Think you know Great Expectations? Think again

Raised in the darkness of Satis House where the clocks never tick, the beautiful Estella is bred to hate men and to keep her heart cold as the grave.

She knows she doesn’t feel things quite like other people do but is this just the result of her strange upbringing?

As she watches the brutal treatment of women around her, hatred hardens into a core of vengeance and when she finds herself married to the abusive Drummle, she is forced to make a deadly choice:

Should she embrace the darkness within her and exact her revenge?

A stunningly original, gripping Gothic read, perfect for fans of Stacey Halls, Madeline Miller and Jessie Burton.

My Review

I’ve always loved Great Expectations in all its iterations – my husband loves the 1946 film version where John Mills plays Pip (I think he is far too old), but my favourite is the TV mini series where Gillian Anderson portrays Miss Havisham. As a child, the scene where Miss H goes up in flames terrified me and still does.

As an aside, for my OU degree creative writing module, I wrote a short story called Miss Havisham’s Ghost. It earned me a good mark, but it never saw the light of day, as it got woven into another story a couple of years later. Just goes to show that we all have a budding Dickens in us somewhere!

But back to Estella’s Revenge. I absolutely loved it and have given it a worthy five stars. The writing is impeccable and immaculate. The plot is original and entertaining. It’s not a retelling of GE though, you have to remember that – it’s the story from Estella’s pov, NOT Pip’s, so anything can happen, and it does. There are a lot of the original characters, but also others that are new.

But – if I could keep two things from the story I know and love, it would be Estella and Pip coming together at the end (soppy Love Actually stuff I know), and Bentley falling off his horse and breaking his neck after being cruel to it ie the ‘horse’s revenge’. To discover whether either of these happen in Estella’s Revenge, you’ll have to read it to find out.

My fellow Pigeons and I read this in ten staves over ten days with The Pigeonhole book club and thoroughly enjoyed commenting as we went along. I would highly recommend Estella’s Revenge as a book club read.

Many thanks to The Pigeonhole, the author, and my fellow Pigeons for making this such an enjoyable read.

About the Author

Barbara is an international bestselling author, whose psychological thrillers have topped Amazon and Kobo. Her writing career started in journalism, interviewing the real victims of crime – and the perpetrators. The realistic, complex characters who populate her fiction reflect this deep understanding. When not writing, Barbara is found walking her two dogs, Scamp and Buddy, or taking photos of wildlife.