On the day that twins Seraphine and Danny were born, their mother committed suicide by throwing herself from the seaside cliffs at their family’s estate, Summerbourne. Years later, after the recent death of her father, Seraphine is going through his papers and finds a photo taken on the day she and Danny were born. The photo shows their mother, smiling beautifully, surrounded by her husband and young son, but holding only one baby. Who is the baby in the picture? Is it Seraphine? Or Danny? Or neither? And why does their mother look happy, when she would kill herself just hours later? Seraphine realizes that the one person who would know what happened the day the twins were born and their mother died is Laura, their older brother Edwin’s au pair, and sets off to find her.
I’ve heard a lot of great things about this book, however, I was really underwhelmed and was underwhelmed with the reveal. I don’t want to give away the ending but I thought the explanation was a letdown and that the reasoning behind everything was kind of meaningless.
The chapters alternate between Seraphine in the present and Laura in the past when she lives at Summerbourne as Edwin’s au pair. I thought the Laura chapters were far more interesting than Seraphine’s. It’s clear that Laura has some trauma in her past but I enjoyed reading about her spending the days with Edwin – she seemed like such a fun au pair – and I found her storyline to be quite engaging.
By contrast, I thought Seraphine’s chapters were kind of all over the place. I did think it was odd that when Seraphine saw the photo with only one baby in it, that her first thought was “Who are my real parents?” I mean, that’s what I thought but then again I’ve watched over 20 years of soap operas and I knew that I was reading a thriller novel so of course that’s where my mind went. But I’m not sure that wondering if you are your parent’s child after seeing one random picture would be a normal response. I know that we were supposed to find Seraphine’s actions and sleuthing interesting, but I just found them to be a bit over the top.
Honestly, this was a fine read. I kept turning the pages because I wanted to find out what happened but I didn’t find any of the characters to be really memorable. It’s highly likely that I’ll forget about this book in a month or so.
Leave a Reply