The Lost Book of Eleanor Dare was an interesting book. Although I did wish for the historical part of it to be more prominent.

I have received this book in exchange of an honest review, thank you to NetGalley and Harper Muse for the opportunity.

Release date: 12th of April 2022.

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Lately, I'm craving historical fiction books a lot. Even better when it's seemingly a feminist one, and connects the past to the present in any way. The Lost Book of Eleanor Dare had both of those in its pages, if I go by the synopsis and I was very excited because of it.

Once I have started reading it however, I ended up learning that it's much more rooted into real life historical events in The United States. Which someone like me, who's not that knowledgeable about it, ended up enjoying the connection a lot.

For the most part, I enjoyed following Alice and Penn as they slowly made their way back to where it all began. While, watching Alice battle her own demons and start unraveling the history surrounding Evertell. However, I did wish that the historical part of it, came to be much much earlier than when it did.

Until we got there however, I got the chance to see the community in Savannah. I enjoyed seeing how the locals are, the stories they have to tell and where the grudges against some might stem from as well. Given that it's set during WWII as well, and having it be a significant event was enjoyable to read.

Mainly due to it adding even more different sides of grief shown throughout the story. There is no one universal way to anything, and being around the two of them as they navigate this city and seeing this front and center was very good. Those who shared the same pains, those who had others, the aftermath of some decisions. Hidden parts to some of the stories, learning the truth and getting closure.

There are many things to see in this novel and it being as women centered as it was, before anything else, made it all the better for me. Even better with the mystery that's yet to be revealed.

The mystery is not solved immediately, it's given in smaller tidbits till the very end. And the great thing here is that Kimberly Brock has a way of making me want to know the rest of it. That of course, doesn't mean that Alice's story or Penn's for the matter, are not interesting. Not quite, but neither story is anywhere near as interesting as Eleanor's to me.

And that is the problem here to me. It simply takes way too long before this side of it comes to be.
And in turn, it makes the book much different than what I hoped or expected going in.

If it was just a contemporary read with Alice coming to terms with everything that's happened and tracing her roots, it would have worked wonderfully based on what I got. However, having the historical side in the backseat despite the teasing of the greater story here, made it not as enjoyable as it could have been to me. It dragged on a bit till we got there, and once it did, I wished for so much more.

There are many mentioned great women in the book, and having seen their stories as well in a way, would have been great in my humble opinion. And I didn't quite get that here.

It was an interesting read, and maybe in a different mindset it would've worked brilliantly for me. But, for now, I thankfully enjoyed myself for the most part and that's the biggest win I could ever hope for.

I had never heard of Eleanor Dare and her stones before I read this book. I read about them as I read this beautiful story of love and loss, of transitioning from a feeling of shame to a keen sense of awareness and believing in oneself. The reader will learn the art of finding themselves as they read this story, of forgiving themselves, of letting the bad things go so that there can space for the good things to survive.

This book has a touch of both mystery and magic. There are parts where you find that the story is dragging a bit. But get through it and you will be rewarded with an enchanting tale of mother and daughter finding their true selves. The rich characters of the story are so engaging, that it is hard to give up anyway.

I would like to thank NetGalley and Harper Muse for a digital ARC.

#NetGalley #TheLostBookofEleanorDare

The Lost Book of Eleanor Dare is one of those books that I absolutely promise I really tried to love. The concept was great and I was highly intrigued by the synopsis. However, I was disappointed that much of it fell flat. While Alices’s decisions made more sense as the story goes along, it doesn’t make her less whiny. It took far too long for me to connect with her problems and attempts at solutions. The disconnect may have stemmed from a hard time distinguishing what was memory, what was thought, and what was actually happening. Penn’s chapters were much easier for me to follow because, although she had a lot of turmoil in her heart, she had a clear goal and ways to accomplish that goal. The progression of her character was both interesting and believable.

The synopsis promised a connection to the Lost Colony of Roanoke and it didn't come until much further into the story than expected. It was only finding out more about that part of the story that kept me going. Once those chapters started appearing more frequently, the story moved at a faster pace.

One of the most compelling parts of the novel was the complexities of life and culture in the south. The settings and characters outside of our main characters were beautifully written. I love a story that has characters outside of the main characters that are fully flushed out. This was one of those books that I could fully immerse myself in whenever there were sections of description. I had a harder time with the person to person interaction.

Normally, I would provide a short synopsis with this review, but this is such a complex novel that I feel I would be doing a disservice by giving it only a few sentences.

⅗ stars

Thank you to Netgalley and Harper Muse for allowing me to read this eARC in exchange for my honest opinions.

"A story matters, not because it is true, but because it's been told."

I normally love historical fiction and dual timelines, but this one was difficult for me to get into. The scene the author used as a "hook" in the beginning was just confusing, and as a reader I had no idea who was narrating or which of the 3 timelines we were in until much later in the book. I found myself liking a lot of the side characters more than Alice and Penn, but was glad to have their shifting perspectives to keep the story moving. It did do a good job dealing with grief and loss (especially loss without closure for both Alice's mother and Penn's father), but it just didn't quite live up to my expectations. At times it was hard to tell if the author meant for the Dare descendants to actually have visions and a little bit of magic or if it was just family folklore and knowledge of herbs & plants. The Evertell and Savannah setting were great and I loved watching Penn explore the property. Eleanor's book wasn't really "lost" so that killed part of the mystery almost immediately and I would have liked to see more direct excerpts from it rather than Alice just talking about what was in there. This story had so much potential but ended up just being another WWII Homefront story for me.

Thank you to Netgalley, Harper Muse, and Kimberly Brock for an ebook ARC in exchange for an honest review

THE LOST BOOK OF ELEANOR DARE is one of those novels that will reveal itself in as many different ways as there are different kinds of readers.

Yes, it is an historical novel built around the lost colony of Roanoke.
Yes, it is a coming of age story.
Yes, it is an inter-generational story of love and loss.
And, yes, it is a story that illuminates the pain and injustice inflicted by war.

I found the best way to experience this book was to let myself get lost inside it, but not search for answers or meaning. The characters do that for you and their journey was illuminating enough for me. I’m not sure I could “discuss” this book in a coherent way, but It allowed me to be “ a seeker” and I benefited from the quest.

Netgalley provided me with a complimentary copy of this book in exchange for a candid review.

Kimberly Brock’s breathtaking prose takes readers on a brilliant story with a fascinating history and perfectly flawed characters. The Lost Book of Eleanor Dare is a rich, moving saga that will transport readers to the magic of the south, through heartbreak and love, through family secrets, to finding your truth and belonging.

This book is a wonderfully balanced story of two timelines. The mesmerising way of writing and different POVs generate such a good reading

This book focuses on women who are descendants of Eleanor Dare and the Lost Colony. Alternating between the different timelines, one focusing around World War Two, makes the book a good historical fiction with a little bit of fairy tale and mystery.

Although a slow burn and sometimes a bit too crowded because of several characters, the book takes some time to get the attention of the reader. But when hooked, it’s another walk through history and is a wonderful plot to the lovers of Kate Morton.


All thanks to Netgalley for this eARC for preview. Loved reading it.

This book touches on all the intricacies of mother/daughter relationships. I loved the way Kimberly Brock was able to weave the modern day lives of Alice and Penn seemlessly with the lives of their ancestors in this timeless tale. I was previously unaware of the Dare Stones and all of the mystery surrounding them. Whether they are "real" or not, they are the perfect basis for this story.

I loved this book so much. I have long since been fascinated with the mystery of the Lost Colony of Roanoke, so I jumped at the chance to receive this eARC. This was a beautifully written book that uses a dual timeline and multiple POV’s to weave a lovely tale of love, longing and loss. The book is quite an undertaking though at almost 500 pages, so be ready to dig in.

I am not typically a reader of Historical Fiction so I tried to go out of my comfort zone with The Lost Book of Eleanor Dare, about the lost colony of Roanoke. I mean who isn't intrigued by a whole community vanishing into thin air?! This book was very different than what I anticipated, jumping between dual timelines of WWII and the 1500s. Acknowledging that I am not the prime audience for this book, I had a hard time engaging with the story. The focus was a lot less mystery than it was family history, grief and loss. The mythos of Roanoke was also debunked in a very reasonable (and less exciting and sensational) way, which aligns with the actual history and discovery of the Dare stones. It was also quite long at over 400 pages and didn't touch on Eleanor Dare until more than halfway through.

That being said, fans of historical fiction may very well enjoy this one. Usually I am all for going into books blind but I recommend doing a little research in advance about the Dare family (if you don't already know). It will enhance your reading experience 100%.I did a deep dive and found the history very interesting.

Thank you to NetGalley and Harper Muse for a chance to review this ARC. I received a complimentary copy of this book. Opinions expressed in this review are completely my own. Eleanor Dare drops April 12, 2022.

This was an ARC copy that I won and a first from this author for me. While the story got off to a slow start, once I got into it I could not put it down. I became invested in the lives of the Dare girls. Alice struggles to raise a teenage daughter during WWII after her husband was killed. She goes back to her family home that was left to her through her mother after her father passes away. She has many things to work through that is left over from a childhood incident and the tragic loss of her mother. This affects the decisions she makes once back at Evertell, but as she spends more time there and learns more about her mother, herself, and her daughter they all grow in various ways. Woven through the story is the tale of Eleanor Dare and what happened to the fated lost colony of Roanoke. How her father's decisions set everything in motion. It is a moving tale and gives us a glimpse of what could have possibly happened so long ago and how that story still lives on in the Evertell heirs of Eleanor Dare.

I wasn’t sure what to expect as I started to read this book and came away pleasantly surprised and very happy that I read it. To me this was a coming of age story not only for a daughter but a mother too. To the female descendants of Eleanor Dare the history all the women through the ages shared and what happened in Jamestown. Their connection to the land, Belle Isle and the wonders there made for a beautifully intriguing story.

It was easy to get caught up with the characters and stay engaged with the rich descriptions. You could picture yourself there.

Thank you to #netgalley and #harpermuse for allowing me to read this wonderful story.

Even though I’m not a fan of the who historical what ifs mainly because I hate it when fiction writer’s try to chance history. I enjoyed this one. And I am pretty sure it is because the author did it with a point in history that we really don’t know what happened. The Lost Colony of Roanoke and I loved this author’s take on.

A story written, using a mystery that captures people's imagination, was beautifully written. The characters, dealing with loss, looking for answers and a future. Told in dual time the common thread between the historical story an d the more present day story is one of loss and dealing with those losses and the heartache that comes with it while trying to forage a future. It's also about embracing one's past, while not getting lostt in it and the perseved expectations that cone with it, but also about using it to create a future that's entirely your own. Nothing is entirely straightforward and there's always a degree of truth to even the things that seem to be lies. Beautifully written story.
I received an ARC copy from NetGalley for review but all opinions are my own.

After her father’s death Alice inherits Evertell her family home located in Savannah. Alice thought the house had been sold many years ago after her mother died. Alice and her daughter travel back to the home Alice lived in as a child. Alice hopes to sell the house but first she wants to find a book that should have been given to her when she turned thirteen. The commonplace Book had been handed down through many generations of her family.
Alice hopes the book will give her answers to her family history. Alice’s daughter Penn is thirteen and is excited about seeing her families abandoned home and is curious about the secrets that have long been hidden.
This is about the history of Alice’s family over fifteen generations back to Eleanor Dare. Set mostly in Savannah in 1945 and earlier times. The family stories are told through clippings and notes and people living near Evertell and Alice’s memories.
I loved the way the family history was told and the way the character’s interacted. This is about families, history, buildings and secrets.

The Lost Book of Eleanor Dare is a captivating historical southern novel during the WWII era. Alice and her daughter Penn have returned to Evertell to claim their inheritance. Alice left Evertell at age 13 with her father after the death of her mother. After arriving, they find the Commomplace Book and learn how their ancestors are connected to the Lost Colony of Roanoke and the Dare Stones. The Lost Book of Eleanor Dare is an enjoyable book full of family lies and secrets. Thanks to author Kimberly Brock, publisher Harper Muse, and to NetGalley for providing a copy of this book for an honest opinion.

If you have traveled to Raleigh, North Carolina, you may have visited the Museum of History, the exhibit dedicated to Virginia Dare, believed to be the daughter of Eleanor Dare and the first English child born in the New World. This powerful legend and its haunting story of female strength inspired Kimberly Brock’s second novel, THE LOST BOOK OF ELEANOR DARE. 

In the 1500s in England, Eleanor White, like others of her sex, inherited her mother’s whispered stories and cherished words that encouraged Eleanor to be more than her mother could be. Though women could do only women's work, they learned to find ways to break rules, their ideas and truths hidden in what came to be known as The Commonplace Book. Even its title masked its contents, for within her deceased mother's jottings, Eleanor White found hidden messages, secret charms and cures that she could pass on to others of her sex. This was not unlike the anatomy of a women, her necessary and important role in human creation always to be hidden under long skirts, cloaks and her silence.

But a spark in Eleanor White made her refuse to hide one talent. She became her artist father’s apprentice, creating inspired and artful engravings, though only her father’s name could be added to her completed work--Eleanor, a woman, an artist, forced to be invisible. She accepted this, wearing her deceased mother’s red boots, long grey cloak, and clinging to The Commonplace Book. There she copied parables and recipes that helped her accept such a life, all while creating her own vision of how that life might change, what that life might become. 

Then in the late 1500’s, Eleanor's father was made Governor of a new colony in North America, Sir Walter Raleigh’s Roanoke colony. Eleanor had to marry and go with him. But it was her father who chose Eleanor’s husband, Ananias Dare. He would accompany Eleanor and the newly appointed governor to the New World. At their departure, Eleanor, already pregnant, clasped The Commonplace Book to her breast while drinking her mother's dark tea recipe, already fighting to become her own woman, the one she was meant to be--the progenitor of the line of women who appear in Kimberly Brock's seductive and beautiful novel. In the words of Penn, the daughter of Alice Young who currently guards The Commonplace Book: We grow and change, we claim our very own world. 

FICTION AND HISTORY

Readers of Brock's novel are in capable hands. This is a tale of mothers who all had daughters; mothers who passed The Commonplace Book from one generation to another, relating the myth of a stone whose engraved words connected all the generations to the historical figure of Eleanor Dare and her female descendants. Brock names them Alice, Bernadette, Claire and yes, Eleanor. And of course there was Virginia. 

The novel begins with life in the midst of WW II. Alice Young and her teenage daughter Penn have lost husband and father to the war. They are driving back to Evertell, the home of Alice's grandmother and mother, supposed descendants of Eleanor Dare. 

Alice has inherited the gentile house on spreading grounds near rivers that feed the Atlantic Ocean. Evertell is expansive, with outbuildings, acres of vegetation, wandering peacocks, even a small island. Though it is a place of lost grandeur and disrepair, Penn finds it alluring with its hidden stories that can reveal the lives of people who have lived and are still living there. She finds she is craving adventure, eager to learn the stories and fables of Evertell and all its inhabitants. Her once detailed plan to attend a secondary school gradually fades away. Evertell is in her blood. Penn could be an actual descendant of Eleanor Dare. The pull of Evertell and its history, slowly opens her eyes to past worlds, the history of this lineage of strong women. But even before Penn fully understands where and why Evertell is changing her, she impulsively starts the process by inviting the aging lawyer, Oscar Lewallen, to have dinner with them in the rambling house, so in need of repair. Lewallen concurs that Evertell has been passed to Alice. And yes, the 236 acres, the mill, the cemetery on Bel Isle—all of it.   

Maybe it is the very ground Penn now walks upon that excites her, or it’s the people who have lived here for years, or the mystery of a bell, crafted by Paul Revere, that no longer rings. So many mysteries to solve. So much better to fall in love with the history of the females in her family, with their stories that connect them to Evertell and The Commonplace Book that her mother Alice finds in the dusty and neglected house.  

There is Bernadette Reece Telfair, possibly the heir of Eleanor Dare, who completed Evertell in 1799, but also found a hand-drawn map (so like the previous Eleanor) in the Commonplace Book, with the initials EWD. She sent men to find the source, the beginnings of the lives of Eleanor and her descendants, believing in the stone, one inscribed with the story of the fate of those first adventurers. Verbal history claims the stone was found and brought to Evertell to protect it from robbers or the possibility of defacement. But when a later descendent, Bernadette, finds that her daughter has disappeared, the stone is blamed, Bernadette believing she had brought a curse on the family. So now, where is the stone? 

Kimberly Brock has written a novel of strong women, of the struggles of Penn and Alice, now thrust into a world of memory, but also the real world of sorrows and lies, bickering and feuds. And decisions. Though her husband is dead, Alice has a future. She must decide what that future will be and if she will claim her inheritance, the memories it bears.  Penn succumbs to the enchantment, not only of the physical house and surrounding land, but also the history--the missing stone, the damaged bell, that Penn believes must ring again. 

CHANGE IS ETERNAL 

The hearts and souls of women are beautifully wrought in this novel. We don't need to believe in the myth of Eleanor Dare to become enchanted with them, their losses and struggles, the history of Evertell: an explosion that kills a son, causes the death of an innocent man. The friendships that have fallen away because of the darkness of war, the loss of commination, the fever of lies. Though it provides an historical context, the novel is a story of gain and loss, sorrow and joy, of people connected to the land and the buildings that are Evertell, a place that might heal the sorrows and worries of past and present: Penn’s future choices, Alice’s pull to Sonder, the boy she once loved, but now a changed man, in body and soul.

"I could see the girl I'd been when I'd believed in my own magic,” Alice says. And though eager to explore and understand the history that surrounds her, she’s not planning to stay in this expansive place of memories—not all of them welcome. Instead, she focuses on Penn, will make this a short sojourn, a reevaluation, a time to check things out.

But there are always memories that Evertell must reveal. They pull at Alice who says: "I'd gone dark too long ago." Watching Penn embrace this legacy fraught with sorrow and joy, Alice must make a choice—to walk away or open her heart to her inheritance, the strength of her ancestors, the love of man who will help her decide what her personal legacy should be.   

From the novel: Now people live and die in a place, and when you walk the streets, the lawn and orchards, you are walking over lives, over bones—you are tramping on history

This book tells the story of Alice and Penn, mother and daughter in rural Georgia who travel to an old family home by the name of Evertell. Alice lost her husband (and Penn's father) in World War II, and after the passing of her father, Evertell became hers. The home is known for its lores and legends, including the existence of a book which has been passed down through generations of women in Alice's family. Eleanor Dare is a woman who supposedly survived the Lost Colony of Roanoke.

The title and concept really appealed to me, but I honestly had trouble getting into this book. I didn't particularly grow fond of any of the characters, and there was no compelling action propelling me through the book. There was nothing original about going-back-to-an-old-house-filled-with-legends concept. I was hoping there would be more about the Lost Colony of Roanoke.

Thank you to NetGalley, the author, and the publisher of this book!

The premise for The Lost Book of Eleanor Dare is intriguing but I didn’t feel the story lived up to the promise. Several points in the book are painted with much tension and anticipation but when they are resolved it seemed anticlimactic. I like the 13-year-old main character Penn (and love her name) but other characters felt a little flat to me. There is a lot going on and it feels complicated. I was waiting for the historical timeline to begin but didn’t get that until half way through, and then it was limited. The book did one thing that I love about historical fiction and that is make me curious, I’m going to look for other books either fiction or not about the lost colony of Roanoake. Thanks to NetGalley and Harper Muse for an early copy to read and review. This book is expected to release in April 2022.

This is a beautiful story - I feel I lived the journey with the characters, from grief to happiness, from shame to self-confidence.
Hard not to write spoilers, but the discovery at the end was perfect. Brock's prose is poetic, and she weaves a touch of magic and mystery into the fabric of the story, I'm going to miss Penn and Alice today.. Highly recommend!