100 Pages A Day...Stephanie's Book Reviews

Famed poet Hugh de Bonne is dead following his wife, Ada sixteen years earlier. From this, Hugh was thrown into a melancholy that produced some of his most famed works published in The Lost History of Dreams as well as a stained glass chapel where he buried his wife.  With Hugh's death,  distant cousin Robert Hightstead is charged with carrying out Hugh's last wishes- to be buried next to his wife and have a daguerreotype taken with his corpse in the chapel next to Ada's niece, Isabelle Lowell.  Robert is the perfect person for the job since he is currently a post-mortem photographer.  However, Robert is dealing with a ghost of his own and doesn't want to leave London for long.  Upon arriving to Hugh's home in Shropshire, Robert finds that his task is made much harder by Isabelle who will not let anyone open the glass chapel.  Robert and Isabelle finally make a deal where Isabelle will open the glass chapel if Robert will record Ada's story over the course of five nights.  

The Lost History of Dreams creates a haunting by hopeful story and a mystery that patiently waits to be unfolded and solved.  Every character, object and place has been created with a story and a secret that made we want to keep digging in deeper and deeper.  From meeting Robert at the beginning of the story I was very curious about and his past and how that led him to be a post-mortem photographer. As the setting moves to Shropshire in Victorian England, a weight settles upon everything that gives the book a distinctive Gothic, atmospheric feeling.  The ghosts in the story are created as characters just as much as Isabelle and Robert.  I loved the device of a story within a story as Isabelle tells Robert of Ada and Hugh; through the story some mysteries are solved and others arise.  The romance entangles not just the dead, but the living as well as two lost souls untangle death to learn how to live.

This book was received for free in return for an honest review.