The Wardrobe Mistress
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London 1945. A young war widow steps aboard a train in search of a new life. Clutching the key to a mysterious inheritance, Vanessa Kingcourt can no longer resist the pull of the old Farren Theatre - an enchanted place seeped in memories of her actor father. Now owned by troubled former captain Alistair Redenhall, The Farren is in need of a Wardrobe Mistress and a new lease of life. With no experience and no budget for supplies, Vanessa must use her intuition to create beautiful costumes from whatever scraps of silk and thread survived the blitz. It's a seemingly impossible task, but a welcome distraction as she struggles to resist her blossoming feelings for Alistair. What Vanessa discovers could unravel family secrets sewn deep into the very fabric of the London theatre scene... but will she repeat the same terrible mistakes her father made? And can she dare to love a man who will never be hers?
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I had a hard time with this one. The Wardrobe Mistress couldn't make up its mind whether it wanted to be a romance, a mystery novel, or a theatre procedural. Instead it oscillates between all three and never achieves a cohesive theme.
I also struggled with the “romance” portrayed between the two main characters. Love at first sight is all well and good, but maybe the characters should actually like each other too? They spend 3/4 of the novel bickering or assaulting each other.
Alistair almost forces himself on Vanessa at a point early on in the book and it made me feel sick.
Things softened towards the end thankfully, but the book also got more muddled and inconsistent in tone. At time boring and with too much minutiae, at others frustratingly sparse.
I won't be reading anything else by this author.