The Glass Painter's Daughter: Uncover an extraordinary love story from the million-copy bestselling author of The Hidden Years

This is almost an amazing novel. The multifaceted and contrasting settings of stained-glass, music and Victorian London are convincing and fascinating. The characters are complicated, fully fleshed and involving. Our heroine's unfolding story has drama, mystery, historical interest and angels. Hey, we all like angels! But, and here is the problem, it also has romance.I have nothing against chic-lit. Read once, enjoy and bin is what the Kindle was made for. But this novel is also about real-life non-romantic love and anguish, drama that entranced me, and so I was surprisingly disappointed to be treated to the "who will she end up with" device like any old pulp fiction. Somehow the mushy stuff is irritating when put along side believable emotional drama. If you do read it (and I recommend you do) try to ignore the cliched romantic story line and concentrate on the other threads of this well woven tale.One minor niggle. The historic part of the story is told through a found Victorian diary. This is introduced with exerts in an authentic voice of the time. But the author lost her nerve or got lazy, and told the rest of the historical story in a modern voice. Maybe it is just me (an avid consumer of real Victorian fiction both good and bad), but that cop-out just diluted the impact.

Banal chick-lit piffle bestrewn with historical inaccuracies and clunking dialogue, The Glass Painter's Daughter left me utterly cold and bored witless. Diabolically unsubtle, the reader is force-fed angelic imagery on, seemingly, every other page as Hore pitifully attempts to add depth and meaning to the bland narrative. Our dopey heroine falls in love at every whipstitch, yet the tale is utterly devoid of passion; kisses bestow an 'amazing tingling feeling', which is about as fulsome as it gets. The names of artists and composers are bandied about in an attempt to imbue the sorry story with a more highbrow air - an attempt which, needless to say, falls flat.An anodyne, syrupy romance which goes nowhere, yet fancies itself as something more. Awful.

This is the first book I have read by Rachel Hore. I will definitely be buying her others.Its difficult to weave past with present as expertly as Rachel has. I was also impressed with her ability to illustrate the difference between infatuation and love. She explores many facets of loss: of ones child through death or divorce, of parent, of health, of possessions and of love. In all, the book was for me, deliciously moreish and unlike many current books, she did tie up all loose ends, bringing the book to a satisfying conclusion.One tiny criticism is that I felt she could have left out the story about her friend Jo and the build up via Jo's mysterious behaviour. It leads us to believe this will fit somewhere into Fran's own story and yet it does not. It seems to sit on its own as a sort of 'flash fiction' - Jo was more or less a background figure - only really needed to introduce Fran to Ben and Amber. Therefore I felt irritated and side tract by her mini story which seemed so insignificant to anything much else going on.

I found this a bit difficult to get into at first, and even left it for a few days. I tried it again when I couldn't get to sleep, sure I'd be nodding off in no time, but a couple of hours later, I had to force myself to put it down. Definitely a slow burner, but a rewarding read that I very much enjoyed. I'll be downloading other books by Rachel Hore.

This is the first Rachel Hoare book I've read and I found it to be such a relaxing read. I loved the subject matter about stained glass and thought it very interesting. Here we see Fran building a career as a musician only to be called home as her father has been taken poorly. Fran is left running the glass shop and trying to get along with her irascible work colleague Zach. Both Zach and Fran are experiencing heartache. Can they open up to each other and bury the past?Also both Zach and Fran receive a commission to restore a window that got damaged during ww2 and realizes that they made this window during Victorian times. Fran goes through her father's records and learns not only about the window, but the history of the glass shop too.A very good and interesting book. Would recommend.

This is the story of Fran who has to come home from an itinerant musical career when her father suffers a stroke. Fran and her father have unresolved misunderstandings within their relationship as do several of the other characters in this accomplished novel. An intriguing restoration commission leads Fran to research the history of a stained glass angel window together with the history of her own family. A particular delight in this novel is the wealth of detail about stained and painted glass of both the Victorian and other periods. It took me through a sleepless and difficult night and I would certainly recommend it.

I'm two thirds of the way through this book but struggling to finish it. It has all the content for a really good book - the making of stain glass windows, classical music, quotes from the bible & various literary works and some social history - but it is let down badly by a tedious and predictable story and terrible dialogue. I had already downloaded another book by this author - I hope it's better than this one or else it will be dispatched to the 'cloud' forthwith!

Many strands weave a complex pattern , and the Story line had much Promise ,but somehow lost my interest ,in parts ,as the Book unravelled too many Story Lines .I did however enjoy being transported in Time ,and delving into the Craft of the Glass Maker .The Shop , and Workshop sounded exciting ,and it was beautifully bough to life .Laura's Diary also unravels the Past , but would a Personal Diary include such Dialogue ! I really wanted to get on with Fran's Story ,even though the Diary helped with the restoration of the Angel Window .A GOOD READ .