Diane Setterfield: The Thirteenth Tale

This is a truly fantastic read. I don't want to give anything away here, but the story is full of twists and turns, magic and mystery. I enjoyed "The Thirteenth Tale" right from the first page. Only in the end it was a bit too much. Certain things should not have been written. I love it when I end a book and it still leaves room for imagination. Here, the last two chapters give everything away and nothing is left to ponder about.Having said that I'll probably re-read the story again one time as I want to see if the story reads coherently knowing the end of it...

Vida Winter, a bestselling yet reclusive novelist, has created many outlandish life histories for herself, all of them invention. Now old and ailing, at last she wants to tell the truth about her extraordinary life. Her letter to biographer Margaret Lea - a woman with secrets of her own - is a summons. Vida's tale is one of gothic strangeness featuring the Angelfield family: the beautiful and wilful Isabelle and the feral twins Adeline and Emmeline. Margaret succumbs to the power of Vida's storytelling, but as a biographer she deals in fact not fiction and she doesn't trust Vida's account. Margaret starts to investigate, and two parallel stories unfold, as she begins a journey to discover the truth - her own, as well as Vida's...