Bland. That about sums up my overall impression of Harstairs House. There was nothing offensive about it, but there was nothing exciting either.

Susannah Thorpe toils away as governess to two nasty little boys, when suddenly her life is changed by a visit from a lawyer. She has inherited Harstairs House in Cornwall, along with a sizable fortune, from a former love of her great-aunt’s. Mr. Harstairs always regretted the misunderstanding which separated him from his love and, childless, he wants to pass along his estate to the only living relative of his lost love: Susannah. There are caveats attached to inheriting: she must either marry within a month, or she must spend a month living in Harstairs House, which is said to be haunted. Compared to the little monsters she teaches, ghosts sound like a breeze to deal with. She takes her employer’s beleaguered companion with her and is off to Cornwall.

Upon arrival, she finds the house already occupied by Oliver Bristow and his two friends, who claim to have a month left on their lease from Mr. Harstairs. They decide the house is big enough that they can coexist without having to see much of each other for a month.

There are no ghosts in the house, but Susannah does find some odd circumstances – secret passageways, lights off the coast, Oliver being beaten up by the local militia. Clearly he is involved in some sort of smuggling, but, since Oliver is a Good Guy, it’s not brandy he is smuggling into the country.

I felt as if I didn’t get the story that I had been primed for from the opening chapters. With tales of a haunted house on the Cornwall coast I expected a gothic novel, but once Susannah and her companion settled in, not another word of ghosts until the end of the book. Instead I got a couple who acted properly and politely to each other while they quietly fell in love. Only I didn’t feel any heat between them at all. There were a couple of interesting moments with the smuggling aspects of the book, but again, nothing to get excited about.

And then there’s the Big Mis near the end of the book which felt like it was only there to pad the page count. This is a short book, and I felt the storyline might have been better served – with some tightening up – if this were an anthology contribution. As it is, there’s not much here to justify a full-length novel of less than 300 pages – especially at a trade size price.

Harstairs House was certainly readable, I enjoyed the less-used Georgian setting, but there was nothing about it that lifted it above the ordinary.