The Lost Book of Eleanor Dare – ARC Book Review

The fate of the world is often driven by the curiosity of a girl.

What happened to the Lost Colony of Roanoke remains a mystery, but the women who descended from Eleanor Dare have long known that the truth lies in what she left behind: a message carved onto a large stone and the contents of her treasured commonplace book. Brought from England on Eleanor’s fateful voyage to the New World, her book was passed down through the fifteen generations of daughters who followed as they came of age. Thirteen-year-old Alice had been next in line to receive it, but her mother’s tragic death fractured the unbroken legacy and the Dare Stone and the shadowy history recorded in the book faded into memory. Or so Alice hoped.

In the waning days of World War II, Alice is a young widow and a mother herself when she is unexpectedly presented with her birthright: the deed to Evertell, her abandoned family home and the history she thought forgotten. Determined to sell the property and step into a future free of the past, Alice returns to Savannah with her own thirteen-year-old daughter, Penn, in tow. But when Penn’s curiosity over the lineage she never knew begins to unveil secrets from beneath every stone and bone and shell of the old house and Eleanor’s book is finally found, Alice is forced to reckon with the sacrifices made for love and the realities of their true inheritance as daughters of Eleanor Dare.

In this sweeping tale from award-winning author Kimberly Brock, the answers to a real-life mystery may be found in the pages of a story that was always waiting to be written.

This was actually an enjoyable historical fiction that shifts between two timelines–between 1500’s to the WWII era in Georgia. Eleanor Dare has brought a book from England back in 1500’s and was passed from generation to generation through the daughters. When thirteen year old Alice was going to inherit the book, the tragic death of her mother changed everything and the book got lost. Now an adult and a widow, Alice returns back to the town to inherit the house and the will. But her own daughter, Penn is curious about her lineage…

Though the first part of the book was slightly boring, it got interesting towards the middle. There were multiple perspectives–Alice, Penn in the present day WWII time and Eleanor during the 1500’s. I actually like the author’s style of writing as she does a good job of taking the reader through different periods of times. Her writing style is almost poetic. The ending was unexpected but I actually enjoyed reading this story in the end! Worth four stars!

Many thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for the ARC. The review is based on my honest opinion only.