Black Rabbit Hall

Author/Guide: Eve Chase

Why a Booktrail?

1968, 2000s: In the rambling and crumbling Cornish estate, a secret from the past lies waiting to be discovered…

ISBN: 978-1405919326
Genre: Fiction, Mystery

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What you need to know before your trail

In their Cornish estate and home of Black Rabbit Hall, the Alton children enjoy carefree summers playing and exploring in the woods. Time seems to stand still here. Even in the house, no two clocks ever read the same. Everyday is filled with adventure.

Until one day when tragedy strikes and a shadow of gloom and grief hangs over Black Rabbit Hall. The children grow up in this darkness, and and even a glamourous stranger cannot bring light to their day. Infact things only get worse.

Decades later, Lorna and her fiancé wind their way through the countryside searching for a wedding venue. Lorna has a vague memory of there being a country house tucked away somewhere so they go to find it. When there, she feels a pull to the place but also a sense of danger when she finds a disturbing message carved into a tree.

The house it seems has been waiting to spill it secrets. The clocks it seem have seemingly synchronized.

Locations

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Travel Guide

Roseland Peninsula

Black Rabbit Hall, or Pencraw Hall to give it its official name in the novel is sadly fictional but it’s a place where a gothic mansion is evoked in gorgeous gothic detail.

Tucked away in Cornwall, somewhere along the Roseland Peninsula, it’s a ramshackle, crumbling place and even back in the 1960s, “It’s as if the twentieth century never started.”

The woods around it are the children’s carefree playground, the rivers, fields, woods..oh the woods where the trees try to grab you and the shadows dance. A tree with a disturbing carving which years later causes Lorna to shiver.

Present day and the house is a retro, vintage image of its former self. The landscape seems to be reclaiming it, as if the house was always merely part of it. Mrs Alton lives there with her housekeeper Dill. Two old woman rattling around like ghosts.

Time stands still here:

“The other thing about Black Rabbit Hall is that when you’re here it feel like you’ve been here for centuries but when you leave it feels like the entire holiday happened in one afternoon. Maybe that’s why nobody cares that the clocks are all set wrong.”

The ghosts from decades past are whispering, and the trees in the overgrown gardens are smothering the secrets.

Booktrailer Review

Susan: @thebooktrailer

Last night I dreamt I went to Black Rabbit Hall again…

That’s my summary in one line. Reminiscent of a certain Du Maurier novel yes, but also a nod to the fact that I’ve never forgotten about the hall since I read about it.

I really really really would love to go to Black Rabbit Hall. I prefer to call it that for how it got its name. It’s your perfect gothic mansion and with two old women living there with the memories. I was dying to dip my toes into this as soon as I read the blurb.

Eve Chase’s first novel and how gorgeous is her writing. It’s as if she was singing when she was writing it. It’s everything there is to love about an old gothic and grand house being gradually smothered by its past. I was right there in that house, in the woods with the children, heard the creek of the stairs then felt the thrill of going back to visit it with Lorna in the present day. Mrs Alton was a fascinating woman, as was Dill, but Mrs Alton! I vet Eve had great fun creating her. She’s a large and complex character and I loved scenes with her.

The first person narrative worked really well drawing me into the story and the atmosphere and the minds of those in that house. I was intrigued to find out how Lorna knew it. The mystery of that house is definitely worth finding out. It’s the first time in a while I’ve wanted to step inside a novel and punch someone, shake someone and make them see, warn the others

Bravo Ms Chase. Now please can you write some more very quickly!