It’s a delight today to be helping launch the blog tour and to share my review of the new novella from the lovely Victoria Connelly, The Wrong Ghost, independently published for kindle on 31st October, available via Amazon (and free via Kindle Unlimited) in the UK and US. I must tell you too that this story is one of three novellas in her The Christmas Collection Volume 2, which also includes two previously published stories, The Christmas Rose and Christmas for the Book Lovers: published on 10th November in paperback as well as for kindle, that really looks like something perfect for a book lover’s Christmas stocking. My thanks to Rachel at Rachel’s Random Resources for the invitation and support, and to the author for my advance reading copy.
I was very late discovering Victoria Connelly’s lovely writing – I only read (and loved) The Book Lovers in 2020, five years after it was published (you’ll find my review here) – but she’s now very much a personal favourite. My next read from her was a quite wonderful standalone, The Beauty of Broken Things – I entirely loved it, one of my 2020 Books of the Year, and a very special book (you’ll find my review here). And more recently, I’ve thoroughly enjoyed her The House in the Clouds trilogy. I missed the first, The House in the Clouds, but happily picked up the second in the series, High Blue Sky and fell in love with Winfield Hall in the same way Abi and Edward did (you can read my full review again here). The Colour of Summer was the perfect conclusion to that series – totally delightful, heartwarming and uplifting, infused with the warmth of summer sunshine (and you can read my full review again here).
So a novella this time, just 114 pages, the perfect length for my recent train journey to London – let’s take a closer look…
When Beatrice Beaumont loses her husband, George, she finds herself raising their young daughter alone in the ancestral home, Ketton Hall, deep in the Suffolk countryside. With Christmas approaching and marking the first anniversary of George’s death, there’s nothing Bea wants more than to have him back again.
One night, she makes a wish for him to return and gets the shock of her life when a ghost appears. But it isn’t her George…
The Wrong Ghost is a delightful Christmas tale, full of warmth and charm, perfect for a dark winter’s night in a cosy, candle-lit room.
I often think a novella or short story is just perfect for a Christmas read – it’s the time when it can be particularly difficult to focus on a full length book amid the many other demands of the festive season. And there’s something just right about making it a ghost story too – not something I often choose (a tendency to sleepless nights, hearing every creak and imagined footstep…) but this really is a very gentle one, unlike to disturb even the most sensitive reader.
Beatrice is approaching her first Christmas without her much-loved husband George – it’s the anniversary of his death, and she’d give anything to have him back by her side at Ketton Hall. The house itself is too much for her to manage – although she’d never want to be anywhere other than the place that holds so many memories of their happy life together. At a particularly low moment, amid the Elizabethan linenfold panelling that gave her floral business its name, she calls his name and asks him to return – but the George that appears isn’t her husband, instead a very amiable ancestor (another George) from the seventeenth century.
While she keeps him hidden from her young daughter, the obnoxious cousin who feels Ketton Hall should be his, and the casual callers, she becomes rather attached to him. And through his knowledge of the Hall, and their investigations of the panelling and hidden priest holes, he might just help secure her future. And, at the same time, she begins to find an inner strength she thought she’d lost, and there might just be a happier life ahead for her and her young daughter after all.
This really is the loveliest story, gently and beautifully told – a very real portrait of grief and loss, but with plenty of moments of lightness in her relationship with George as the mystery slowly unfolds. The descriptions are really excellent – the Hall itself, and the surrounding countryside and the natural world that bring Beatrice some solace – and I really liked some of the details about her creative activities with her on-line floral business. The emotional touch is just perfect throughout – and I adored the intriguing ending, leaving things a little open for a possible return. Really lovely, and the perfect short read for a stormy night at the fireside – and one I’d very much recommend you add to your Christmas reading list.
About the author
Victoria Connelly lives in a 500-year old thatched cottage in rural Suffolk with her artist husband, a springer spaniel and a flock of ex-battery hens. She is the million-selling author of two bestselling series, The Austen Addicts and The Book Lovers, as well as many other novels and novellas. Her first published novel, Flights of Angels, was made into a film in Germany. Victoria loves books, films, walking, historic buildings and animals. If she isn’t at her keyboard writing, she can usually be found in her garden either with a trowel in her hand or a hen on her lap.
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Sounds just gorgeous Anne! And the cover is divine, I wonder if Victoria might reveal who designed it, and where the wonderful house pictured is? XXX