The Elf House has been passed from generation to generation, with the pattern anticipated to play out for generations to come. Until everything changes, and the estate is being left to someone else. Everything that once was expected has now changed, and Saskia is forced to examine her own past to find out why.

This was a dark story. Told in both past and present, with the pressures of perfection and strong #metoo vibes, this really had layers to unpack for the reader. The writing was captivating, I love a story told in dual timelines and especially if an old house is involved. This one was no exception as the vibes really had it all. The witty fairy tales at the beginning of the chapter added an eerie layer that I enjoyed, I kept wanting to read as I was so curious how this would all played out.

Thank you to St. Martins Press and NetGalley for my eARC in exchange for an honest review!

Comparisons to My Dark Vanessa do not do this novel justice. IMO, this is a better novel, with more complex characters and a better storyline. So much more going on in this novel!

I finished this book, and it is still haunting me.


Special thanks to Netgalley and St. Martin's Press for an ARC of this book in exchange for my honest review.

The Elf House didn’t always have the elves, but for as long as Saskia can remember the elves have been there. Saskia hadn’t planned on ever really saying goodbye to those elves, but after her mother’s death, and the reading of her will, Saskia is faced with a tough reality; she will not inherit the house, it will no longer remain in her family, and the new owner of the house–Patrick–is the last person she wants to have it. Attempting to find a way in which to keep the house from Patrick, Saskis must face her past and her relationship with Patrick while unburying her memories of a damaged childhood.

This is a novel centered around an intense topic and it approaches it, in my opinion, with a survivor, not victim, mentality. I enjoyed the style and setup of The Ingenue. Each chapter starts with an excerpt from one of the Fairy Tales for Little Feminists stories (written by Saskia’s mother), followed by a flashback (which themselves are in chronological order), ending with the present day events. This was very effective at laying out the events in a war that revealed truths at just the right time. While it is a good story, it didn’t exactly grab me however.

This story is back and forth from past to present. A hard read due to the nature of some of the content. Saskia was a child prodigy who has been used and abused. The book should have trigger warnings with regards to sexual abuse and rape.
This book has gotten many good reviews but it was a difficult read for me and it is not one of my favorites.

Thank you Netgalley for the advanced E-book copy in exchange for an honest review.

I have not read My Dark Vanessa, but this book is definitely dark and intriguing, that you can't help but be hooked. I found the main character beautifully flawed, so powerful that I wanted to hear her play the piano.

The only thing was that I was hoping for more of ghost story, the details about the house was really haunting. It felt cold yet oddly fit the main character.

Saskia was once a piano prodigy, but there is a reason she doesn't play anymore, so hang on it gets deep! She returns to her childhood home after her mom dies and expects to inherit the family estate. But that all changes when she finds out that her mother left everything to a man, she has complicated past relationship. In order to find a way to seek revenge and get what belongs to her she has to dig deep into her past. She has to find the answers to what lead her down a path she never recovered from. Has she starts to relive that part of life, new things come to light that she thought she had buried. Is revenge the only way or does she have to destroy what destroyed her?

Thank you to NetGalley and St. Martin's Press for copy of this book for my honest review.

After a cleverly well developed story like her previous work, “The Ballerinas”, I had high hopes for this one, and Kapelke-Dale did not let me down. Similar in theme, “The Ingenue” follows a piano prodigy, struggling to deal with the normal expectations of adult life, after her childhood dreams were literally ripped away.
Rachel Kapelke-Dale’s Ingenue alternates between Saskia’s childhood and events in the present. As a child she had a difficult relationship with her mother. It was not until after her mother’s death that she discovers just how far her mother would go to protect her. Each of the chapters begins with a quote from Evie’s fairy tales that often brought a smile as I read them.. While Saskia considers herself a failure when you first meet her, the character continues to grow and become stronger as she plots her revenge. Her final solution and the fate of the estate come with a twist that makes this book highly recommended. An Ingenue is a character in literature, film, or theater, generally, a girl or a young woman, who is endearingly innocent. This perfectly sums up our main character Saskia. Even though she was unlikeable at times, I still rooted for her. The characters and story were very well developed and I loved the setting of the elf house. It took me a bit to get into The Ingenue but once I did I ended up falling in love with the writing. Just like in The Ballerinas, Rachel Kapelke-Dale always evokes an elegance of yesteryear that’s not so common in modern times. In the same vein as My Dark Vanessa and Dark Horses, The Ingenue is centered around an adult woman who is reckoning with a past relationship she had as a young teen with a grown man. As with any story dealing with sexual abuse, this is not an easy story and will not be for everyone.

I almost didn't read this one. I had it on my shelf well past it's publication day, and I try really hard to read and review all the books on or before their pub date, for some reason I kept skipping, passing over this one. I finally made myself start reading it. I won't say I wasted my time but it was something of a struggle to get through. The writing is very dry, there isn't any ompf to it, there was too much focus on the legalise, ownership rights, deed etc. Ok, Ok, we know she expected to inherit and didn't I think we didn't need to know every legal detail.
There are shade of "My Dark Vanessa" which my be disturbing to some readers. I liked "The Ballerina"s", by Rachel and was maybe expecting this one to read along the same lines as it did, maybe my expectations were too high or unrealistic, maybe I compared the two books too harshly, but the bottom line is that this one just does not deliver for me, it doesn't strike that certain reader's chord that perks my senses up, heightens my interest and keeps me turning pages, anticipating what is to come while at the same time not wanting the story to end. This one I wanted to end. Sorry. I am sure others may like this book, it is just not the one for this reader.
Thank you to St. Martin's Press and to Net Galley for the free ARC, I am leaving my honest review freely of my own will.

What a dark and surprising book this was! It was a slow burn until about 50% in and then it took off in ways I never could have imagined. The writing is sublime and the premise is unlike anything I've read, mixing gothic, mystery and fairytale elements to tell the story of a mother and daughter and talent wasted.

(3.5 stars rounded up)
I couldn’t help comparing this one to My Dark Vanessa, but that wasn’t a bad thing! The subject matter is obviously uncomfortable and could definitely be triggering for some. I found that I enjoyed the “Little Feminists” quotes and the flashbacks to Saskia’s earlier years in the beginning of the book, but felt that both these elements were a bit overdone towards the end. The story was interesting (with the legal plot, Saskia’s character arc, and her reconciling her relationship with her father) but the ending felt completely rushed; I would have appreciated more wrap-up of the story and less build-up and flashbacks.

This book is a slow burn so if you want a quick story this isn’t for you. This also has a protagonist who will be off putting to some people but I liked her. She was complicated and messy with her choices and relationships but that’s what made her an interesting character…I prefer my characters gritty around the edges.

This is a very well written book by the author of The Ballerinas, which explored the perils and traumas of three friends struggling to be the top dancers at the Paris Opera Ballet. While this previous book was fairly dark in tone, The Ingenue is ever darker. This one focuses on a former piano prodigy, Saskia, who returns to her childhood home after her mother has passed away. Believing that she will inherit the ancestral home, she is shocked to discover that the house has been left to Patrick, a colleague of her mother's.

We see the two different lives Saskia has lived. When she was young, she was a piano prodigy who traveled the world and lived a fairy tale existence inhabiting a grand gothic mansion called Elf House. We learn that her fairy tale has ended and now she has to deal with her music career having fizzled, and the truth of what occurred between her and Patrick.

This book is very intense with many heart-rending passages. It's not an easy read, I found it quite upsetting at times, but if you are looking for an involving, intelligent story about a woman coming to terms with her past and the disappointments of her life, this book is highly recommended.

I’m not quite sure what this supposed to be. Is it literary fiction about a woman exploring her past? Is it a domestic thriller? Maybe a little of both? In any case, it’s kind of slow and dry. It took me two tries to get through it. I thought the parts where she gains perspective on her adolescence and comes to understand her mother were the most interesting. But there’s just a lot of legalese about estates and wills and property ownership that were plain old boring. And once again, just like in The Ballerinas, I thought the ending was abrupt and unrealistic.

A mesmerizing, evocative look at grooming, abuse, and how it ruins lives, and how people look away. The setting and characters are compelling.

I picked this book up because I liked The Ballerinas. This book just didn’t deliver for me. I found it hard to connect to any of the characters and the writing was too heavy for me to get engrossed in the book. I’m sure this novel is a great read for a different type of reader.

Thanks to NetGalley and St Martins for the arc.

An enjoyable, but heavy read, The Ingenue is reminiscent of The Paper Palace. While the plot and characters weren't especially impressive. The fluid writing made it incredibly difficult to put down despite its heavy topics. I haven't enjoyed a writing style this much in many years.

This book was difficult to get into which resulted in it taking me months to read through. I appreciated the story it was trying to tell but it felt clunky and was not captivating. Ultimately, while it may be the right story for some, it wasn’t for me.

Probably not something I would have picked up based on the plot, but I loved The Ballerinas and thus decided to give this a whirl, and I’m glad I did.

The part of the story that was the most intriguing (and also the one plot element that caught my attention before reading) was Saskia’s life as a piano prodigy. Though the focus of the novel is more about inheritance and her reckoning with her history of abuse, I found the way she spoke about her talent and work fascinating, particularly the realization as one ages that being an wunderkind in one place and at one point in time doesn’t necessarily mean you’ll always receive that designation.

Her relationship with an adult while in her midteens is a tough read at times and not a topic I’m particularly fond of in literature, but this one has a revenge element that helped pique my interest and the ending is pretty satisfying if, like me, you need a sense of justice when reading about these things.

The Fairy Tales for Little Feminists which appear at the beginning of each chapter provide an interesting minor plot component. As little riffs on fairy tales, they’re a mixed bag. Some are cute and clever, others kind of cringe.

I’m still not sure about Milwaukee as a setting for this, though I don’t think it interferes with the story. Milwaukee is probably one of the toughest cities to create much sense of place in general, and that’s true in this book as well. There are better places to set something like this (especially because the family house and the concept of home as a space was so central to the narrative), but again, I don’t believe it did much damage to the story.

In both concept and execution i much preferred The Ballerinas to this book, but both are well worth a read, and Rachel Kapelke-Dale is now on my must-read list.

*I received an ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review.*

3.5 ⭐ Rounded down.
I read Rachel Kapelke-Dale's The Ballerinas last year and loved it!
When I saw a new book by Rachel pop up on NetGalley, I immediately hit request.
Her writing is solid and I am addicted to her style 100%.
I didn't enjoy the plot of this was as much as her last book, but I would still recommend it.
Had I read this first I likely would have rated it higher, but I loved The Ballerinas soooo much more!
This felt like too slow of a walk to the end, where as with The Ballerinas I enjoyed the tension building behind the past. I'll likely still read anything she writes lol.
Much love to NetGalley & St. Martin's Press for my ARC.

The timeline jumps back and forth between Saskia's childhood as a young child pianist prodigy and adulthood. When her mother passes away, Saskia stands to the mansion that's been in their family for generations only to discover that her Mothers will was changed.

It was dark and choppy at times but i still enjoyed it. It had alot of the same vibes as My Dark Vanessa.


Thank you to netgalley for an arc in exchange for an honest review.

I was eager to check out The Ingenue after seeing it compared to The Queen’s Gambit, and while that was an apt comparison, this incredibly dark story fell flat for me.

WHAT I LIKED
🎹 I haven’t really read a ton of books that take place in the Midwest so the Wisconsin setting was a nice change of pace that added to the Gothic vibes and did a good job of illustrating how darkness and evil can live where you least expect.
🎹 The Elf House, Saskia’ childhood home that she’s fighting to retain, was described in exquisite detail, which made it really easy to get immersed in the story.
🎹 Saskia was a great MC and it was easy to root for her, even when she made some tough decisions.
🎹 The premise – child prodigy looking back on their development – is one I enjoy, and I liked how psychological thriller elements were layered throughout. This is definitely one of those books that falls into the “ghost stories without actual ghosts” category.

WHAT I DISLIKED
🎹 I felt kind of let down by the ending, as after all of the build up, I was expecting something more.
🎹 The third-person present tense narration kind of threw me off (but that might be a matter of personal preference)
🎹 The feminist fairy tales that kicked off each chapter didn’t really add much to the story and were a little distracting.

Even though the book was a miss for me, I actually think this would make a great miniseries or movie as it has a very compelling story and characters. Check it out if you like MeToo stories, psychological thrillers, and haunted houses.

Thank you to St. Martin’s Press and NetGalley for the eARC in exchange for an honest review. The Ingenue is out now.