Poinciana Road

Poinciana Road by Margaret Way struck me as a mix of a traditional Gothic romance except it’s set in modern day Australia. Instead of a creepy setting on the English moors, we have a lovely estate on the Queensland. The estate that Mallory James has inherited sounds beautiful and made me want to get on the plane. The heroine, Mallory, has her own psychological problems having witnessed the death of her mother and having a nasty, cold father who abandoned her. But she was lucky enough to have been brought up by her Uncle Robert. After having lost her fiance when he got a local woman pregnant, she has left her home and gone on to a successful career as a child psychologist. I thought the book would follow the rather worn road about the heroine having lost her first love and ready now for a new romance. That romance is with local wealthy town leader, Blaine Forrester. But the book adds in a creepy mystery involving her former fiance who now works for the estate. His wife, the woman he cheated on with Mallory, is pitiful, but their daughter is charming. Except the child suffers from mysterious illnesses. Mallory wants to help the child but is blocked by her former fiance, Jason Cartwright, and his twin sister. The relationship between the twins is strange and an overall aura of creepiness pervades the novel. The reason I’m not giving the novel five stars is that the romance between Mallory and Blaine isn’t very well developed. At first she’s cold to him and then suddenly they’re a loving couple. Also, there’s a ghostly element that suddenly enters the book near the end. But it was still an intriguing and different sort of read. I received an ARC of this book, from the publisher, via NetGallery, in exchange for a fair and honest review