After a whirlwind romance, a young woman returns to the opulent, secluded Long Island mansion of her new fiancé Max Winter. But all is not as it appears. The house is steeped in the memory of Max’s first wife Rebekah, who haunts the young woman’s imagination, while his very alive teenage daughter Dani makes her life a living hell.
Last night Rebekah tried to murder me again.' So begins Gabriele’s haunting reimagining of Daphne Du Maurier’s original thriller, Rebecca (1938). In this version, an orphaned young woman begins a passionate affair with Max Winter, a widowed, wealthy New York politician. After a whirlwind romance, Max proposes marriage and invites her to move to his Long Island mansion, Asherley. She agrees and is thrust from a life of servitude into a world of wealth, glamour, and loneliness, as Max is often away, leaving her to roam the halls of Asherley and obsess over his first wife, the beautiful, tragic Rebekah ... This retelling, updated with Instagram stalking and magazine photo shoots, retains the allure and gothic tone of the original, while remaining a page-turner for newcomers to the story.
When the narrator first meets millionaire New York State senator Max Winter...and although old enough to be the narrator's father...the two are launched almost instantly into a smokin' hot affair that soon enough leads to a diamond ring and a return to Asherley. There, she must contend with the specter of Rebekah, the woman who nabbed Max the first time around and who has left behind her unbelievably bitchy and precocious daughter. Dani texts her father as soon as she gets word of the new relationship: if you bring ur fucking fling home daddy ill kill myself. Just wait till you get a load of the kid's 31,000 follower Instagram account. A harmless parlor game of a book but a little lacking in the skin-crawling suspense department.
The Winters plays off of Rebecca, but with a darker twist. While Daphne du Maurier’s novel was plenty spooky, Lisa Gabriele’s reimagining takes spooky to a whole new level. If you’re a true thriller fan, you’ll want to spend this Halloween month checking out what’s happening with the Winters at Asherley.
