A String in the Harp by Nancy Bond #1976Club

Title: A String in the Harp
Author: Nancy Bond
Publication: Atheneum, hardcover, 1976
Genre: Juvenile fantasy
Setting: Wales

This review is for the #1976Club, hosted by StuckinaBook and Kaggsy’s Bookish Ramblings, in which bloggers are invited to read and review books that were published in a chosen year.

Description: Fifteen-year-old Jen Morgan lost her mother nearly a year ago and her family has not recovered. In the fall, her father brought her younger siblings, Peter and Becky, with him from Western Massachusetts to Wales where he will teach for a year at the University of Aberystwyth, hoping the change of scene will help everyone cope.

The Woman in the Lake by Nicola Cornick

Title: The Woman in the Lake

Author: Nicola Cornick

Publication: Graydon House, trade paperback, 2019

Genre: Fiction/Historical Fiction

Plot: Fenella Brightwell, in present day, has rebuilt her life after a disastrous marriage, leaving London for Swindon, not far from where she grew up.   When her grandmother dies, Fenella receives a sumptuous gold silk dress that she had impulsively stolen on a visit to a stately home as a teen.  The dress had belonged to Lady Isabella Gerard in 1765, herself trapped in a vicious and loveless marriage, and has become an ill-omened garment that exacerbates out the worst attributes in those who touch it.    Somehow Fenella time slipped across the centuries to encounter Lord Gerard and snatch the dress from his obsessed grasp.   However, Fenella’s possession of the dress is not happy: it makes her kleptomania worse and she starts to feel she is being watched.  As she recognizes parallels between her life and Isabella’s, she begins to fight for her own new life and happiness.