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“Happiness is not a possession to be prized, it is a quality of thought, a state of mind.”

Release Date: August 1938

Genre(s): Classics

Pages: 428

Rating:⭐️⭐️⭐️.75

Synopsis

Rebecca follows an unnamed and orphaned narrator who is proposed to by widower Maxim de Winter. The narrator cannot believe her luck until she arrives at the estate, realizing that her new husband’s late wife will cast a shadow over their lives and threaten to destroy their marriage.

Review

I’m surprised that it’s taken me this long to finally read Rebecca. The writing is so beautiful and atmospheric, and given my love of gothic novels, it appears to be a perfect fit. 

As soon as I started reading Rebecca, I immediately took note of the writing. I love when writers go into extensive detail in the surrounding scenery and atmosphere, and I understand now why this book is so often read this time of year. Additionally, this element is so important to the making of a good gothic novel, and the unsettling nature of the home and Rebecca’s past is definitely observed within duMaurier’s style of writing. 

I’d say that Rebecca is also the kind of novel where you want to know as little as possible going into it, so I don’t want to say too much here. However, I will say that I didn’t expect a certain type of turn that this book took. The beginning of this book sets up a certain path, but it diverts in such a way that I was absolutely fascinated with. In most cases when this happens, I’m usually pretty bothered as I was already enjoying the way the story was going. But in this case, from this point on, I couldn’t put the book down. 

The one issue that I had with Rebecca was the pacing. And I do think that the above contributed to this a little bit. The book does start out at a much slower pace (although I personally enjoyed this). What caught me off guard is that the final pages of this book wrap up very quickly, so much so that there’s a lot of important details that are saved for the very end. I do wish this part was a little more drawn out to match the speed of the rest of the book a little better. I found myself wanting a little more out of the ending because of this. 

But overall, I’m really glad that I finally got to read Rebecca, and have it on my shelves to re-read in the future. I am certainly a fan of gothic novels and if they’re your preference too, I think you’ll like this one as well.