The Fate of Mercy Alban by Wendy Webb

 

My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Category: Adult
Genre:  Gothic, Mystery, Ghost story,
Content: A fade to black sex scene

 

Grace Alban has spent twenty years away from her childhood home, the stately Alban House, for reasons she would rather forget. But when her mother's unexpected death brings Grace and her teen-age daughter home, she finds more haunting the halls and passageways of Alban House than her own personal demons.

Long-buried family secrets, a packet of old love letters and a lost manuscript plunge Grace into a decades-old mystery about a scandalous party at Alban House, when a world-famous author took his own life and Grace's aunt disappeared without a trace. The night has been shrouded in secrecy by the powerful Alban family for all of these years, and Grace realizes her family secrets tangle and twist as darkly as the secret passages of Alban House. Her mother was intending to tell the truth about that night to a reporter on the very day she died - could it have been murder? Or was she a victim of the supposed Alban curse? With the help of the disarmingly kind--and attractive—Reverend Matthew Parker, Grace must uncover the truth about her home and its curse before she and her daughter become the next victims.

 

I've liked other books I've read by this author but I found this one to be frustrating. It was the slow pace of the story, and the way it took its time to reveal all the secrets, some of which were obvious. There would be something about to be revealed and then the author would have to insert descriptions of what they were eating and the scenery to drag it out needlessly. It was dragged out so much that I almost felt like throwing the book across the room a couple of times. 

I also got frustrated with how dumb some of the characters were. All those secrets they just couldn't bring themselves to tell so that they could protect this wealthy family. It was just unreal. And I'm not buying that a family this wealthy with a mansion like that wouldn't have 24 hour hired security there, plus a state of the art security system. 

On top of all that the minister of the church is sleeping with his parishioner whom he barely knows, and whom isn't really a church goer herself. It just didn't seem very believable that a minister would do that. 

Then there was the epilogue. I absolutely hated it.