Bittersharp

An illicit affair and a mysterious death in 1927 Virginia echo through the decades in Bittersharp, a dual-timeline ghost story about love, betrayal, murder, and the quest for redemption.In 1927, Eve Boland travels to Virginia to visit her cousin Luke and falls under the spell of his wife: beautiful, brash, gin-drinking Corrine. At first enamored of her, Eve starts to suspect there are hidden sides to Corrine, and dark secrets lurking in her marriage to Luke. As Eve becomes enmeshed in Luke and Corrine’s life at Hollister House, she inadvertently sets off a chain of events that lead to a death and a terrible secret she must keep for the rest of her life.In 2018, Rachel Shepherd finds her father dead in the haunted mansion of local ghost story lore that he and his young wife, Lily, had been renovating into a bed and breakfast. Something is wrong at Hollister House. Rachel has dreams of a dark-haired man, which turn into nightmares. After she sees the frightening apparition of a woman who has haunted her memory for years, Rachel becomes convinced that exposing the truth about what happened in 1927 holds the key to freeing Hollister House of its past. She enlists the help of Isaiah, her first love from a decade ago, and together they discover a mysterious mosaic mural, an album of disturbing photos, and Eve Boland’s diary.Rachel begins to suspect that Lily and Isaiah know more than they’re saying about Dad’s suicide. Can Rachel trust Isaiah? The last pages are missing from Eve’s diary. What secrets are they hiding, and who took them? Is Lily right when she insists Rachel is imagining things? After all, Rachel has had problems before.As the secrets of the summer of 1927 are revealed, Rachel learns that the worst horror of all may be living with the ghosts of the past…

to discover her father has hanged himself and left a fearful suicide note, her stepmother Lily is behaving bizarrely, and that Rachel herself keeps seeing an apparition of a woman in a red dress. Flashbacks to 1927 find Eve Boland visiting her cousin Luke, while her friendship with his actress wife Corrine takes dark turns. In the present, when Rachel enlists newly renewed flame Isaiah for help, their discovery of Eve's diary and a stash of photos launches them into a battle with a ghost fighting to protect her secrets. Burrows' choice to give the historical side as much attention as the modern aftermath pays off in a richly integrated story that forces the reader to simultaneously

Booklife Review from Publishers WeeklyBurrows debuts with a creepy and effective haunted house story, dual-tracked to interlace contemporary terror with sordid romantic drama. In 2018, Rachel Shepherd arrives at the old Virginia mansion her father and stepmother are converting to a B&B

About the Author

K.D. Burrows lives in Northern Virginia with her writer husband, their two cats, and her vivid imagination.

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