Book Review: The Painted Castle

By Kristy Cambron
Thomas Nelson, 2019
400 pages

Amazon Description:

When art historian Keira Foley is hired to authenticate a painting at a centuries-old East Suffolk manor, she hopes this is just the thing to get her career and life back on track. But from the time she arrives at Parham Hill Estate and begins working alongside rumored art thief Emory Scott, she’s left with far more questions than answers. Could this lost painting of Queen Victoria be a duplicate of the original Winterhalter masterpiece, and if so, who is the artist?

As Keira begins to unravel the mystery behind the portrait, two women emerge from the estate’s forgotten past. In Victorian England, talented sketch artist Elizabeth Meade is engaged to Viscount Huxley, then owner of Parham Hill. However, Elizabeth’s real motive for being at Parham Hill has nothing to do with art or marriage. She’s determined to avenge her father’s brutal murder—even if it means a betrothal to the very man she believes committed the crime.

A century later, Amelia Woods—a World War II widow who has turned Parham Hill and its beloved library into a boarding school for refugee children—receives military orders to house a troop of American pilots. She is determined the children in her care will remain untouched by the war, but the task is proving difficult with officers taking up every square inch of their world . . . and one in particular vying for a space in Amelia’s long-shut up heart.

Set in three time periods—the rapid change of Victorian England, the peak of England’s home-front tensions at the end of WWII, and modern day—The Painted Castle unfolds a story of heartache and hope and unlocks secrets lost for generations just waiting to be found.

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Thanks to TLC Book Tours for sending me a copy to review! All thoughts and opinions are my own.

Are you an art buff? I’m not, but that didn’t stop me from thoroughly enjoying this novel. The Painted Castle is the third installment in Kristy Cambron’s Lost Castle series. It continues with the same format as the previous two books, following the stories of three women in separate time periods, all connected by a single significant location.

As a confirmed historical fiction lover, I adore time slip novels for the way they bring past and present together. Kristy Cambron does this seamlessly with three separate but related timelines, and fills her novels with realistic characters that you can’t help but love. The Painted Castle contains multiple love stories and multiple mysteries. As Kiera and Emory in the present day timeline investigate the origin of an unsigned painting, they find clues that hint at the lives of the previous occupants of Parham Hill. The story begins with young artist Elizabeth Meade witnessing the murder of her father in 1833, an event which changes the course of her life irrevocably. In between these two timelines we meet Amelia Woods, a strong, courageous widow who is harboring children at Parham Hill during WWII.

All of the women in these stories are wonderful examples of grit and resilience, and each struggles with learning to trust in the person who loves them most. If you like strong female protagonists featured in truly beautiful stories of love and loss then you will like The Painted Castle, as well as the other books in the Lost Castle series.