Reminiscent of I Capture the Castle, The Book of Hidden Wonders is a charming, deeply imaginative debut novel about a young girl and her eccentric father who hides within the pages of an illustrated book a treasure hunt that will lead her to uncover a priceless secret about her family’s past.
The Book of Hidden Wonders tells the story of Romilly Kemp and her artist father, who live in a ramshackle mansion in the English countryside. To help make ends meet, he creates a children’s book series with Romilly - a striking redhead with a mole on her cheek - and her cat Monty that becomes an instant success. The rumor is that hidden within its pages are clues to an elaborate treasure hunt, and their estate becomes crowded with tourists and adventure-seekers hoping to find the treasure.
As Romilly gets older, she finds her father disappearing within himself, and eventually learning he’s suffering from dementia. Wanting to connect with her failing father and know him better, she returns to his books and comes to realize through a series of clues he’s left just for her, that the treasure it leads to is worth more than gold or precious stones - it’s a shocking discovery of her family that explains her peculiar childhood and helps her better understand herself.
With the imagination of Aimee Bender’s The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake and the heart of Dodie Smith’s I Capture the Castle, this is a tender and enlightening story of family, mortality, and self-discovery with a mystery that will keep readers eagerly turning the pages.
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“An extraordinary debut. Polly Crosby has created an expertly crafted jigsaw puzzle, beautiful, dark, haunting and unforgettable. It is a most wonderfully tender nightmare, a haunted house childhood where the landscape gets ever stranger, a deeply affecting portrait of the climb towards adulthood. Nostalgic, familiar and yet utterly strange. I loved it.”
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Edward Carey, author of Little