The Vanishing at Castle Moreau by Jaime Jo Wright

In 1865, orphaned Daisy Francois takes a position as housemaid at a midwestern Wisconsin castle and finds that the reclusive and eccentric Gothic authoress inside hides more than the harrowing tales in her novels. With women disappearing from the area and a legend that seems to parallel these eerie circumstances, Daisy is thrust into a web that may threaten to steal her sanity, if not her life. In the present day, Cleo Clemmons is hired by the grandson of American aristocratic family the Tremblays to help his matriarchal grandmother face her hoarding in the dilapidated Castle Moreau. But when Cleo uncovers more than just the woman's stashes of collectibles, a century-old mystery of disappearance, insanity, and the dust of the old castle's curse threatens to rise again, and this time, leave no one alive to tell its sordid tale.

No matter how strange, how creepy, how unearthly, you can always count on Jaime Jo Wright to have a rational and believable explanation for all happenings in the end. There were a lot of direct parallels between the two (technically, three) timelines that made me wonder how she was going to pull it off--no one can live for 220 years, for instance. And ghosts don't exist. But Wright pulls it off expertly, as usual.

There was something about the past timeline with Daisy and Lincoln that put me in mind of the movie Rigoletto (the 1993 Beauty and the Beast-esque Feature Films for Families movie, not the classic opera), even before I got a full view of Lincoln or learned the castle's secrets. Now at the end, I stand by that impression even more. I can't really draw too many comparisons for sake of spoilers, but it's safe to say that appearances can be very deceiving. 

Wright has a way of pulling hope out of the bleakest circumstances in her stories, but I think this one holds more hope than all the others. There's a significant amount of darkness--abuse permeates all timelines of the story--but there is light for those watching for it.

Thank you Bethany House and NetGalley for the complimentary e-book. I was not required to write a positive review, and all opinions are my own.