Book Review: The Tutor's Daughter

Read with caution, this review may contain spoilers.

I have to admit right off that I hesitated in picking this book up to review. I love Regency era fiction and you would think that in a Austenesque saturated book market that I would have my pick of the lot. However, I have sadly found that 'lot' lackluster and filled with improbable modern situations, thinking, and anachronisms. My other fear in reaching for this book was the fact that I had read one of the author's previous books (The Apothecaries Daughter) and found the heroine, well, kinda too clueless for her own good and I worried that this would be more of the same.
But...Bethany House Publishers periodically holds a 'book banter' session on Facebook with it's various authors and after 'attending' author Julie Klassen's banter session I decided the book just sounded too good to let it pass by!

The book is about Emma Smallwood a warm, intelligent young woman who plays assistant to her father, a man who is a tutor and runs a private boy's academy. Growing up the only girl in an all-boy environment Emma is a woman who relishes order and who has 'a place for everything and everything in it's place'.  Ever since her mother's death two years previous Emma has been ever increasingly tending her fading father- and the boarding boy's education. With the send off of their last remaining pupal Emma looks for- and finds- just the right distraction and challenge for her father and together they travel to take up an in-residence position at a country estate tutoring the two younger brothers of two of her father's most memorable students.

In Emma's mind memory of the two elder Weston brothers hold equal strength- but for decidedly different reasons. The elder, Henry, was snarky, teasing, daring boy who tired her patience but was a surprisingly good chess partner. The younger, Phillip, was closer to Emma's age was kinder and more congenial becoming a friend and confidant until his departure years previous.
Before long, strange things begin to happen to- and around- Emma like midnight piano playing, secret notes under her door, and frightening, escalating, and unexplainable pranks. Bewildered at the secrets Ebbington manor holds, Emma peals back the layers until she discovers what the family is hiding- but little does she know that what appears to be the answers to her questions has nothing to do with the danger she is in. Through all the twists and turns she finds herself questioning which Weston brother is unchanged from her memory and trustworthy- and which- curiously enough might be seeking her heart.

The one and only pet peeve I had with the book is that Emma constantly refers to Henry Weston as Henry Weston. This really seemed unnecessary to me as Emma comfortably calls the other boys by name whether in person or in her internal monologue and never refers to anyone but the Weston parents by a 'proper name'. Even if she called him by a proper name in public she could have referred to him casually in her mind. It really grated on me...however....

The novel that Julie Klassen has created is a superb one. The writing was clean and well paced and the plot well developed and unfolded.  When beginning this book I didn't have many expectations but before long I knew I was reading a great book and really enjoyed it from unassuming start to charming ending! The back cover suggests that the book may remind the reader of Jane Eyre or Downton Abbey but for me it harkened back to Gaskell's Wives and Daughters. I wanted a great, satisfying, uncomplicated read this weekend and that is what I got. Klassen has created a clever novel without trying to be clever- and in a world of books that try hard to be something they aren't this one trys and secedes.

Final Rating: 4.5

I received a copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for an honest review and opinion of the product.