RAVEN HEIGHTS MANOR

A teenager adjusting to a new home searches for clues to a mysterious death.

Claire Temple’s first glimpse of Raven Heights Manor, grimly perched on a rock on the north Cornwall coast, fills her with foreboding. Lonely and despondent since her parents’ deaths nine years earlier, Claire has suffered the common fate of late-18th-century orphans and been put to school—until her bachelor uncle invites her to the manor. When she arrives, he’s still abroad, and Claire is left in the care of his second cousin, the kindly housekeeper. Vitus and Roman, two boys about her age who live on the neighboring estate, claim her acquaintance, and Roman tells her all about the smugglers who hide their treasures in caves along the coast. With the natural resilience of not quite 16 years, Claire soon begins to enjoy exploring the manor and its grounds, although she’s warned away from the cliff where young Zillah recently fell to her death. Zillah was close to a little blind girl, Alice, who boarded with her at Miss Bethany Coulter’s inn. When Alice confides in Claire about a couple of notes Zillah left behind in case anything happened to her, Claire is increasingly curious about the young woman’s unfortunate fate. She takes a break from sleuthing to try to match up Bethany and Malcolm Randall, an aspiring chef, as business partners. She’s resourceful for one so young and enjoys unusual independence for a girl of her time, but it’s not her fault that her readers will probably be one step ahead of her most of the way. 

For an author with a list of historical romances to her name, Louise (RoseHill Manor, 2010, etc.) doesn’t write very convincingly about her chosen period or show much originality in a slight tale that’s likely to have the most appeal for young adults.