Sluttery Book Club: The House at Riverton by Kate Morton

When we asked our Facebook fans what books we should be reading, there was lots of little Facebooky thumbs next to The House at Riverton by Kate Morton. So we decided to find out what all the fuss was about in our second Sluttery Book Club.

What's the book about? Here's the Amazon blurb: Summer 1924: On the eve of a glittering Society party, by the lake of a grand English country house, a young poet takes his life. The only witnesses, sisters Hannah and Emmeline Hartford, will never speak to each other again. Winter 1999: Grace Bradley, 98, one-time housemaid of Riverton Manor, is visited by a young director making a film about the poet's suicide. Ghosts awaken and memories, long-consigned to the dark reaches of Grace's mind, begin to sneak back through the cracks. A shocking secret threatens to emerge; something history has forgotten but Grace never could.

Caleigh: The House at Riverton is not the sort of book I usually read and I wasn't expecting to enjoy it at all, so I was pleasantly surprised. It took a while to immerse myself in Grace's story but when I did, I found her to be a character I could really root for. Sadly, I thought the other characters were rather two-dimensional, especially Emmeline and Hannah (however, since they existed only as Grace's memories, maybe that was intentional). I was intrigued by the 'downstairs' characters and wish that Morton had expanded them a bit more. While certain elements of the plot are tied up quite beautifully, others are left disappointingly open. All in all, a haunting story with one compelling character, but I wanted more.

Alex: I really wanted to like this book. It has everything I love - the roaring twenties, gothic romance, dark family secrets. I just found the execution very clumsy. The clues to the secrets were made so painfully obvious it made reading the book a bit of a chore. Such a shame!

Sian: This week, I am that girl. I'm the girl who didn't finish the book club book. But what I have read of it, I'm really enjoying! Particularly the juxtaposition between young Grace and the other children in the book. Bit long, though.

Hazel: Who chose this book?! [Er... me. Ed.] The pace was painfully slow. It felt like nothing actually happened until the final 30 pages. There were moments that were beautifully written but I felt the author concentrated so much on trying to write eloquently that the book suffered massively. I was so bored throughout. I'm really struggling to find anything positive about the book at all, it is without doubt the most dull book I've ever read.

Elizabeth: The House of Riverton had so many similarities to Downtown Abbey that I found it distracting. I'm not sure which came first but like Caleigh I found the characters rather lacking in depth. The first half of the book is unnecessarily long and I found myself wondering when the plot would begin to materialise. The second half had elements of interest and excitement with Hannah's story taking some interesting turns. The author has clearly done their homework with details from the era thrown in thick and fast but there were too many obvious clichés. And then there is a sudden change in narrator for a chapter to tell the story of Hannah which was explained away as "Hannah told me all this later". It was frustrating and unbelievable. I found the story tedious and overall a bit of a chore to read.

The Sluttery Verdict: Gosh, we really didn't get on with this book. We wanted to be transported into a dark world of 20s glamour and twisted family secrets and just didn't get that. The House at Riverton has been incredibly popular, but it just didn't float our boat. No Sluttery thumbs up for this novel.

What do you think? Did you love it? Hate it? Want to throw it at us because you're mad that we made you read it? We'd love you to share your thoughts in the comments. Next time we're reading Never Mind by Edward St Aubyn. It's the first in a series, and we're hoping it'll be so brilliant that we want to read the rest (apparently it's 'epic and intimate, appalling and comic' so we're pretty excited). We'll be having our live chat on the evening of August 28th and using the Twitter hashtag #DSBookClub.

WARNING: We've kept all spoilers out of this post, but we can't promise that you won't read spoilers in the comments. Don't say you weren't warned.