{"id":6025,"date":"2024-10-30T07:19:41","date_gmt":"2024-10-30T14:19:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/?p=6025"},"modified":"2024-10-30T07:24:20","modified_gmt":"2024-10-30T14:24:20","slug":"elizabeth-hobbs-misery-hates-company","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/elizabeth-hobbs-misery-hates-company\/","title":{"rendered":"Elizabeth Hobbs: Misery Hates Company"},"content":{"rendered":"

Series debut<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>I really, really appreciate a book that\u2019s able to keep me guessing.\u00a0 This novel, while adhering to many of the expectations applying to cozy historicals, also completely upends them in other ways, to the point that even when I was about three quarters of the way through I was still not quite sure where the story was headed.\u00a0 (I was more than eager to discover where that might be, however.)\u00a0 As the book opens in 1890\u2019s Boston, Marigold Manners has just lost both parents to the flu pandemic.\u00a0 And worse, she\u2019s discovered that they died broke.\u00a0 While Marigold had formerly been a firm part of upper crust Boston, it appears now as though she will have to leave ritzy Wellesley College, abandon her dreams of archaeology, and throw herself at the mercy of her relatives. She has a last, final night out with her friend Isabelle and her devoted society hunk, Cab. So far, so standard.<\/p>\n

Of all the letters from far flung cousins and aunts the one Marigold chooses to accept is from her cousin Mrs. Sophronia Hatchett, who lives on a place called Misery Island, off the New England shore.\u00a0 Marigold has never heard of Sophronia, but she\u2019s intrigued by her letter, which promises to reveal secrets and right family wrongs.\u00a0 And from then on, things take a turn to the weird and uncanny.\u00a0 It reminded me a good bit of one of my favorite girlhood books, Joan Aiken\u2019s Nightbirds on Nantucket,<\/em><\/a> and heroine Dido Twite\u2019s stay with her Aunt Tribulation.\u00a0 Misery Island is all the reader might expect from the name, and the well dressed Marigold arrives at the train station with her trunks to find no one there to meet her.\u00a0 What she does find, after some asking around, is a drunk on the beach with a little boat who rows her over to the island (and she has to assist him).<\/p>\n

The island is desolate, her relatives, rather than being welcoming, are scattered around the island and often downright hostile when they do happen to encounter her.\u00a0 Cousin Sophronia is cryptic beyond belief, and the only food to hand is the goopy stew made by Cleon, the inebriated rower.\u00a0 Marigold, not one to let things lie or to wallow in misfortune, rolls up her sleeves the next morning and gets to work cleaning the kitchen. She also makes her way across the water to town, where she finds the library, retrieves her bicycle (a real novelty in the 1890s) and forms a women\u2019s bicycle club.\u00a0 She\u2019s truly the model of an independent female, or \u201cnew woman,\u201d and, as such, finds very little fellow feeling with her new cousins.<\/p>\n

She then determines to disarm them with charm \u2013 learning that her lovely cousin Daisy has a secret beau, cousin Saviah has a talent for singing, and cousin Wilbert intends to raise sheep on the desolate island.\u00a0 She finds their father, Ellery, intimidating, as every time he sees her he starts ranting and shouting. Her putative patron Sophronia remains aloof, and, to add to her dread, Marigold is almost certain on her initial voyage across that she\u2019d seen the body of a young woman under the water. This body remains submerged in the plot, not resurfacing again until later on in the novel.<\/p>\n

The middle bit has a bit of a Cinderella feel as she helps her cousins begin to realize their goals, meanwhile reuniting with Cab at an actual ball, ballgowns supplied by couturier friend Isabelle. She also befriends Lucy, a young black woman who cooks meals and leaves them on a tray outside the door of matriarch, Alva, who never leaves her room.<\/p>\n

That gets us through about three quarters of the book, in turns a story of identity (Marigold\u2019s), a dysfunctional family, adventure, and a gothic, haunted house. After that it morphs into a straight up mystery when one of the family is discovered murdered and Marigold and Cab have to be the ones to solve it in the face of a local constable who seems totally unsuited for the job of detection.\u00a0 This was a charming, funny, and at times bleak story which has a surprisingly happy ending and a wonderful central character.\u00a0 Marigold is a blooming heroine I can only hope to encounter again. —\u00a0Robin Agnew<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Series debut I really, really appreciate a book that\u2019s able to keep me guessing.\u00a0 This novel, while adhering to many of the expectations applying to cozy historicals, also completely upends them in other ways, to the point that even when I was about three quarters of the way through I was still not quite sure … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[1878,943,1218,1876,1879,1877,1276],"class_list":["post-6025","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reviews","tag-1890s-new-england","tag-crooked-lane-books","tag-debut","tag-elizabeth-hobbs","tag-marigold-manners","tag-misery-hates-company","tag-robin-agnew"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6025","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6025"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6025\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6101,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6025\/revisions\/6101"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6025"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6025"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6025"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}