Description: Tressa Harlowe's father did not trust banks, but neither did he trust his greedy extended family. He kept his vast fortune hidden somewhere on his estate in the south of England and died suddenly, without telling anyone where he had concealed it. Tressa and her ailing mother are left with a mansion and an immense vineyard and no money to run it. It doesn't take long for a bevy of opportunists to flock to the estate under the guise of offering condolences. Tressa knows what they're really up to. She'll have to work with the rough and rusticated vineyard manager to keep the laborers content without pay and discover the key to finding her father's fortune--before someone else finds it first.
Award-winning author Joanna Davidson Politano welcomes readers to Trevelyan Castle, home of the poorest heiress in Victorian England, for a treasure hunt they'll not soon forget.
My Thoughts: A Rumored Fortune is a romance tied up with a mystery meant to discover a fortune, perhaps one that is less monetary and more eternal. Tressa is a woman caught up in her love for her father and her mother, as well as the expectations of everyone around her. And those expectations are for her to be someone else, someone more selfish and unloving, someone with little care for anything other than the typical life of a woman of her station.
However, Tressa's interests go deeper than that. For her, life is meant to be beautiful as well as about the people that you live it with... even if those people do not agree. The way Tressa sees the world blends into her descriptions. She speaks in a more poetic cadence and relates her thoughts through metaphors in much the same manner. These metaphors delve into value and wealth, centering around the message of the novel which is finding true wealth. Discovering this wealth not only means searching the house she has grown up in, but also evaluating the people who have infiltrated her life at this time.
For me, this poetic nature of the book made it a slower read. I prefer straightforward dialogue and descriptions, finding the story more interesting than the words themselves. The same goes for metaphors, which I prefer to be handled in the plot rather then the characters' internal musings. However, I know that there are many people who find the use of language to be just as important, or more so, than the rest of the story. And for those who do, I believe that this is a beautifully worded manuscript. Even if the metaphor of grapevines has been done before, it is still a decent one that, when combined with Joanna's writing style, is beautiful as well.
I have provided an honest review after having received a copy of the book from the publisher.
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