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Review: Enchanted Hill by Emily Bain Murphy


Blurb from Goodreads:
Escape to Enchanted Hill in this historical mystery where two people with a dark, shared past collide while working undercover at a glittering mansion on the California coast.
 
The year is 1930 and Cora McCavanagh is posing as a maid at Hollywood magnate Truman Byrd’s legendary estate. She’s closing in on the damning evidence she needs for a high-profile client. 
 
An aspiring PI, Cora was trained by her father, a former prison guard at the notorious Pelican Island, where Cora grew up surrounded by hardened criminals.
 
Which is why she recognizes Jack Yates as soon as he walks through the door. The last time she saw him was on an ill-fated night that changed the course of her life and still haunts her more than a decade later. Cora never expected to see Jack again—and now a single misstep could cause both their secret identities to come crashing down.
 
They strike a tentative truce to help each other during a week of parties overflowing with champagne and caviar. But there are puzzles hidden in every corner of Truman Byrd’s labyrinthine estate, and if Cora is to finally learn the truth about Jack Yates, she must unravel a sinister history that the rich and powerful will do anything to keep concealed.
 
Filled with intrigue and Old Hollywood glamour, Enchanted Hill is an unforgettable, sweepingly romantic novel set in a world you won’t want to leave.
 

I liked this but it also felt long -- almost too long.  It's a riff on Hearst with a criminal twist and I did enjoy it. It was fun to read about a woman private investigator undercover and also about her growing up on an island with a prison similar to Alcatraz. I would certainly recommend this if you like historical fiction!

Enchanted Hill comes out tomorrow on November 7, 2023 and you can purchase HERE.  

"Did you sing at Christmas?" he had once asked the girl. It was tradition, on Christmas night, that the families of the guards would sing carols first at the warden's house, and then to the prisoners. She had given a shy nod with that sharp chin of hers, and he remembered how cold his fingers were as they twined around the wire fence. He had spoken so quietly, he wasn't even sure that she'd heard: "Thank you. Hearing those songs was the first time I have felt like myself again."
It had reminded him of church. Of the golden mosaics. Of his mother, singing next to him. He would see a flash of the girl's face sometimes, in a store window.
Someone walking down that dusty little street in Bakersfield. On a train in Albuquerque. The underground bar in Reno. It was never really her. Just a wisp, a figment, his own guilty conscience.
He raised his drink to his lips, pretended to drink it, and put that impossible thought out of his mind.

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