#119 in Romance
My Cousin Rachel
- 348
- Pages
- about 6 h
- Reading time
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Our view
“My Cousin Rachel” is a dark, tense Gothic novel in which grief turns into suspicion. Philip Ashley is ready to hate the widow his cousin Ambrose left behind on dying in Florence, until she arrives and seems nothing like the woman he imagined. Some readers admire the storytelling and the moral ambiguity at its centre. Others lose patience with a narrator who keeps working against himself.
The view of the BookRank editors, written from readers’ ratings and comments. It does not affect the score or the book’s place in a ranking.
About the book
Orphaned at an early age, Philip Ashley is raised by his benevolent older cousin, Ambrose. Resolutely single, Ambrose delights in Philip as his heir, and Philip grows to love Ambrose's grand estate as much as he does. But the cozy world the two construct is shattered when Ambrose sets off on a trip to Florence. There he falls in love and marries a mysterious distant cousin named Rachel -- and there he dies suddenly. Jealous of his marriage, racked by suspicion at the hints in Ambrose's letters, and grief-stricken by his death, Philip prepares to meet his cousin's widow with hatred in his heart. But when she arrives at the estate, Rachel seems to be a different woman from the one described in Ambrose's letters. Beautiful, sophisticated, and magnetic, Philip cannot help but feel drawn to Rachel. And yet, questions still linger: might she have had a hand in Ambrose's death? And how, exactly, did Ambrose die? As Philip pursues the answers to these questions, he realizes that his own fate could hang in the balance.
Where the score comes from
The sources average 8.0 across 118 ratings — not yet many, so the reader vote carries 45% of the weight and the rest pulls toward the Romance average of 7.6. That is how 7.8 comes out.
| Source | Average | Ratings | Weight |
|---|---|---|---|
| Open Library | 7.8 | 11 | 9% |
| Hardcover | 8.1 | 107 | 91% |
Frequently asked
How long is My Cousin Rachel?
It has 348 pages — shorter than 76% of the ranked books in Romance.
In this book
Themes this book shares with others — each leads to the best books on it.
If you liked this
Same shelf — Romance — with scores between 7.7 and 8.2, closest to this book.
