I am always exciting to read a book by Hester Fox. The Last Heir to Blackwood Library was a great read with lots of mystery and strange happenings.
Ivy Radcliffe was alone after losing the last of her family in the war. No money and a horrible apartment she shared with a friend. Ivy received a letter from an attorney and discovers she has inherited an estate with the title of ‘Lady Haworth’ from a cousin she has never heard of. Ivy found herself the owner of a large estate with a long strange history that goes with it.
A must read.

Thank you NetGalley, Harlequin Trade Publishing Graydon House, and Hester Fox for the ARC for my opinion.

Deliciously atmospheric and hauntingly romantic, Fox continues to shine in the hallmarks of old school Gothic with perhaps her most Brontëan excursion yet. A book lover’s dream, THE LAST HEIR TO BLACKWOOD LIBRARY has it all: an ominous abbey, a library as rich as the novel’s imagination and a twisty, turning plot. But, more still, this is a treatise on grief and belonging, made richer still by the story’s careful placement in the lingering memory of the Great War. An utterly unputdownable read.

This story has good bones: a smart but unreliable protagonist, an unlikeable but deeply loveable waitstaff, a gothic atmosphere, and ciphered messages. Overall a fun read, but in my opinion the writing didn't quite convey the atrocities and spookiness that the story deserved. The concept was solid enough that the near miss execution is just that much more disappointing.

I wanted to like this significantly more than I was actually able to, it left me a bit unsatisfied. A second round purchase for most libraries.

Ivy Radcliffe has lost the last of her family to the Great War, so it doesn’t take a great deal of thought when she is told she is the last heir to Blackwood Abbey. Her father having been a far-off cousin, and nothing keeping her in London, she travels away to her new home where she meets the suspicious servants, the Hewitts and Ralph.

But there is a locked door, and behind that locked door is a library. Books have always been a comfort to Ivy, but no one has told her about the library nor why it was locked. It's not long before she begins to feel that something else is inside the library.

I have not read any of Hester Fox’s novels prior to this one.

I wanted so badly to like this novel, and yet I cannot stand it. I hated Ivy and the Hewitts. The only good character was Ralph, and his hands were tied the majority of the time. I didn’t understand how someone could know that something was wrong with their health and do nothing about it. I didn’t understand how the Hewitts could demand Ivy act or do something in a certain way and expect to not give explanations. Nothing about their personalities and the actions they took made sense.

The novel’s pace is slow, and the premise seems to have gone off the rails. I was expecting more from the library and less from the evil doers. When you dislike the people as much as I do, then the rest of the book is harder to concentrate on. The prologue at the beginning didn’t make any sense, nor did it seem to have anything to do with the rest of the action of the story.

Overall, I rate this novel 2 out of 5 stars.

I wanted to love this book, but despite an intriguing final few chapters, I was mostly let down. While I can appreciate a narrative that evokes the mental state of a character, I found myself drowsy and forgetting my place, much like Ivy, despite the fact that I was not trapped in a paranormally-infested estate. The plot was mind numbingly slow until the final moments, and I felt most of the characters were rather two-dimensional. The romance revealed at the story's end fell flat because we, like Ivy, had no insight into the fact that it had been developing the whole time. A shift in narration may have cost us the big reveal, but it would have made the relationship more believable, and I would have invested more as a reader.

This one was middling for me. the setting and atmosphere were great but for some reason a lot of the story just wasn’t clicking for me.

I enjoyed this book. Would definitely recommend. Thanks so much to NetGalley and the publisher for the ARC.

I had high hopes for this novel but it was a DNF for me. The first 100 pages were slow and I was getting antsy to get to the meat of the story. A friend who read it before me said that I had just gotten to the point where things start getting good only to discover the character makes a decision that made me lose all interest in finishing it.

A book that has its place amongst the popular fiction of post-war era, mildly supernatural women's fiction. Seems a bit like a bridge book for converting YA readers, just from the character structure. A fun read, but a hard one to get into. Thank you to both Netgalley and the publisher for an opportunity with this title.

Set in post-WWI, Ivy Radcliffe unexpectedly inherits an estate from a distant relative, catapulting her to peerage. She soon learns this mysterious library holds many secrets. I’ve enjoyed previous Hester Fox’s books, but missed some of that same magic from those here.

I don’t know what I was expecting when I started this book, but gothic tale about a woman who inherits a mysterious library had me hooked. Ivy Radcliffe is left nearly alone in the world after she loses most of her family to WWI. She inherits an estate from a mysterious relative she never heard of and travels to the countryside where she struggles to deal with her new title, foreboding home, and aloof servants. She takes comfort in the library but mysterious happenings soon take over and she begins to question her reality. It’s an extremely entertaining book, and I couldn’t put it down. It contained all the Gothic tropes a heart could desire, which is expected from a book where the protagonist shares a surname with the queen of Gothic fiction. I really wanted the book to be longer because there are so many areas that could be fleshed out in more detail, especially the romantic relationships. But I understand that this would have slowed down the riveting plot, so I didn’t mind it. Overall I highly recommend, and I can’t wait to read more from Hester Fox.

I will say first that the prose in this book read a lot like it was meant for a younger audience rather than general fiction. It was a pretty easy to breeze through read, but that doesn't mean that I disliked it! I actually enjoyed it quite a bit, but I feel like genaral adult audiences might pick up this book and find it lacking. The twists and turns throughout the story were fun to discover and I loved the way we as readers were left in the dark about missing memories and mysteries right alongside the main character, Ivy. This feels like a great casual read for a vacation or a cozy rainy day at home and thats exactly how I will be recomending it in the future.
Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the copy of this book!

I think it’s time to just say that this author isn’t for me unfortunately.

The book is told from one point-of-view and it comes from Ivy Radcliffe. She has recently lost all of her family and is now the new owner of an estate with the title Lady. It comes as a shock but since she doesn’t have much going for her, she takes the opportunity.

I will say that I wasn’t a fan of her character. She was rather annoying and never took anyone’s advice even when it was solid advice. I also felt she was rather one dimensional, but also so was the other characters as well. There is a bit of romance but because of the weird timeline (loss of memory for main character) it felt rushed and honestly didn’t make sense from the reader perspective. The timeline really messed with a lot of the plot for me. It’s a cool concept to want to do it based on the main character but it was just hard to keep up with.

There is some spooky vibes and part of it has to do with a library. I’m all for libraries! I thought that this was the best part of the plot. I do wish it had been flushed out more because nothing pops off with it until you are already halfway through the book and the beginning just feels slow.

Overall, this was okay but just ended up not being for me.

I’d like to thank netgalley and the publisher for an advance copy in exchange for an honest review. I have read all of the author’s other books so I was excited to read this one but unfortunately it fell flat for me. While I enjoyed the story line, it took me longer to really get into it basically until the last few chapters. With that being said, I still am looking forward to see what she comes up with next.

I really enjoyed this book. It was a great combination of a mystery and historical fiction combined with a rags to riches trope. Ivy Radcliffe inherits Blackwood Abbey, a huge home which contains a magnificent library. As she begins spending time the library strange things start to happen and locals drop cryptic hints about the library’s past. The book is perfectly atmospheric,

I did think that the pacing of the first half of the book was fairly slow, but once secrets started to be revealed in the second half I could not put the book down.

3.75/5 stars

Thank you to NetGalley and Harlequin Trade Publishing for the eARC of this book.

This was my second Hester Fox novel, although I didn't realize that at first. It turns out I read A Lullaby for Witches in January of last year, drawn in again by a blurb that held great promise. Unfortunately, that one didn't work for me either - although for very different reasons. I went into this one having utterly missed that fact somehow (to be fair to myself, I read rather a lot) and with no aspartame knowledge about the author or her writing beyond the blurb, which caught my eye because - hello - who wouldn't want to inherit a library? The previous book felt overly light to me, given the subject matter. This one, too heavily drawn. I'm starting to feel like Goldilocks...

I don't know if this is an issue with the author's writing style generally or just with this story, but I felt like this book was exceptionally flowery in prose and I found it distracting rather then engaging. The writing style and language just never grabbed or held my attention. Nor did the characters. The concept, while interesting, was not strong enough to carry the entire book on its shoulders without any connection to characters, writing style, or pacing (which felt slow and drawn out, even for historical fiction).

Unfortunately, this one also just wasn't for me.

It’s always exciting when Hester Fox gives us another mystery to unravel! And this one is a really good one!

The first world war is over. Young Ivy Radcliffe has, with the stroke of a pen, inherited a manor. And a title. From people, she is sure she has never heard of. Unfortunately, Ivy has lost a lot recently. Her parents and then her brother in the war and is still grieving and feeling quite alone in the world.

All that has changed and now Ivy may get a family of some type. Headed at once to the home, she finds it still in a bit of a shambles after the war and use as an infirmary for the soldiers. The place is enormous and the people are odd.

The people in the village talk about the abbey. People don’t want to stay there. It is supposedly haunted by a crazy monk who was into the occult. And it is a very unnerving place.

As Ivy explores she finds a library behind locked doors. Doors no one wants her to open. But oh my the library! A book-lovers dream come true. So many books. But odd things begin to happen to her inside the library. Headaches, loss of time and memory.

As the servants try to keep her out of there, Ivy smells a mystery and goes exploring. People talk about a mysterious manuscript the monk created and left somewhere in the library. There are people who want that book and will use it to do wicked things!

So many really evil people here. Motives are less than honorable. There were enough red herrings to send me all over the map, and I love that. This was almost a gothic story and I already want the next one.

NetGalley/April 4th, 2023 by Graydon House

The cover of this book is what caught my eye at first. The Last Heir to Blackwood Library was a good read with lots of mystery and a strong, feminist heroine (YES!!!!!!!). The author does a wonderful job of setting the atmosphere and allowing the landscape and seasonal gloom to add to the sense of foreboding. The supernatural elements were well done. I liked the heroine - she was strong-willed, intelligent, and determined
Thank you to Harlequin Trade Publishing, Graydon House and NetGalley for allowing me to read and review this digital arc

“Miserable rainy days were meant for curling up inside with a cup of hot tea and a good book, not tramping across the city with only one’s thin coat for protection.”


A single woman living in England just after World War I, Ivy has never lived an extravagant life. That is, until she discovers that she is the heiress of an abbey with a mysterious library. Ivy is excited to start her new life, but quickly realizes something strange is going on at the abbey. The servants treat her oddly, she begins to forget recent events/conversations, and someone or something seems to be following her unseen through the manor. At the center of everything lies the library.

Depending on who she decides to trust, Ivy will either escape before it is too late, or fall prey to the curse that seems to surround the abbey.