Laura B. (doorman-to-the-cats) reviewed on 9/6/2020 + 8 more book reviews

Today this book would be classified as "paranormal romance" but back when it was written, they didn't have a name for it. This book plunges the reader into what is an alien world for most Americans, that of an ancient family in England who kept a manor house and the property it was on through multiple generations, and for whom marrying a cousin was not unusual. It is made clear that ruthlessness and self-serving was one of the constants in the family. In the past, that characteristic was credited with having kept the property with the moated manor in the family. In more modern times, the 70s, apparently the UK still has the same sexist laws which also affected Jane Austen's heroines, wherein the male descendents inherit all, leaving female heiresses in potential penury; in spite of both biological and legal advantages, the males of the family, ostensibly running a wine business, fail to make money, pile up debt, and come to consider the sale of the estate to real estate developers the solution to their financial woes. In order to sell the land, and to enable a developer to replace the grand estate with tract houses, they have to get their female cousin to consent to break the trust protecting the bulk of the property, and to allow a road to be built through the small strip of land with a cottage which she inherited, or sell it for that purpose. She wants to stop it for sentimental reasons, but is legally powerless, until a clue from a statement made by her father before he died gets figured out, and an unknown cousin who was formerly believed to have been descended from an illegitimate line and therefore disqualified from inheriting the estate turns out to be legitimate after all, his great-great-great grandparents having been secretly married, and the page from the parish register which documented that fact having been carefully concealed. A happy ending for all but the villains is achieved by the end of the book, the history of the family having played its part. (Foreshadowing, your mark of quality literature.) BTW, a Scottish wildcat, the animal on the family crest, is something closer to a Bobcat or Lynx than a leopard, but capable of breeding with domestic cats and producing hybrid offspring. It was common centuries ago, but is threatened today: http://www.coffeefilms.com/scottishwildcats/wildcats.html

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