The Gates of Evangeline by Hester Young
My rating: 3/5 cats
first in a trilogy: a romance-heavy southern gothic psychic detective ghost story in which a mother goes through the grieving process, solves a cold case and is swept up in a family mystery. oh, and there’s a man.
so, yeah – a bit cluttery, but not unenjoyable. it’s pretty standard gothic romance fare – there’s a spooky antebellum estate, home to the secretive and unpleasant deveau family whose matriarch is dying of cancer and making some last-minute adjustments to her will, there’s a dreamy landscaper whose sudden arrival and suspiciously close relationship with said matriarch causes some kerfuffle among the family, there’s secret lovers and a spooky swamp, and of course the help – who are in a position to see much but say little. until charlotte cates arrives on the scene, having left her high-powered devil wears prada job in manhattan after her four-year-old son dies and she begins having powerful dreams of other children in peril. one of these dreams is about gabriel deveau, who was just a toddler when he disappeared from his bed 30 years ago, and whose disappearance was never solved. when she is suddenly offered the opportunity to write a true crime piece about the deveau family, she takes it and goes to louisiana to live in the guest cottage on the estate, ostensibly to write an architectural history of the place. once there, her dreams of gabriel intensify, and she begins having dreams about other children, one of whom is the terminally ill daughter of a local detective. during the course of her investigation, she uncovers many secrets about the family, and begins a relationship with the hunky new landscaper; who is the grandson of gabriel’s former nanny, and who lived on the estate and knew gabriel when they were little boys.
it’s a little bit frothy, and there’s some suspension of disbelief necessary in her (working) relationship with the detective, in which she is allowed a great deal of access a civilian probably wouldn’t have – prophetic dreams or no. and there’s this very obvious and facepalmy rom-com misunderstanding that’s a little hard to take as it recurs and recurs and builds to an ending that is pretty jejune and harelquiny.
so the romance was a thumbs-down for me. but i liked the descriptive and humid atmosphere, and there were enough mini-mysteries that even though some of the major reveals were predictable, there were still some surprising twists. there are also some strong secondary characters, and charlotte herself is a well-rounded character whose history is revealed throughout the novel along with the history of the deveau family.
it’s a perfect medium-book for me – it held my interest, but i didn’t see stars or anything. i have no idea what the rest of the trilogy will involve. more dreams? more missing kids? more jealousies? guess we’ll all find out together!
