I had previously enjoyed Ms. McVeigh's debut novel and was hoping this one would be good too. I needn't have worried, it was wonderful! It deftly showed the dangerous and sad side effects of colonialism, and portrayed a part of Kenyan history that not too many people know about. It was very well written and I flew through this excellent novel.

While I did enjoy this book it didn't grab me like I was hoping. I try and pick books that I think will hold my attention and I can't put down. Unfortunately this wasn't one of those but wasn't slow either. It was just ok for me.

Interesting novel set in 1950s Kenya. The main character, Rachel, returns home to her father's farm in Kenya at age 18 after graduating from the boarding school in England where she spent the past 6 years after her mother died, only to discover how much things have changed - both at home, where her father has taken up with an unpleasant woman, and in the country as a whole, where there are increasing uprisings against colonial English rule. Not a period of history I knew anything about, and the writing was very evocative, really giving a sense of place and time.

A beautifully told story about a beautiful country! Loved this book to bits!!

Sweeping, beautiful novel of Africa. I loved every minute. Would be a great book club selection.

I am voluntarily submitting my honest review after receiving a NetGalley edition of this book.

This extremely well-written book is a haunting, beautiful and unflinchingly honest illustration of life in Kenya during the collapse of British colonial rule. The author does an excellent job of illustrating man's capacity for inhumanity and brutality against his fellow man, and how even innocents and those who make a concerted effort to remain separate from political events get swept up in the wake as the tide of violence washes over them. It is also a timeless portrait of a young woman's struggle to find herself in a family where she no longer fits after her father's remarriage, in a country whose political and social divisions she cannot understand and in a world where there is no one to protect her from the abuse of a locally powerful man. This book had me turning pages as quickly as I could, tied up in knots the whole time and emotionally wrung out by the end! An important story, powerfully told, this book is a must read!

Featured this here: http://www.bethfishreads.com/2017/01/stacked-up-book-thoughts-brrrr-its-cold.html

here: http://www.bethfishreads.com/2016/12/todays-read-leopard-at-door-by-jennifer.html

And on Litsy

and here:

http://www.bethfishreads.com/2017/01/sound-recommendations-two-novels-for.html

This review is going to be more of a rant... with bits of constructive criticism.
[trigger warnings: sexual harassment]

Rachel, the main character is a weak and stupid. She continuously turns a blind eye to situations when the answers are literally in front of her face. The whole time, while poor Africans are suffering and dying, guess what Rachel whines about? She being the victim. Like we're supposed to throw a pity-party her way and wipe her tears. Puuhlease. It was her choice to move into this dangerous historical and geographical time and place, so why does she complain literally every second? Because this is first person we are left with a free stream to her innermost thoughts, and I found them completely dull and useless.

Like I understand her a little bit more as a character because the author tried their best to fill in a solid backstory, and how her experience shaped who she is. So in a sense I can understand how she becomes and grows up as she is, but I felt 0 emotional connection to this character. Absolutely none.

The only solid thing that was written in this book in my opinion was the setting: Kenya. But honestly, this book wasn't focused on that either. I had a ton of negative opinions in what places this book went. All of the characters were very unlikable, I hated all of them for different reasons. This "dysfunctional family" thing that we have going, is really not my cup of tea, and as I realized what the dynamic is, I looked on with disgust.

Rachel's father completely ignored and invalidated his daughter, and the reason that she came all the way out here was to be with him. Sara, was a manipulative fiance who didn't felt like she sucked out the breathing air in the room. But what bothered me the most, the worst thing about this book, is that they killed the best and most authentic character in this book: Harold. And the reason why was that he happened to be supposedly gay and of course the author just had to kill him off. You don't even understand how many frustrated fumes where coming out when I read that scene. I can't, I just can't.

Thanks to NetGalley for the publisher for providing me with a copy of this in exchange for my honest review.

Rachel returns home to Kenya after finishing her schooling in England and living with her grandparents to find her father. After her mother's death her father felt she was better off in England, but Rachel missed her father and her home too much to stay there. Arriving in Kenya and finding another woman living with her father was a shock, but her father's continued emotional distance was even harder to take. When the Mau Mau insurrection began to threaten the white settlers, Rachel's friendship with the black servants and workers at her father's farm became dangerous. As the history slowly unravels through the lives of the whites in Kenya, Rachel's life takes a dangerous turn and loyalties are questioned on all sides.

Quite a good read.

Thanks PENGUIN GROUP Putnam and netgalley for this ARC.

This is a novel that comes alive on the page. I wanted to yell, shake, and hug Rachel throughout the book. Jennifer McVeigh writes novels that are unforgettable.

An ambitious story of a young girl's return to her childhood home set against the struggles against colonialism in post-WWII Kenya, "Leopard" succeeds better in tracing the Mau Mau Revolution than as a coming-of-age tale. Rachel's issues of returning to a home rendered different by both personal and political issues are easy to relate to, but unfortunately the other characters she's surrounded by--the memory of a perfect mother, a suddenly disinterested father, a selfish and evil stepmother, a forbidden (and somewhat awkward) love interest--are cliche and take away from the interesting setting and premise. I loved the history and the notion of moral awakening as regards colonialism in adolescents challenging the status quo, and that makes this a novel enough read to recommend it. But other books such as "The Poisonwood Bible" have done this better.

In her second novel, Leopard at the Door, British author Jennifer McVeigh has cemented her strong penchant for Naturalism. McVeigh’s debut novel The Fever Tree harbored strong resemblance to W. Somerset Maugham’s The Painted Veil. Her protagonist was very similar to Somerset’s focal character Kitty Garstin, whose initial vanity, superficiality, and willful naivete aligns with The Fever Tree’s Frances Irvine. The fact both characters redeem themselves after a rude awakening from the bouts of self-delusion and silly romanticism that put their life and chance at true love in jeopardy, revealed The Fever Tree not only as a sort of less tragic modern version of The Painted Veil, but also gave us a strong indication that McVeigh had a fondness for amply describing the South African landscape, making it a solid character with a voice of its own.

In Leopard at the Door, McVeigh brings us to Kenya in the 1950s, a time of social unrest under the domination of the British Empire, and the spark of a much feared revolution, set forth by a rebel group known as the Mau Mau. The novel’s main character Rachel Fullsmith returns to her father’s farm in Kenya after six years of absence, forced to leave Africa by her father after the unexpected death of Rachel’s mother.
Her apprehension and anticipation is felt in equal measure as she arrives in Kenya, which has very much to do with returning to a place that is very different from the one she left, and to a father who she hardly knows anymore. Shipped off to England to live with her grandmother she has had little to no contact with the father she idolized as a little girl. Upon returning to Kenya Rachel is surprised and disappointed to find a strange woman, her father’s new partner Sara, who besides living with her father while still married to another man, is taking her mother’s place and doing her best to obliterate any reminder of the previous memsaab from the household. Adding to her grievance, she also finds herself exiled from her old bedroom now in possession of Sara’s shy and dour son, Harold.
While The Fever Tree presented certain characters that were unlikeable, weak or cruel, at the same time they were three-dimensional and complex. Their behaviour was defined by their life experiences, their evolution and transformation gradual but there. Leopard at the Door, on the other hand, has no such character shift or development.
Rachel is weak and a pushover from start to finish, bullied by virtually everyone around her; her father, his mistress, and Steven Lockhart. The latter holds a powerful secret over Rachel and uses it to humiliate her verbally and sexually, groping her several times against her consent. She keeps this from her father from fear he will know she was somewhere she wasn’t supposed to be, and saw something she shouldn’t have when she was only twelve years old.
Even her secret relationship with the rebellious Kenyan native Michael, who sparingly comes to her defense in dire situations, is disappointing, the alleged chemistry and love between them never quite there. The encounters and conversations between them are few, and when they occur they are too hurried, too rushed, as if McVeigh was eager to get this part over with to return to what actually turns out to be the best part of the novel, the description of the landscape.


Here McVeigh is a master. Her heartfelt narration is one of a place she knows well and loves even more, descriptions of the vast African landscape and wildlife detailed enough to effectively jump from the page. Upon her return, Rachel reflects on seeing Kenya and the vast terrain between the port on Mombasa Island and her father’s farm:
I must have slept for longer than I thought. We are in open country. The plains of the central highlands stretch into the hazy distance like the shimmering, tawny back of a lion. Herds of wildebeest and zebra mingle in the long grass, and far off I can see the elephants moving, their bodies silhouetted against the afternoon sky, like dark storm clouds. The smell of the dry road, the rolling grasslands, the warmth of the sun against my skin make the last six years seem almost as though they were a dream.
Although not within the deeply analytical range of the sombre prose of Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, Leopard at the Door points a critical finger at the cruel practices of British colonialism in Africa. The injustices enacted against the natives in their own land are epitomized in the novel by the actions of Rachel’s stepmother Sara, the District Officer Steven Lockhart, and to a certain extent by Rachel’s own father.
When the Mau Mau begin to commit their atrocities against white European farmers in Kenya, and come increasingly closer to their own farm, Rachel has a sudden revelation that the savagery was first instigated by the British, saying to Sara: “We have taken away their lands, crippled them with taxes, and closed down their schools.” It’s significant to point out that this is one of Rachel’s very few moments of bravery, but is sadly overshadowed by her inability to reveal the truth about Steven’s frequent harassment to her father, as well as her failure to claim and defend her rightful position as her father’s only child.
As the end of the novel nears, we still expect to see a Rachel transformed from an insecure, scared and sniveling girl into a strong, take-charge woman but it never happens. Her character never evolves or shows any growth despite the many life-altering events she is forced to live through. The story itself is also flawed, plagued with too many plot holes that are never resolved and crucial conversations that never take place.
While an open-ending is a perfectly valid literary device that many fiction authors use, it doesn’t make sense when it’s used to replace mandatory resolutions to important loose threads. While not expecting a neatly tied-with-a-bow, mea-culpa ridden ending, or bad-guy comeuppance from the author, McVeigh could have easily given her readers and the novel a sense of character redemption and evolution. Sadly, this never materializes.

Available tomorrow: Leopard at the Door by Jennifer McVeigh

*****4.5/5 starsjmcveigh-leopardatthedoor

Like Gone with the Wind, but set in 1950s British-occupied Kenya: You'll love it!

Recommended readers:

Fans of British history
If you like Gone with the Wind for its historical insights and feels
If you like fictional history and a mix of genres
Here's my Rankings:

4/5 for characters
5/5 for plot
4.5/5 overall
REVIEW FROM BOOKS FOR HER:

After spending her adolescent years in England, Rachel has longed for her family's Kenya farm, where she roamed the land, worked and loved the family's slaves, that she left behind after her mother's death. Now, no longer a child, Rachel comes to see the harsh challenges of British-occupied Kenya in the 1950s, both from the native Kenyans to the extremist Mau Mau fighters to the white settlers. It's like a Gone with the Wind, set in Kenya, where the stark contrast of slaves and owners - along with the dramatic political climate, make this an intense, emotional and thoughtful read. I loved it!

Available tomorrow: Leopard at the Door by Jennifer McVeigh

I really wanted to like this book. I loved the cover, the title and the setting depicted in the first few chapters was gorgeously written. However, once the story got going, I could not get into it. I did not connect with any of the characters and found the majority of them extremely unlikeable. I put the book down multiple times and in the end had to force myself to finish it. I found Rachal naive and foolish. Sara embodied the stereotypical stepmother and her father was so passive it bordered on ridiculous, especially given the fact that he had run a successful farm on foreign soil for so many years. McVeigh did do an excellent job in her research and ability to depict the racist political climate of the time. I learned a lot about the MauMau Revolution, which I was previously unfamiliar with, so in that regard the book was informative. Many thanks to the publisher and to Netgalley for my advance copy of this book in exchange for my honest review.