Book Event: A weekend at Owlpen Manor

When Alice Eveleigh arrives at Fiercombe Manor during the long, languid summer of 1933, she finds a house steeped in mystery and brimming with secrets. Sadness permeates its empty rooms and the isolated valley seems crowded with ghosts, none more alluring than Elizabeth Stanton whose only traces remain in a few tantalisingly blurred photographs. Why will no one speak of her? What happened a generation ago to make her vanish? As the sun beats down relentlessly, Alice becomes ever more determined to unearth the truth about the girl in the photograph – and stop her own life from becoming an eerie echo of Elizabeth’s…

The Event

Recently I received quiet possibly the most mysterious yet exciting invite ever from the lovely folks at Penguin. When I was told they had an ‘exciting’ invitation for me I thought nothing of it, until I started receiving messages to tell me the courier couldn’t deliver it. Courier? Usually event invites come in the form of a very well designed email, not a signed for next day parcel! What on earth was it?

The invitation was for an overnight weekend stay on the grounds of Owlpen Manor house in the beautiful Gloucestershire countryside, all in aid of Kate Riordans latest novel The Girl in the photograph (which is inspired by this particular manor house) being published on January 15th. So of course I RSVP’d like a mad woman and hopped on a train to Gloucestershire, who wouldn’t?

 I spent the weekend in the lovely Over Court cottage with some other great book bloggers.

The rooms were perfect and I had a fantastic stay, who wouldn’t enjoy a night here?

Owlpen is so isolated that their is no chance of receiving a phone signal, their was no wifi and I was literally cut off from the world, it was absolutely perfect to just curl up and read Kates book in the lovely surrounded by the setting which inspired it.