Well-written, but ultimately so sad! The curtains are going down on poor Maud but even so, she realizes that her friend Elizabeth has gone missing, and is striving to find her. It felt a little too much like a preview for me.

This creepy, bleak and sad novel will have you looking at shattered childhood ideals through the eyes of nine-year-old Michele. You can feel the Italian summer through the bottoms of your feet--you're there. A good writer.

Macabre but fun--if you can call deaths fun . . . I loved it.

Fantastic! A young (black) man finds himself trapped in a gated community, and as he strives to find a way out, he encounters people along the way, some helpful, some with a different agenda. Thought-provoking, creepy, even funny, but never boring. So many facets of humanity are explored here, one can't help but identify at times with everyone. Well-written--it would make a suspense-filled movie. Maybe when 45 hears the title he'll fund it.

So strange, but compelling, too. This family's saga (based on fact, but stretched) has that comic feeling with dark undertones. You know there's terror outside, but the family is so unusual that they manage to keep their weirdness front and center while WWII rages on. I could see this being an oddly amusing TV show or movie, a la Life is Beautiful. Interesting.

Weird, dark and so unlikely. Although it was well written, those factors caused me to check on how many pages were left more than once.

So sad. Such creative genius but at such a high price.

Forgettable and innocuous.

Creepy! You can slip it in your pocket, take it anywhere, and t'll take all of an hour to get through. Read it if you're in the mood for something eerie.

An interesting chronicle of Victoria's girls. If you like history, you'll probably like this.

I had read books by Rumer Godden before, and loved them. This one, however, just moved too slowly for me. And being a long one (638 pages), it was a plodding journey into convent life. If you want to learn ALL about the old ways of cloistered nuns, this is your ticket. Although some of it is memorable, much of it was too much for me.

Disturbing and captivating. I wonder how many true stories there are out there like this? More than we'd like to think, probably.