The Splendour Falls

Aug 18, 2025 11:37 AM

Author:Rosemary Clement-Moore

The Splendour Falls

Sylvie Davies is a ballerina who can't dance. A broken leg ended her career, but what broke her heart was her father's death, and what's breaking her spirit is her mother's remarriage. Still reeling Sylvie is shipped off to stay with relatives in the back of beyond. Or so she thinks, in fact she ends up in a town rich with her family's history . . . and as it turns out her family has a lot more history than Sylvie ever knew. More unnerving, though, are the two guys she can't stop thinking about. Shawn Maddox, the resident golden boy, is the expected choice. But handsome and mysterious Rhys has a hold on her that she doesn't quite understand

Then Sylvie starts seeing things - a girl by the lake and a man with dark unseeing eyes peering in through the window . . . Sylvie's lost nearly everything - is she starting to lose her mind as well?

Reviews

Sophie's character is marvellous - despite her hardships she remains likeable, determined and feisty. However, the family home in Alabama is almost a character in it's own right with its history and ghostly happenings. . . . Bang on trend for the current teenage market . . . Perfect

—— Anna Elliott , Carousel

What can I say other than WOW? The Splendour Falls is a hauntingly, beautiful, love story with a twist!

—— Jenn , Book Crazy Book Blog

Beautifully told

—— Evening Standard

A gripping account of paternal love gone wildly astray

—— Helen Schulman, author of A DAY AT THE BEACH

There's nothing polemic or didactic about Grodstein's story, but she's written such an incisive diagnosis of aspirational America that someone should hand out copies at Little League games and ballet recitals ... What Grodstein captures so strikingly is the anxiety of a father's love ... Horrifyingly plausible and deeply poignant

—— Washington Post

I'd thoroughly recommend it.

—— Candis

Compelling and quick to unfold. Readers will find themselves racing for the finish.

—— News of the World

A gripping plot, a moral dilemma and unexpected tenderness makes it a winner.

—— Image

A gripping account of angst-ridden fatherly love and a suburban idyll blown apart

—— Chat magazine

An absorbing read

—— Grazia

Beautifully crafted

—— Mirror

A literary big hitter with a velvet touch

—— Bella

Dark and brilliantly absorbing

—— Heat

The Other Family is highly involving, deeply humane

—— Sunday

Trollope is a barometer of modern middle-class mores, with a talent for pin-pointing the burning issues in supposedly ordinary lives

—— Saga Magazine

Joanna Trollope has many, enviable skills but perhaps her greatest is for identifying and illuminating the emotional truths of contemporary life

—— Literary Review

Well drawn and convincing

—— Mail on Sunday

Trollope explores, with infinite delicacy, the strands that make a family

—— Daily Express

An absorbing contemporary novel from one of our most perceptive writers

—— You Magazine

Trollope has created a fount of bitchy tension which she manipulates with great skill

—— Evening Standard

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