Winterbourne

By Elisabeth Wolf. Bonnier Books 2026

When the blurb on the cover says there’s an unspeakable secret, I guess you can expect a bit of horror to be involved. How significant that is will depend on the rest. In this case, the book mostly reads as a gothic horror story although the horror aspect doesn’t really ramp up until the last quarter of the book. Anne Adams is desperate to be out of her family’s home after recovering from a car crash that caused the death of her brother. Her mother, particularly, blames her and life is a misery. She’s surprised when her entire interview consists of a five-minute phone conversation and is soon off the isolated Winterbourne to catalogue a massive book collection. She is mostly alone in the large house but there’s a housekeeper and man of all jobs who live in a nearby cottage as her main interactions. The owner, Lucien Broussard, also makes an appearance fairly early on and seems to appear unexpectedly through the story.

I enjoyed reading this book most of the way through, but I didn’t feel it held together at the end. In a way, it’s almost like the very end was tacked on randomly and I admit I took no satisfaction from it. It also leaves the door open for a sequel which doesn’t really seem warranted by what I read. Perhaps that is the purpose of the ending though. There was a tension that slowly built up in the first half of the book that was really thrilling but it didn’t really connect with the latter part in a way that works for me.

I found the most believable character to be Robert Cooper, He’s unfriendly and mostly unlikeable and stays pretty consistent through the story. Mrs. Cooper is also unfriendly and not very likeable either, but I feel like there’s much more room for her character and motivations. There’s a scene between her and Anne towards the end of the book that really makes little sense to me. It’s like a number of scenes that feel like they were added after the fact to flesh out the story but failed spectacularly. In any case, this was a scene that made no difference to the book and changed nothing. Lucien is seen in mostly fleeting glimpses, often when Anne is in a particularly ominous situation. The island is supposed to be isolated and yet he pops up unexpected quite often. Anne develops some fixation on him, along with her predecessor, a librarian who left without completing the job.

There are mysteries upon mysteries here and revelations do come but they don’t feel like they tie into the full story very well. I will also point out there are supernatural elements in the story even though I wouldn’t call this a supernatural story as it is. And yes there really is a horror element that is slowly built up to in much better way than anything paranormal.

I’m a bit torn as to rating this as I did enjoy reading much of the book. The ending definitely put me off and the rest just didn’t work together to make a whole as one would expect. I will give this a two and a half star rating for the good parts. I would like to thank Netgalley and Bonnier Books for giving me an advanced reader copy. My review is provided on an entirely voluntary basis.