THE TUTOR'S DAUGHTER (JULIE KLASSEN)

 

 

Story Description: 

 

Baker Publishing Group|January 1, 2013|Trade Paperback|ISBN: 978-0-7642-1069-3 

 

Award-winning Regency Romance from Bestselling author Julie Klassen. 

 

Emma Smallwood, determined to help her widowed father regain his spirits when his academy fails, agrees to travel with him to the distant Cornwall Coast, to the cliff-top manor of a baronet and his four sons.  But after they arrive and begin teaching the younger boys, mysterious things begin to happen and danger mounts.  Who does Emma hear playing the pianoforte, only to find the music room empty?  Who sneaks into her room at night?  Who rips a page from her journal, only to return it with a chilling illustration? 

 

The baronet’s older sons, Phillip and Henry, wrestle with problems – and secrets – of their own.  They both remember Emma Smallwood from their days at her father’s academy.  She had been an awkward, studious girl.  But now one of them finds himself unexpectedly drawn to her. 

 

When the suspicious acts escalate, can the clever tutor’s daughter figure out which brother to blame…and which brother to trust with her heart? 

 

My Review: 

 

Emma Smallwood lost her mother two years ago and her father, John, runs ‘The Smallwood Academy’, a school for boys.  Emma is the tutor who helps her father run the school, but they no longer have any students and can’t survive without any income.  Her father is very depressed over the death of his beloved wife and has no ambition whatsoever to try and find new students to enrol in his academy.  

 

A few years ago, two of the Weston family’s sons, Phillip and Henry, had attended the Smallwood Academy and Emma knows they still have two younger sons who she hopes will enrol in their school.  This prompts her to write a letter to Sir Giles Weston, a baronet, offering seats in their school for the two young boys.  However, Sir Giles replies and invites Emma and John to their mansion to privately tutor their two young sons at home. 

 

Once they arrive on the Cornwall Coast, the home of the Weston’s, all is not as it appears.  There are a lot of unexplainable things happening during the night and someone is playing tricks on Emma.  Each member of the Weston family seems very weird in their own way and the matriarch (step-mother) of the family is a stoic, snobbish woman who appears very untrustworthy from the beginning and the patriarch (Sir Giles) just seems to go along with whatever rules and demands his wife makes and not really paying any particular attention to what she is doing. 

 

Something is very strange about this entire family and their house and who and why is someone trying to scare Emma?  This family is hiding a secret of some sort and Emma intends to discover just what that secret is.  Why is there a room that no one is allowed entry too?  Why would someone steal Emma’s personal journal then finally return it with a page torn out?  That missing page is eventually slid back under her bedroom door with a terrifying and threatening drawing on it.  However, even with all this going on, Emma is falling in love with one of the Weston brothers. 

 

Will this person responsible for the drawing be caught before there are possible deadly consequences for Emma?  Will Emma discover the family secret and will the Weston brother realize that Emma is in love with him? 

 

Julie Klassen has written a superb story that will grab you in the beginning and not shake you lose until the very end.  I found it very hard to put this book down.  I’ve read other novels by Ms. Klassen but The Tutor’s Daughter is something special! 

 

"Book has been provided courtesy of Baker Publishing Group and Graf-Martin Communications, Inc.
Available at your favourite bookseller from Bethany House, a division of Baker Publishing Group".