From the Editors

<style type="text/css"> <!-- .style1 {font-size: 18px} --> </style> <p class="style1">"From the first page…the reader is back in the moody, brooding atmosphere of Rebecca." —The New York Times</p> <p><i>From the bestselling author of Rebecca, another classic set in beautiful and mysterious Cornwall.</i></p> <p>Philip Ashley's older cousin Ambrose, who raised the orphaned Philip as his own son, has died in Rome. Philip, the heir to Ambrose's beautiful English estate, is crushed that the man he loved died far from home. He is also suspicious. While in Italy, Ambrose fell in love with Rachel, a beautiful English and Italian woman. But the final, brief letters Ambrose wrote hint that his love had turned to paranoia and fear.</p> <p>Now Rachel has arrived at Philip's newly inherited estate. Could this exquisite woman, who seems to genuinely share Philip's grief at Ambrose's death, really be as cruel as Philip imagined? Or is she the kind, passionate woman with whom Ambrose fell in love? Philip struggles to answer this question, knowing Ambrose's estate, and his own future, will be destroyed if his answer is wrong.</p> <ul> <li><em>Bonus Reading Group Guide Included</em></li> </ul> <p><u>PRAISE FOR DAPHNE DU MAURIER</u></p> <p>"Miss du Maurier is... a storyteller whose sole aim is to bewitch and beguile. And in My Cousin Rachel she does both, with Rebecca looking fondly over her shoulder." <br> <strong>New York Times </strong></p> <p>"Double-distilled readers' delight." <br> <strong>Manchester Guardian</strong></p>
Product Description

Customer Response

Suspense and Insight
....captured my interest from the first few words, as Du Maurier most always does. "My Cousin Rachel" is a bit dark and brooding .. wonderful insight into character's personalities which drives the suspensful story...one of my favorites, right up there with "Rebecca."

Deliciously suspenseful
Daphne du Maurier is growing on me. While quite not as good as Rebecca, My Cousin Rachel is as suspenseful and well plotted.

The book is written from the 1st person POV of Philip Ashley. Philip is a 25-year old heir to his beloved older cousin Ambrose, who for years have been substituting Philip's dead parents. Unexpectedly, on one of his doctor-advised trips to Italy, 43-year old Ambrose marries his (and Philip's) distant cousin Rachel. Soon after the wedding Philip starts receiving alarming letters from his cousin - Ambrose accuses his wife of slowly killing him. Philip doesn't know what to make of these letters - are these allegations true or they are delusions produced by Ambrose's tumor-affected brain? The young man rushes to Italy to check for himself, only to find his cousin dead and buried and Rachel gone. Soon after Philip's return to England, Rachel shows up for a visit and she is not quite what the young heir expected her to be. Is she a cold-blooded murderer or simply a victim of a series of very unfortunate events?

My Cousin Rachel is a very well written, tightly plotted mystery. Du Maurier skillfully builds suspense throughout the novel, throwing in a good amount of love, obsession, jealousy, passion, and deceit. While I am not sure Philip's male voice is completely believable (at times he sounds a tad feminine), his changing affections towards Rachel are. Rachel's subtle play at getting young and naive Philip to become enchanted with her without him even realizing it is masterfully done. Oh, this woman knows how to flirt and entice! An ambiguous ending is a plus too.

I am definitely up for some more du Maurier.

A Gothic masterpiece
My Cousin Rachel is my third book by Daphne du Maurier, and re-confirms to me once again why she is regarded as one of the great writers of the 20th century. Du Maurier's style is full of imagery, even symbolism, and yet nothing is superfluous; each scene, each passage makes a clear and definite contribution to the whole. My Cousin Rachel, even more than her previous two works, reads like a longer version of a short story in its sparseness and foreshadowing.

Daphne du Maurier subtly adjusts her style to fit the time period in which her books are set, and this was most evident to me in My Cousin Rachel. Set in 19th century Cornwall (with a brief passage in Italy), the dialogue, especially, felt more restrained and formal than in her other works, which contributes to the Victorian setting and feel of the novel.

I won't recap the plot, as countless other reviewers have already done that and this is not a book report, after all. I will only comment on the book's famously ambiguous ending which leaves many readers wondering "did she, or didn't she?" For me, there really wasn't much if any ambiguity at all. Although she didn't absolutely state what Rachel had or hadn't done, du Maurier left plenty of clues along the way to make it pretty clear. Although she did throw in a few contradictory tidbits they never raise any serious doubt, at least not to my mind, but they do make the book significantly more interesting.

Although My Cousin Rachel is as skillfully written as Rebecca (which is one of my all-time favorites) I think there are a couple of important reasons why it has never achieved quite the level of popularity that Rebecca has. One, is that My Cousin Rachel lacks the twists and plot surprises of Rebecca. When reading Rebecca for the first time you really have no idea where the story is going to take you; with My Cousin Rachel it is much more straightforward and predictable. Du Maurier even weaves in subtle clues along the way that are almost like signposts of the road ahead (for example, the recurrence of laburnum trees).

But perhaps the more significant reason why My Cousin Rachel is less popular than Rebecca is its less-likable narrator. In Rebecca the narrator (the young and never-named second Mrs. De Winter) is an innocent bystander for the most part, who engages our sympathy from the first page and holds it all the way until the end; in fact, by the end we admire her even more than we did in the beginning. With My Cousin Rachel it is just the opposite. In the beginning the narrator Phillip Ashley engages our sympathy with his naivete, his innocence, his inexperience, and his unswerving love and loyalty for the cousin who raised him, Ambrose. However, this changes abruptly upon his first sight of Rachel; not only does he fall in love with her, but he begins to act like a complete fool, disregarding the good advice of everyone who loves and cares about him, and even discounting the letters and notes left behind by Ambrose. At the end Phillip does come to his senses but never reclaims our sympathy; rather, the reader almost recoils from what he becomes, as symbolized by Louise who asks him near the end, "What have you done?!"

My Cousin Rachel showcases du Maurier's amazing skill at showing the reader the whole picture by using the most subtle of language (for example, Phillip's abrupt switch mid-way in the book from referring to her constantly as "my cousin Rachel" to simply "Rachel"). That she is able to reveal Phillip's foolishness and pig-headedness, and even allows us to see him through other people's eyes, in spite of the fact that he himself is telling the story, is evidence of her superb talent as a writer.

My Cousin Rachel will definitely be a future re-read and is a solid five stars; how could anything by du Maurier be any less?

I never thought another book could live up to the book 'Rebecca', but this one did!
I read Daphne Du Maurier's book "Rebecca" and fell in love with it. I decided to buy another one of her books and read online that "My Cousin Rachel" had a similar feel as "Rebecca" so I decided this was the one to buy. I didn't think it would live up to Rebecca, but I was mistaken. It has the same dark, mysterious atmosphere to it, the same kind of wonderfully developed characters and a great storyline that captivated me from beginning to end. Just like Rebecca, this book was not predictable to me and left me thinking for days after finishing it. I didn't want to put it down and was sad when it was over. "My Cousin Rachel" and "Rebecca" are now my two favorite fiction books.

If you loved Rebecca, you must read this book.
When I read Rebecca last year, it instantly became one of my favorite novels. The second Du Maurier book I read was Jamaica Inn. While it was a well-written novel with plenty of mystery to go around, I couldn't help but feel a little disappointed when compared to Rebecca.

My Cousin Rachel should be the second Daphne Du Maurier novel you read if you loved Rebecca. It is a psychological mystery reminiscent of something written by John Fowles. In this novel, Ambrose Ashley is advised to go to Italy for the sake of his health. His cousin Philip, who he raised as his own son, is distressed to see him go, but soon begins enjoying being master of the estate.

Things change when Philip learns that Ambrose has married an Italian countess. Before Ambrose and his bride return to England, Philip receives a few cryptic messages from Ambrose suggesting that Rachel is attempting to harm him. Philip departs for Italy immediately, but upon his arrival learns that his cousin has died and his widow vanished.

The fun begins when Rachel turns up in England and seeks an audience with Philip. Before Rachel's arrival, Philip creates a sundry of images in his head of this woman who possibly killed his cousin. First he imagines her as an old invalid, then she is a silly young girl. When Rachel arrives in England, Philip is so enraged by the images he has conjured up in his imagination, he refuses to even see her.

At the request of his god father, Philip agrees to meet with Rachel at the Ashley estate. He is surprised to see that the real Rachel Ashley resembles none of the faces he had imagined for her. Every suspicion he had of her begins to vanish as Rachel casts her spell on Philip and the readers. Just when the evidence begins to pile up against her it is easily explained away. The question is, did she murder her husband? If I had to pick a favorite between My Cousin Rachel and Rebecca, I don't think I could. Both novels are two of the best I have ever read.

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