The main character is Anne, she is a servant in a house in London, and has been since she was very young. Her mother died when she was young, and her father is a servant in another household and she rarely sees him. When she turns 17 a couple things happen. First, birds fall from the sky and die. Then she is called in to the Lady of her household and told that she's being sent to work for Lord Grey at Rosewood Manor. She's not happy about this, she'll have to leave the life she's known. The people she thinks of as the closest she has to family. But she must go, she has no choice, and her father has already given his permission. So she travels to the manor which is in the country, a big difference from living in London. The trip there is strange enough. The lord of the house has sent a carriage to take her. And the drive is very strange. He will barely talk to her and when she tries to make conversation, he acts like she is doing something very offensive and tries to get away from her. Once at the house she finds there are only a couple other servants, and no cook. She's not taken to see the Lord right away, in fact she's told she may never see him, but she is expected to do her job. Cleaning and dusting basically. The other servants aren't that friendly either. The house is kept extremely cold as well.
Then, one night, she notices scratching and growling on her door in the middle of the night. When she opens the door, there is nothing there. Strange things happen around the house. She is almost drowned in a fountain, and once she does finally come in contact with Lord Grey, she finds that there is something going on, and maybe she is the only one that can help. The supernatural part of the story isn't quite what you think at first. And it took almost halfway through to get an idea of what is going on. But it kept me reading so that I could finally find out what was actually going on. And when it all starts happening, there isn't a ton of time before it all comes to a head. No long time spent trying to get it all learned and figured out. They have to do it when the time comes to fight the evil.
It is definitely a good ending, a character shows up at the end that I had wondered about, and now was interested to see. Not to mention that the romance isn't anything that could be considered insta-love, so that is nice. A good read, kept my attention the whole way through.
