Cover retrieved from Goodreads

The Miniaturist

Jessie Burton

Ecco: 2014, 400 pages

Reviewed by Tori Lyons

Nella knows that she is in for a culture shock when she leaves her family's farm and arrives on the doorstep of her new husband's home in Amsterdam.  Living in the seventeenth century, 18 year old Nella's future was bleak when her father died, leaving her family penniless.  When a wealthy Amsterdam trader asks for her hand in marriage, she fantasizes about her glamorous new life in the city.  However, the reality proves quite different when she arrives at her new home and finds a husband who has virtually no interest in her, a sister-in-law who runs the household with an iron fist, and household servants who take too many liberties for Nella's taste.  While the prosperous trader seems like the model Amsterdamer, Nella soon discovers that each of the house's inhabitants has dangerous secrets that threaten them all.