Review: The House on Biscayne Bay (by Chanel Cleeton)

My Rating:  3.5 stars

In her latest work, Chanel Cleeton tackles the gothic theme by centering her dual timeline story around Marbrisa, a glamorous mansion built in Miami, Florida right after the Great War. The over-the-top mansion is a gift that Robert Barnes surprises his wife with for her birthday, but during the inaugural party to celebrate the estate's completion, tragedy strikes and their lives are changed forever.  More than 20 years later, Carmen Acosta has no place to go after the tragic death of her parents in an accident, so she moves into the Marbrisa, the mansion that is currently home to her sister Carolina and her rich husband Asher Wyatt.  Prior to her arrival though, strange things were already happening at the mansion but things escalate soon after, to the point where Carmen's life is in danger.  Is Marbrisa cursed and haunted like people believe it is?  Or are the strange events the result of something more sinister?  

Overall, Cleeton's latest foray into Gothic fiction was entertaining, but I enjoyed her previous works more.  While the writing was good (as expected), the plot was way too predictable, to the point that I already had everything figured out less than halfway through the story, which of course took the "suspense" out of things (not to mention some loose ends never got explained, which created a few plot holes here and there).  The other issue I had was the narrative structure: the story was told in a dual timeline structure, with each time timeline narrated from the first person perspective of its respective protagonist— Anna in 1918 and Carmen in 1941.  The two protagonists couldn't have been more different in terms of age, race, life experiences, circumstances, etc., yet at times, I found it difficult to tell the two narrative voices apart and had to go back to check the chapter heading to remind myself which timeline I was reading.  This got a bit tiring after awhile, though it wasn't to the extent where it prevented me from moving through the story at a decent pace.

As I mentioned earlier, I did enjoy this one, but I have to admit that I was a little bummed that the story this time around had no connection to the Perez family (though I shouldn't have been surprised, since this book and her Cleeton's previous one were both standalone). With that said, there was an indirect link to one of Cleeton's previous novels — a "blink and you'll miss it" reference that I totally missed and only found out about after reading the Author's Note.

Even though I didn't take to this one as much as I thought I would, Cleeton continues to be one of those "go-to" authors for me whose works I will continue to read regardless (though I do hope she writes another book with a Perez family connection at some point).

Received ARC from Berkeley via NetGalley.