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I really enjoyed this book. I liked that it was told from various viewpoints. I grew to love the family. I even felt sorry for the Cecil character. Such a sad women. The village life, and living on an estate is something I have no frame of reference for, as I live in a modern city home. The lifestyle was interesting to read about. The story really shows that love and kindness are what is really important, no matter what kind of life you lead. I liked that Madeleine almost seems to wake up to life, and make some decisions about what she wants, rather than just drift along, letting other set the pace of her life. Loved all the happy endings. I already have 'Return to Drumveyn' on order, as I can't wait for a further look at the character's lives.

A thoroughly enjoyable read on a weekend when it's raining, everyone you know is out of town, there's nothing on TV and you need a book you know you won't put down. I can only give this book four stars because Alexandra Raife uses a storytelling technique that somewhat ruins the read: She uses an excessive amount of flashbacks to tell the story instead of allowing us to experience events with the characters as they are happening. Often, she will start a paragraph with the character having leapt forward in the story only to quickly flashback and tell us how that character got there by using sentences like, "Madeleine had to smile to herself as she remembered Lisa telling her this morning that..." This technique begins to appear as laziness in storytelling, as this "summing up" will certainly end up meaning that in-depth details about an event are going to be left out in a way that they would not have been had we simply been allowed to watch events unfold. Imagine if, in "Pillars of the Earth", Ken Follett had decided to summarize events by having us experience them through different characters remembering things in flashback form. Instead of 1150 pages, we would have had 550. Raife had the makings of an 800-page saga: Family intrigue, divorce, abandonment on several levels, the large family estate, outsiders who infiltrate the inner circle, etc. Why not make use of these wonderful "saga tools"? For those who have read it, imagine if we had SEEN Stephen invite Lisa to come live with him instead of having this fact revealed through Madeleine's flashback of Lisa TELLING Madeleine, "I'm going to live with Stephen. Please be happy for me." We are deprived of at least 40-50 pages of romance and story development by not being allowed to watch the relationship between Lisa and Stephen unfold but rather having it "summed up" in a flashback. However, "Drumveyn" does entertain. That alone makes it worth four stars!!

Book was exactly what I expected, condition was as described. Author did a good job of making reader feel as tho' they were actually in Scotland.

When I ran across this title in a used book shop I read the description on the back cover and set the book on the shelf. I had no intention of buying it. I was unfamiliar with the author and naively thought it was going to be boring. I continued searching for titles of books I needed when I came back to the shelf this book was on. Apparently I failed to shelf it properly and it stuck out. I looked at the book again and, this time, I admired the front cover. DRUMVEYN was an unusual name and the house and grounds looked eerily like it might make an interesting gothic-type romance. So I bought it.

It starts out several months after the death of Madeleine Napier's husband, Sir Charles. You slowly get an idea of what Madeleine was like; she had been married for 26 years, had two children and had nothing to show for her life.

Charles had dictated what she had become. The caretakers, the Platts, had been with the house for as long as she could remember and they were rude. Her mother was on her fourth marriage and was nowhere around and her son and daughter felt alienated. She knew that they had concerns of their own but confided little to her. She had one old friend that visited her recently but didn't stay long because of the crushing feel of this house. Up to this point, a feeling Madeleine had always taken for granted.

Then on page 44 things started to accelerate. Madeleine's daughter, Lisa, headed back to her mother's house. Madeleine's safe and boring world begins to change. Without giving away too much of the story, the author takes a group of characters and weaves their individual stories together to make an interesting family drama. And family they are, whether they are related to each other or not with Madeleine as their center. Each of them is valued and needed and it shows.

I would recommend this book to twenty-somethings that are old souls, thirty-ish people with eclectic tastes but those that are 40 and older because you might remember the era it was written in and appreciate it more. DRUMVEYN was published in 1997 and sometimes it felt mildly dated but not in a bad way.

Because of a few minor quirks I couldn't give it five stars. It was suppose to take place in Scotland but with the exception of a few times the language spoken made me think England was the actual setting. Also, time passing by came into question several times. Something would be going on and then several weeks had come and gone with little explanation. The month of August moved very slowly into September. It wouldn't have been so bad except I took notice.

Most everyone finds happiness in the end. A few in unusual places. One moment hippy-style, another time highly emotional, the storyline continually flowed. For me it wasn't a page-turner but the content kept me interested until the end. I am very tempted to read RETURN TO DRUMVEYN, the sequel, if I can find it.

***Oh, and I never did learn where the title of the book came from.***