131. The Darkling Bride by Laura Anderson

listened to eAudio/Chirp
narrated  by Sarah-Jane Drummey
Unabridged audio (12:02)
2018
369 pgs.
Adult Mystery in two time periods
Finished 12/28/2019
Goodreads rating:  3.92 - 2253 ratings
My rating: 3
Setting:

First line/s:  "Twenty miles south of Dublin, Deeprath Castle brooded in its shallow valley scooped out of the Wicklow Mountains."

My comments: A gothic mystery, taking place in Deeprath Castle in Ireland, where a young woman goes to catalog the huge library.  Once she gets there, she discovers a family enmeshed with the mystery of a murder twenty years previously, of the parents of the two current owners.  Hopping back-and-forth between the late 1800s and present day, an interesting mystery is solved.  Not sure I liked many of the characters, but I guess I wasn't really supposed to.  Interesting, but for some reason I couldn't really relate to any of them, particularly the protagonists.

Goodreads synopsis:  Three generations of Irish nobles face their family secrets in this spellbinding novel from the award-winning author of the Boleyn King trilogy.
          The Gallagher family has called Deeprath Castle home for seven hundred years. Nestled in the Wicklow Mountains of Ireland, the estate is now slated to become a public trust, and book lover and scholar Carragh Ryan is hired to take inventory of its historic library. But after meeting Aidan, the current Viscount Gallagher, and his enigmatic family, Carragh knows that her task will be more challenging than she’d thought.
          Two decades before, Aidan’s parents died violently at Deeprath. The case, which was never closed, has recently been taken up by a new detective determined to find the truth. The couple’s unusual deaths harken back a century, when twenty-three-year-old Lady Jenny Gallagher also died at Deeprath under mysterious circumstances, leaving behind an infant son and her husband, a renowned writer who never published again. These incidents only fueled fantastical theories about the Darkling Bride, a local legend of a sultry and dangerous woman from long ago whose wrath continues to haunt the castle.
          The past catches up to the present, and odd clues in the house soon have Carragh wondering if there are unseen forces stalking the Gallagher family. As secrets emerge from the shadows and Carragh gets closer to answers—and to Aidan—could she be the Darkling Bride’s next victim?