The Lost History of Dreams

A Novel

By: Kris Waldherr

Narrated by: Matthew Lloyd Davies, Fiona Hardingham

A post-mortem photographer unearths dark secrets from the past that may hold the key to his future in this “sensual, twisting gothic tale…in the tradition of A.S. Byatt’s Possession, Diane Setterfield’s The Thirteenth Tale, and Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights” (BookPage).

All love stories are ghost stories in disguise. “This one happily succeeds at both” (Kirkus Reviews, starred review).

When famed Byronesque poet Hugh de Bonne is discovered dead in his bath one morning, his cousin Robert Highstead, a post-mortem photographer, is charged with a simple task: transport Hugh’s remains for burial in a chapel. This chapel, a stained-glass folly set on the moors, was built by de Bonne sixteen years earlier to house the remains of his beloved wife and muse, Ada. Since then, the chapel has been locked and abandoned, a pilgrimage site for the rabid fans of de Bonne’s last book, The Lost History of Dreams.

However, Ada’s grief-stricken niece refuses to open the glass chapel for Robert unless he agrees to her bargain: before he can lay Hugh to rest, Robert must record Isabelle’s story of Ada and Hugh’s ill-fated marriage over the course of five nights.

As the mystery of Ada and Hugh’s relationship unfolds, so too does the secret behind Robert’s own marriage—including that of his fragile wife, Sida, who has not been the same since a tragic accident three years earlier and the origins of his morbid profession that has him seeing things he shouldn’t...things from beyond the grave.

Blurring the line between the past and the present, truth and fiction, and ultimately, life and death, The Lost History of Dreams is “a surrealist, haunting tale of suspense where every prediction turns out to be merely a step toward a bigger reveal” (Booklist).

I liked it but…

Whenever I read a book that goes back and forth in time, I’m reminded of Kate Morton’s books. She is the master of this storytelling style and I can’t help but compare at least a little. This book jumped around well enough but somehow I just fel a bit of whiplash.

The story was good but there were parts that just went on too long.

Overall, I’m glad I read it and enjoyed it mostly but felt like it could have been edited better.

Twisty Gothic

A slow building story filled with gothic like dying wives who linger as ghosts while their mourning but none too faithful widowers endure wistful hauntings No one lives without regret. Everyone seeks revenge takes on assumed names and tells stories that could possibly be true. You never know until the end.

Overwrought and poorly read

If you like bleak 1850s British novels, you may like this book. It has lots of 1850s Bronte novel staples: A bleak house of mystery on the moors, several characters who are obsessed with other characters for reasons that never quite become clear, a kindly housekeeper, a deeply implausible sequence of events, and worst of all, a narrator whose constant changes of volume made it very hard to listen to this book in my car. The male narrator kept switching from a normal tone of voice to a whisper and then a near-shout. I kept having to adjust the volume so I could try to hear the whispered parts and not be blasted away by the near-shouts. There was also a female narrator, who was better.

so disappointed

I never write reviews, but definitely want to give a heads up as we all know a narrator makes or breaks a story. I couldn't even get past the first chapter to find out if the story is for me as the reading went low and loud in such a way as riding a roller coaster. Looks like a cool story. Going to try the physical book.

A Must Read – Beautiful and Mysterious

Kris Waldherr’s novel The Lost History of Dreams is beautifully written, and is a story that keeps giving as I’m on my third read. I love both the hardback and the audio!