The Time Of The Hunter's Moon (1983) - Plot & Excerpts
THE TIME OF THE HUNTER’S MOON was one of Victoria Holt’s best books but still a very good read overall. Took a while for the suspense to kick in but when it did it was a race against the clock to save lives; I think I clicked as to what was going on only a short while before Cordelia worked it out! There is one scene I was uncomfortable with as it broke out of the mould (and not in a good way) that you expect with these gothic reads. Cordelia is lured up into a barred room where the ‘dashing land baron’ tries to force himself upon her – she smashes her hand though a glass window to escape. Not a pleasant moment. Other than that I enjoyed the story’s journey.I think the one thing I enjoy about Romance suspense generally it is the same basic plot line – Set in Victorian times the heroine is an impoverished young woman, usually orphaned, becomes a governess/companion to some rich Lord/Business man’s child or ailing/dying wife. Man has a past, and is usually suspected of murdering dying/ailing wife. The Manor/Large house/castle is dark and spooky (ruins optional). Heroine soon faces danger and has two (or more) handsome men falling in love with her, one means her ill, one she thinks means her ill and the other is a really nice man but not the one the heroine ends up with! Of course the mystery is solved, danger vanquished and love, fortune and happiness follows. THE TIME OF THE HUNTER’S MOON has all of this! It will not make any of the classic great literature lists, though I don’t know why not, but it IS a great book to curl up with on a Sunday afternoon while listening to music and sipping wine.
Now this is one of the good VH's. We plunge right into the action, with the threads of the mystery being laid in the opening chapters (pay attention now!). The heroine is already a young adult and the book doesn't dwell on her childhood. The hero shows up by page 50 and is pleasingly alpha. What's not to like?VH writes a good mystery here. It stays in the background during a large part of the middle chapters, but ramps up nicely again towards the end. Not that the middle sagged, there was lots going on. What happened to the hero's dead wife? Is the melodramatic ex-actress really his mistress? Where did she disappear to? Is the hero's niece really being poisoned? I was absorbed and kept turning the pages to find out what was going to happen next.This is also a rare VH with genuine passion and sexual tension. The locale is nicely creepy. The writing is focused and very good. There aren't too many secondary characters overwhelming the plot. I did like the heroine's aunt a lot.The heroine is very likable and behaves maturely. She takes a bit long to see what's going on, but once her suspicions are aroused she makes some good deductions in the final chapters. The hero is suitably mysterious, actively pursues the heroine for a large part of the book, and actually lives up to his bad reputation. He lures the heroine to a quiet room and attempts to forcibly seduce her. So forcibly that she cuts her hand breaking a window to escape him. He claims if she'd only given in, she would have enjoyed it. Now there's a rake, people! Of course he redeems himself with some heroics at the end.So a solid 4* from me.
What do You think about The Time Of The Hunter's Moon (1983)?
Sometimes I love a good gothic romance, where the heroine is feisty but dumb and the hero has some dark brooding past. But this one...I figured out the mystery long before the characters did, but whatever.My main issue was the fact that the hero would NOT take no for an answer. Ever. He kept pursuing Cordelia, while she continuously turned him down and avoided him; he locked her in a room in his house and would have raped her if she hadn't broken the one unbarred window; he said it was OK because she would have "liked it." WHAT THE HELL? Of course he redeems himself in the end, in typical gothic romance fashion. But at that point I was like:
—Meggie
Back in the sixties, my mother and grandmother read a lot of Victoria Holt's books (my grandmother called the genre "woman in front of the house" books, because the book jacket so often featured just that) -- we now call it romantic suspense. There's a formula; some authors do it well and some badly. Victoria Holt did it well. The heroine is a young middle-class British woman, raised by an aunt, who has been sent to a Swiss finishing school so that she can take over the aunt's school for young ladies. When she returns home, she finds that the school must be sold, so she takes a position in a similar school which is under the patronage of a slightly mysterious nobleman. Any experienced reader can see most of what's coming, but Holt comes up with a new twist for the villain of the piece. It was a quite entertaining way to spend an afternoon or two (I've been quite slow in getting things updated here.)
—Nikki
Easy read. Engaging as are all V. Holt books.But the verbal sparring between the heroine and hero was too long and got really boring, really fast. This guy has no redeeming characteristics. He's a slimy, stalking, would-be rapist of the heroine and she finds him stimulating? I just kept thinking "why doesn't she put an end to this or find another job at another school? This guy is clearly a stalker."The only thing he does to show any humanity or decency is chase after and find his niece prior to her being murdered by the scamming murderer she eloped with. I guess it's supposed to appeal to women who have rape fantasies but for me I found it pretty repulsive. I also think it's really dated--this would have probably been a lot more acceptable in the 1960's.
—Bunnys
