I received this book from the publishers via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

When Hetty is appointed a special new director's role in the Museum of London at the eve of England's involvement in WW2, she has to travel to the countryside to the mysterious Lockwood Manor which would be the new home for the stuffed animals and exhibitions normally housed in London. As soon as Hetty arrives in Lockwood Manor, she has to contend with the brutish Major Lockwood, as well as whispering, unhelpful servants and rumours of a ghost. She also meets Lucy Lockwood, the troubled daughter of the house and someone who Hetty begins to feel deeply for. But there are ominous signs afoot and Hetty has to start wondering if someone is playing tricks on her, or if the madness of Lockwood Manor is creeping into her own mind.

The premise of this book is wonderful and the packaging of it is utterly beautiful - from the title to the cover, as well as the illustrated birds at the start of each chapter. It almost makes me sad I read this on Kindle, as the physical copy of this book would be one I'd keep on my shelves even though I didn't love the book.

The story gave me a lot to think about - such as the amount of work that must have gone into preserving such exhibitions from all different museums and art galleries during WW2 across the world and how important it was for humans to keep safe such objects that held so much history and kept a little bit of each person who was involved in their creation and upkeep inside of them. I enjoyed some of the mundane parts of this book where Hetty described the type of work she had to do to keep the animals safe - from humans and critters alike. The imagery in this book of the dark, still rooms full of dead, stuffed animals was also eerie and unsettling in the best kind of way.

Unfortunately, the story as a whole actually kind of bored me which was surprising as I was expecting to really love this book! I found some of the story quite repetitive - from Hetty believing someone was tampering with the animals, to someone actually tampering with them and then Lucy having an episode and the Major attacking Hetty over it. The same kind of storyline happened several times and Hetty's reluctance to just leave the manor became annoying when clearly something weird was going on.

Nothing in this book really surprised me and I felt like everything that happened was really obvious and foreshadowed from the start. It was never a surprise that

the Major had stolen the jaguar or that there was a secret blue room blacked out from Lucy's memories.

. The only true surprise for me was Mary's

admissions that she was sexually abused as a child by the Major and groomed throughout. This wasn't something I would have ever thought of and it was sad and hard to read

.

I do think one of the best characters in this book is Lockwood Manor itself. It definitely came alive for me on the page in a way reminiscent to Manderly in Rebecca. There was something dark and mysterious about it, it was also shrouded in shadow - even during the summer, and I really felt like I could imagine the sound of footsteps and see the dust hovering in the air in the hallways. It was always silently watching everyone and it definitely gave the book a creepy, unsettling feel that played really well into the overall story.