Rose Cottage

By: Mary Stewart

Narrated by: Jilly Bond

Length: 6 hrs and 22 mins

Publisher's Summary

The last of Mary Stewart's beloved romantic mystery novels, Rose Cottage bears all the romance and intrigue she is known for.

Summer, 1947. Kate Herrick, a war widow, returns to her childhood home for a final visit before the house is sold. But Rose Cottage is not the idyllic paradise she remembers from her youth and someone has been there before her. As Kate uncovers an old secret that haunts the home she thought she knew, she is forced to confront a dark truth from her own past....

Beyond the weedy garden with its riot of rose bushes, nothing had changed. And someone was crossing the bridge to approach the garden gate. Someone I knew well....

©1997 Mary Stewart (P)2019 Hodder & Stoughton Limited

Critic Reviews

"A comfortable chair and a Mary Stewart: total heaven. I'd rather read her than most other authors." (Harriet Evans)

Love it

I’ve been reading Mary Stewart’s books since I was a teenage, and that was a long time ago. “Rose Cottage” is my favorite. I’m so glad Audible finally has her unabridged books available!

Good story; painful narration

I am a Mary Stewart fan so of course I enjoyed the story. I found the narration so hard to listen to that I bought the Kindle version and switched to that as often as I could. The narrator has a lovely voice but the Scottish accents were so shrill as to hurt my ears and so sing-song as to often make the characters sound simple minded. When the London heroine returned to her childhood home the narrator had her switch immediately to a full on local dialect so thick it sounded fake. And then she switched back and forth from conversation to conversation and sometimes even in the same sentence until I honestly began to wonder if part of the mystery was that she had a split personality. It wasn’t written to sound that way.

It seems to me that the current trend in audiobooks is to emphasize “voices” rather than simply doing a well read story. It is totally possible to read a well-written story and impart drama, suspense, humor, and the feel of different characters without the difficult extremes of volume and the fake sound of vocal imitations.

Love the book but not a huge fan of the narrator.

I love Mary Stewart’s books, and this one is no exception. I did find the narration a bit disconcerting as it seemed she gave pretty much everyone a Scottish accent. 🙁
Or I think that’s what it was supposed to be. Anyways. I’d have liked it better with less “voices,” as it took away from my enjoyment of the story.

Happy Sighs

Just the most charming story to listen to while laid up with a bad cold! Jilly Bond brings this book to life❤️

Lovely Story!

This is a good book with a little mystery and intrigue for added flavor. Loved it!

Loved it !

Lovely story! I always love Jilly Bond's narration ! I purposefully look for books that have her narration. She us very talented and has the unique ability to give all the characters individual voices. Not an easy task.

A wholesome tale

A book I read in my teenage years that I have always longed to return to! Now being the same age as Kate returning to her old home, I feel so much compassion for her journey!

What an incredible story of love, mystery and family secrets! A lot of loveable characters only people who have lived in small village communities can understand.

Very enjoyable trip down memory lane!

Really strange accents....

Not the best Mary Stewart, but likeable-as a book. Unfortunately, I didn’t enjoy the narration. The accents were just odd, and some of the voices sounded like Monty Python characters. Ok