Finished 8-15-11, rating 4/5, mystery, 300 pages, pub. 1981

God only knows how it all began.  After all the searching and seeking, the rationale debate and wild, intuitive guessing.  I’m not sure we really arrived at the truth.  We poor humans are so imprisoned in narrow boundaries of space and time, so confined by five meager senses.  We are like ants, running frantically back and forth on meaningless errands that consume our years, taking a few square inches of earth for a universe.

first paragraph

Grayhaven Manor, an English Gothic mansion, was moved stone by stone (graves in the basement included), to rural Pennsylvania.  When Kevin’s parents won the lottery they bought the extravagant home and asked Kevin to live there for the summer to watch over it while they traveled.  He invited his fellow college professor, Anne, so they could work on a textbook they were writing together.  And then Aunt Bea and opinionated neighbor, Roger, show up and the house seems full, especially with the ghosts that make themselves known at night.  They are ghosts, right?

This spooky story is told in first person from Anne’s perspective and she had spunk.  I enjoyed her intelligence and identified with her insecurity about her looks.  She felt very real to me and if Anne saw a ghost then I believed her.  Kevin was a hot guy who everyone woman desired, maybe even Anne, to her disgust.  I liked Kevin and his easy-going nature, but did find him a bit shallow.

There was a considerable amount of history and I did love the way the three differing opinions were shown.  This book was haunting and I really want to visit a gothic mansion to see if I can detect ghost activity.

I did feel like the end was a little rushed and I was a bit disappointed, but not enough to take away from my enjoyment of the book.

Did you know that Barbara Michaels is Elizabeth Peters?  I recomend this for cozy mystery lovers and ghost story fans.

This was from my personal library.

Enter my giveaway for All for Love:A Romantic Anothology here.

Try my latest quiz here.