Mistress of Mellyn

Rating:
Summary: My First Victoria Holt Book & Still My Favorite
Review: Set during the 1800s in Cornwall, England, "Mistress of Mellyn" follows a 24-year-old woman's (Martha Leigh) adventure as a governess in a haunted mansion owned by the widowered Connan TreMellyn and his young daughter, Alvean. While struggling with her emotions over Connan and his just-as-difficult daughter, Martha must also try and uncover the mysterious death of his wife before she, too, faces the same fate Alice did.

"Mistress of Mellyn" was the first book I ever read by Victoria Holt, and it also happens to be the first book Eleanor Alice Burford Hibbert wrote under this pseudonym over 40 years ago. It was given to me by one of my aunts when I was about 11 and is still one of my favorites, even though I'm not necessarily a romance fan. But if you are--or even if you're just a reluctant gothic romance reader like I am--, then you'll more than likely enjoy this one. There's nothing offensive or racy in it, so it's appropriate for all ages, yet it's still very suspenseful. Highly recommended.

Rating:
Summary: Still Fresh After All These Years
Review: This is really dating me because this is the first romance novel I ever read. I read it when it was published about 35 years ago--but then I was rather young at the time--so to speak.

I thought it was one of the most wonderful books I had ever read, but then I was a young teenager. The world of romance was opened to me by this book, and I shall never forget it even though I have moved on to other types of books and away from romances per se.

Besides being a romance, it is a mystery with a surprise ending, which lends itself to being compared to Jane Eyre and Rebecca. This novel, though not a classic, is refreshing still in the 21st century.

Martha Leigh has come to Mellyn to care for Connan Tremellyn's difficult daughter, Alvean. In the process of caring for her, Martha falls under the spell of the home, Mellyn and its many secrets--the main secret being was the former Mrs. Tremellyn murdered, and if so by whom. As she searches for answers, she falls under Connan's spell while still frightened he may have murdered his wife.

This books is still as delightful today as it was many years ago.

Rating:
Summary: The book that made me a fan of Victoria Holt
Review: This is the first book by Victoria Holt that I ever read. I was 14 or 15 years old at that time. Though almost a decade has gone by, I can still remember that, from the moment I started reading "Mistress of Mellyn", I couldn't do anything else. Since then, many other books by Victoria Holt have landed in my hands. I remember that my cousins and I used to spend our holidays at the beach, lying on the sand, sunbathing... and trading with Victoria Holt's books. I don't know. It seems to me that they are very realistic (descriptions are superb). Romantic (in the literary and literal senses), too. And what about that feeling of happiness that evolves around you when you finish the book that you've been devouring for days?

Rating:
Summary: Great debut! but not a first novel
Review: Victoria Holt's first novel - but not her first novel. How can this be? Because Victoria Holt was the same woman as Jean Plaidy, who had been writing since the 1940s. Anyway....

Mistress of Mellyn is an interesting book. It is of interest to the literature student as being the first example of the modern historical-Gothic genre. Written in the first-person style which gives it immediacy and personal interest, it gives us a beautifully developing romance and a true sense of creepiness. The Jane Eyre theme of the governess, the masterful employer, and the sinister manor house is well-handled with an almost ingenuous simplicity, the heroine develops extremely well even if she is somewhat one-sided in her views. In later novels Holt showed a worrying tendency to recycle her old plots with minimal alterations; so it is best to read her in chronological order. She is a skilled and fluent writer, the book is a treat to be savoured and enjoyed in your own leisure. It isn't great literature, but it's great fun, and of interest and relevance to the student of the Gothic romance through the ages.