Petronella (Nella) Oortman, a poor 18-year-old girl from the Dutch countryside, arrives at the Golden Bend home in Amsterdam of the wealthy merchant Johannes Brandt, who married her a month earlier. Brandt gives her a wedding present of a dollhouse designed to look like their nine room home in miniature, and she engages the services of a local miniaturist to add realistic furnishings to it. The miniaturist, whom she never meets, begins sending her lifelike dolls and furnishings that are eerily accurate, and even seem to predict the future - Wiki
I left this book last in my TBR for October. I had seen and heard good things about it and again when I found it for 99p I wasn't about to say no. I struggle with that word when buying books. So I was so excited to finally sit down and read it. Alas, I didn't like it. Please don't lynch me!
Without a doubt it is so well written. Jessie knows how to build a beautiful world but it left me so cold. I didn't like hardly any of the characters in the book, the story it self was dark and awful and shameful looking back at what people did to people (let's be honest still do) for who they were but I feel there was a depth missing and I have said this before I am not a published writer so I can't ever be too harsh on anyone that put themselves out there. This book was just not written for me.
Nella is sulky and annoying and she does seem to come into her own but I'm not sure of her. Brandt is a knob but a kind man and I did warm to him. I couldn't quite wrap my head around the miniaturist and a page of so seems to 'explain all' I wasn't convinced.
Well you can't win them all and as I said this one just wasn't for me, however the last quarter of the book really had me gripped so the story is there and it is good but not for me. A lot of people love this book so perhaps it's one for you too.
I would still recommend it. It's too beautiful not too.
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