Due to a sudden, unexpected passing in the family a few years ago and another more recently and my subsequent (mental) health issues stemming from that, I was unable to download this book in time to review it before it was archived as I did not visit this site for several years after the bereavements. This meant I didn't read or venture onto netgalley for years as not only did it remind me of that person as they shared my passion for reading, but I also struggled to maintain interest in anything due to overwhelming depression. I was therefore unable to download this title in time and so I couldn't give a review as it wasn't successfully acquired before it was archived. The second issue that has happened with some of my other books is that I had them downloaded to one particular device and said device is now defunct, so I have no access to those books anymore, sadly.

This means I can't leave an accurate reflection of my feelings towards the book as I am unable to read it now and so I am leaving a message of explanation instead. I am now back to reading and reviewing full time as once considerable time had passed I have found that books have been helping me significantly in terms of my mindset and mental health - this was after having no interest in anything for quite a number of years after the passings. Anything requested and approved will be read and a review written and posted to Amazon (where I am a Hall of Famer & Top Reviewer), Goodreads (where I have several thousand friends and the same amount who follow my reviews) and Waterstones (or Barnes & Noble if the publisher is American based). Thank you for the opportunity and apologies for the inconvenience.

Secrets everywhere, you just have to look closely. Antonia lives in her ancestral home in 1912 Scotland along with her husband Malcolm. They are to continue the upkeep to the home and “the glass castle”. The glass castle is a large greenhouse that houses exotic plants. Her father, Edward has passed away. Soon she is joined by her brother George’s wife and daughter, Cicely and her daughter Kitty from India. George is off hunting down seeds from the snow tree which would be a prize. It is a costly undertaking. As the two women get to know other they change each other’s lives in ways they could not foresee. Many secrets both of the past and present are revealed.

Really well written if you love historical fiction this is for you.Two women coming together from different places to settle an estate .Characters that come alive a glass house and botany all are involved.Abooj that kept me involved till the last page.#netgalley #flatironboojs

To me, this one reads more like women's fiction rather than a true historical fiction... there are lots of layers to the story, but I struggled to find a connection with the characters. There just seemed like there was this buildup to something happening but that never really plays out. The writing is beautiful so there is that, but the story fell short of expectations for me.

I adore a crumbly old house novel and enjoy most of the tropes that go along with it.

There will be an inheritance dispute! Someone will go missing on the grounds and may or may not survive the experience! There will appear to be a ghost! Someone will burn the whole place down at the end!

In the case of The Glass House...Three out of four ain’t bad? I won’t share which three, but I will say that this also sums up how I mostly felt about this book: Not bad.

Despite the crumbly old estate, it’s not a Gothic novel, so the slow pace wasn’t great, though I wasn’t bored reading it. Mostly I just wish the book had focused more on atmosphere and on Cecily’s travels and time in India.

While the plot point that brings Cecily and her daughter to Scotland is potentially a good one, the story just never grows in the way that I wanted it to. It’s a “little” book, which is fine and can often be interesting if the situation is one that fascinates under a microscope, but this story is one we’ve seen many times before, so the devil in the details fails to be particularly enthralling.

The writing is lovely and the characters at least somewhat intriguing, and I’m not sad I read this book at all. But will I remember the plot of it in a year? Doubtful.

This was a difficult read for me. Historical fiction can really be a hit or a miss for me. This one had its ups and tits downs. I loved how discriptive the writing was. I felt like I was in Scotland the entire time which made the story truly come alive. I felt like the character development of the main characters was really well done, but most of the side characters were just thrown in there and that made some parts incredibly boring for me. I also felt like the author was really forcing some of the racial stereo type ideas and they were not well done.

The Glass House by Beatrice Colin had an interesting premise -- in the Edwardian era, a woman ventures from her home in India to her naturalist husband's remote family manor house in Scotland, only to discover a tangled web of secrets. However, the characters fall relatively flat, and it was difficult to feel the author's intended tension. The descriptions of the Scottish landscape were beautiful, but it would've been a far stronger story if it were a novella. The issue of race/racism was sort of clunky, and it felt somewhat forced.

1.75/5: A disappointing work of historical fiction with some merits (good glimpses into nature), but overall, forgettable.

Many thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

I received a copy of this book to review from Netgalley. Thank you for the opportunity.
This book has wonderful writing that is incredibly descriptive and dreamy. It really well evoked the time. I liked how one of the MC was from India and this allowed for exploration of the empire and racism at the time.
I felt that the author skated over some areas which could have added more depth to the book. At times, it felt like mainly description without much growth and development of the characters.
On the whole, a good book.

In 1912, after the death of Edward Pick, his daughter in law Cicely and her 8 year old daughter Kitty suddenly turn up at Edward’s estate in Scotland. Her secret intention is to claim Balmarra on behalf of her husband George. This would involve dislodging George’s sister Antonia and her husband Malcolm from their home. Edward and George shared a fascination with rare plants. Edward’s collection is still thriving in the glass house. George is hunting for plants in India.

This was basically women’s fiction, which doesn’t generally appeal to me, but I finished it anyway and didn’t hate it. Each woman keeps secrets, each has an unsatisfying marriage and each indulges in a flirtation. There is some ado made about that fact that Cicely and Kitty are “beige” (the horror!) Antonia is too trusting to suspect that Cicely is after the estate and tries to help Cicely get money to support George’s obsession. I would have just told him to get a job. No one in the book is awful, they don’t do hateful things to each other and nothing terrible happens. I listened to the audiobook and maybe I was lulled by the gentleness of the narrator’s voice. 3.5 stars

I received a free copy of this book from the publisher.

Very atmospheric . In 1912 a woman marries a Scottish man and they live in India with their daughter .
He is a plant biologist who travels extensively .always on the lookout for the original,the unusual the yet undiscovered.
His wife and child make a stop at his family's grand estate filled with exotic and grand plants. The book was about friendships,secrets a gone stale marriage and working to make it right again when we thought all hope was lost.
Reading about the plants was very interesting.

Published September 15th 2020 by Flatiron Books
I was given a complimentary copy of this book. Thank you.
All opinions expressed are my own.

The Glass House is a women's fiction more than it is a historical fiction as it predominantly deals with the stories of our two lead women Antonia and Cicely. I love reading stories of women from another era because there is so much to learn about their lives when the world was so different from the world we live in now. Our female protagonists Cicely and Antonia are sister-in-laws who have been living less for them and more according to the terms of the men in their lives. Cicely along with her daughter Kitty sails all her way to Scotland unannounced at the doorstep of her sister-in-law Antonia who lives in Scotland with her husband Malcolm. The reason behind her visit stays a mystery to them but yet they seem to be very accommodating of her and the child. We then get introduced to few more characters as the story shifts back and forth between the present and the past and we get more insight into how these women's lives have been controlled by various men thereby halting their personal growth and dreams. My interest was peaked whenever Cicely narrated tales about her life in India and how british India had been at that time. But i couldn't see through their characters completely for some reason, There seemed to be a window open for them to be something they wanted to be always but these characters kept going back to their old lives which quite frankly didn't make sense to me. But it also could be because i didn't belong to that era and our ideologies are quite progressive comparatively . The ending also kind of didn't quite feel satisfactory to me. I also feel the topic of racism and color culture was not dealt with much precision.

Cecily shows up on her SIL's doorstep to claim her husband's inheritance, while he's on an expedition to discover some rare flowers. Through a series of unfortunate circumstances the end result wasn't what anyone wanted. Some of the stories/characters were only included to throw the reader off and add an air of mystery, but they felt very disjointed. There was also a little too much time describing plants and not enough time telling the characters stories. Good book for a Botanist, but a little boring for the average reader.

Thank You Net Galley and Flatiron books for this free e-galley.

This book unfortunately just wasn't for me. I had to trudge through it. I found the pacing to be slow and parts of the book to be unclear. That doesn't mean I won't read another book by Colin, however, this one just didn't do it for me.

Genre: Historical Fiction
Publisher: Flatiron Books
Pub. Date: September 15, 2020

In the twentieth century, a woman in India marries a Scottish man. They live together in India with their biracial daughter. He is a plant biologist who travels on expeditions around the world in search of discovering rare flowering plants. His wife and child make an unannounced trip to Scotland to visit her husband’s estranged sister who lives on the family’s grand estate. The estate has a glasshouse filled with exotic plants. Yes, you are guessing correctly. There are reasons why they showed up unexpectedly with their suitcases. This was not a social call. I found this book to be way more of a women’s fiction than historical fiction, lots about marriages and not much about history. The only thing I learned is that some wealthy families have always looked down on those that are different. The one percent rule of black blood has been around before America created that unholy rule. The novel was not for me. However, if you like twists you will find them in this story.
https://twitter.com/NeesRecord

"Seeing the world is the greatest thing a man can do"

Oh My! This is one of those stories which took me on a completely unique, totally immersive and enthralling individual journey, at a slow and luxurious pace. I escaped my everyday life and became completely invested in both the characters and storyline, to the point where I didn't want to have turn that final page and for my travels to be over.

Just pre First World War, The Glass House transported me north of the UK border, to the Dunoon area of Scotland, where the vividly descriptive, richly atmospheric writing about the region and countryside, was lavish,  replete with detail, completely evocative of the era and drew me straight into the period, with a real sense of time and place.

This was partially a work of cultural fiction, covering topics which in today's climate of racial equality, made for some cringeworthy reading moments, which were however, pertinent to the storyline, totally relevant for inclusion and did not form too large a part of the overall content. Despite my discomfort, I am still firmly of the belief that you cannot change history and neither should we. We should amend information where necessary, documenting and recording events truthfully and accurately. Going forward we should then work to change our mindset and views, so that the history books of the future will record our new advanced and informed thinking.

But first! Step back in time to the days of inherited estate, wealth and title, when a woman's job was the household management of staff and finances, together with caring for the family. Whilst the men, either conducted their daily business, or set about pursuing their follies and hobbies, without discussion or argument from the females of the family. Vividly remembered and brought to life through some excellent social commentary, the recently deceased, Edward Pike personifies a patriarch of this rigid societal and etiquette driven structure. A family fortune won and lost in the sugar refining business, the secret disgrace and indiscretion of an ancestral family member hidden for all time, a passion for collecting specimen plants and seeds from far-flung corners of the world at huge expense both personally and financially. This is the domineering, selfish and vain man who Antonia and George knew as their father, although it isn't until much later that they discover just how racist and duplicitous he really was.

And that is just the tip of the iceberg, but it sets the scene accurately and without any real spoilers, to a story which challenges the societal mores of the time, reveals long buried potentially explosive secrets, nurtures forbidden friendships, uncovers illicit affairs, discovers latent talents, proves that the truth and forgiveness can set you free, and ultimately shows that loyalty and true love can happen at the most unexpected of times and change lives forever!

Because of, rather than in spite of, the air of mystery and secrecy which surrounds the individual members of this disjointed and dysfunctional family, and their immediate contacts and representatives, the characters were needless to say, very emotionally complex and almost remote, from the very first turn of the page. Whilst being extremely well defined and developed for the reader as individuals, they were all rather insular and self sufficient, not prone to interacting with either each other or outsiders, almost to the point where they had become excluded from the society of which they were part. Despite being intelligent and resourceful individuals, I rather felt that they had been stifled, not only by the spectre of Edward Pike, but almost by the house itself. There was so much British 'stiff upper lip', that even the presence of a young child around the place couldn't shake off the lethargy of the family dynamics.

However, it seemed that when Edward's ghost was no longer hanging over them, there was a transformation of enormous proportions and new life was suddenly breathed into bodies which had been suspended in time and place. There were multi-stranded, totally diverse and very unexpected outcomes for the individual members of the family, and many of their future plans and dreams were left to me to imagine and surmise. Were there happy ever afters? - I suspect there might well have been and really do hope there were, as this was a family who needed to learn how to live, love, laugh and fulfil their true potential.

The Glass House has a multi-layered, textured storyline, with plenty of natural peaks and troughs in its pace, which I felt had the potential to go much further than it did and didn't quite reach the pinnacle of my expectations, but perhaps that was just my yearning for the book to go on for much longer. Parts of the story were intense, although unless you had got under the skin of the characters, this might not have been immediately obvious from their words and actions. Scratch beneath the surface though and there was a real depth and range of emotion and feeling, seamlessly delivered and masterfully managed, by an author consummate in the art of storytelling and completely at ease with the authority she commanded, which is why this one still more than earned its 4 stars from me.

The Glass House by Beatrice Colin is a wonderful historical story with a feature on botany and plants that is enthralling to read . I loved how the author describes species of plants throughout and her love of nature that is so richly pictured for the reader. The author has woven a story that is rich in charcters, drama and a dash of romance amid beautiful plants . The story is set in the early 1900's in Scotland and weaves also into India. Its a complex story that I loved reading and highly recommend. Thank you to the publisher and to Net Galley for the opportunity. .

Have you ever read a book or watched a movie where it was good and you liked it or maybe even thought it was just ok and a little slow? But, then the way the end escalated and dramatically swirled or intensified or perhaps even went in another direction just completely makes the whole thing or changes and improves your opinion and feelings about it - gives it that extra wow factor or puts it over the top?! Well, that is THE GLASS HOUSE by Beatrice Colin released just last month. I enjoyed this slow burn of a book set in Scotland in the early 1900’s centered around a pair of sister-in-laws, Antonia and Cicely, and the family’s Balmarra House estate. In fact, this duo of opposites who became close, transformed into the best versions of themselves, and found an elusive species reminded me of another pair of similarity featured female protagonists - Margery and Enid from MISS BENSON’S BEETLE by Rachel Joyce Books / Rachel Joyce, who already have a place in my heart.

It was an emboldening joy to see both women whose lives and paths seemed to be essentially defined by others like their spouses and families, or by things out of their control such as their backgrounds, gender, or skin color, take control of their own fates and life paths while recognizing and realizing their dreams and talented skills. And even though this novel is set in a time where women were fighting for any number of things—like suffrage, careers, education etc — many of the issues like gender equality and ending racism are still being fought for by women today. Yet common core themes, like relationships whether with friends, families, partners, or even ourselves in the form of self-love and confidence, run and weave throughout the book.

Beatrice Colin has definitely got a new fan in me with this novel, and it is with sadness for those of you as well as myself, who didn’t know until research of the author revealed she had passed last year. Heart breaking and shocking. So I ask if you do like this book share your recommendation to your book club or friends, write a review, and/or post on social media regarding to honor her and her final work with buzz, praise, multiple book printings, and/or all things bookish!! Thank you Beatrice for this beautiful work where you will still live on!

I wanted to like this book a lot. It’s easy to read, great time period, interesting things going on, but wow, none of the characters are likeable. I wanted to throttle most of them at some point. Kitty might have been the most likeable but she reeked of Mary Lennox before she found The Secret Garden. Not a bad read just not a great one.

I did appreciate the plant hunting aspect and wish this had been developed even more.

I learnt so much about botany whilst reading this book! It was incredibly interesting. The plot was engaging and there were parts where I was forced to stop reading and take a breath because the author does a great job at creating obstacles for the characters. Some descriptions of the world were also worded so beautifully. The smells, the sights, the cold – Colin does a great job at setting scenes and creating images for the reader. The themes were a great addition to the story. Both Antonia and Cicely react to and live through racism and sexism throughout. Adultery is another big theme, so be prepared for a LOT of cheating. I must also add that all the men in the book are SUCKY people.
As much as I enjoyed those aspects, I was waiting for the women to establish a friendship as mentioned in the synopsis. But they don’t. At all. The ending also made no sense to me. It felt quite rushed, and I wasn’t sure why any of the characters chose to do what they did? That definitely was a miss for me.
Overall, I enjoyed the story and I learnt some things about plants and trees that I didn’t know prior to reading. This work of historical fiction was an okay read, to be enjoyed by those who would like to catch a glimpse of Scotland in 1912 and with a potential interest in botany.

A beautiful tale of two women, a greenhouse, and a secret to be discovered at the turn of the 20th century.. Botany is also presented as a growing character in this charming book.