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    The Gates of Evangeline
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    The Gates of Evangeline
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    The Gates of Evangeline
    Audiobook14 hours

    The Gates of Evangeline

    Written by Hester Young

    Narrated by January LaVoy

    4/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this audiobook


    *A Publishers Weekly Best Book of 2015*

    From a unique new talent comes a fast-paced debut, introducing a heroine whose dark visions bring to light secrets that will heal or destroy those around her . . .

    When New York journalist and recently bereaved mother Charlotte "Charlie" Cates begins to experience vivid dreams about children in danger, she's sure that she's lost her mind. Yet these are not the nightmares of a grieving parent. They are warnings that will help Charlie and the children she sees, if only she can make sense of them.

    After a little boy in a boat appears in Charlie's dreams, asking for her help, she finds herself entangled in a world-famous thirty-year-old missing-child case that has never ceased to haunt Louisiana's prestigious Deveau family. Armed with an invitation to Evangeline, the family's sprawling estate, Charlie heads south, where new friendships and an unlikely romance with the estate's landscape architect-the warm and handsome Noah Palmer-begin to heal her grief-stricken heart. But as she uncovers long-buried secrets of love, money, betrayal, and murder, the facts begin to implicate those she most wants to trust-and her visions reveal an evil closer than she could have imagined.

    A Southern Gothic mystery debut that combines literary suspense and romance with a mystical twist, THE GATES OF EVANGELINE is a story that readers of Gillian Flynn, Kate Atkinson, and Alice Sebold won't be able to put down.


    From the Hardcover edition.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherPenguin Random House Audio
    Release dateSep 1, 2015
    ISBN9780698405417
    Unavailable
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    Reviews for The Gates of Evangeline

    4/5

    96 ratings16 reviews

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    • 5/5
      Many thanks to Netgalley and G.P. Putnam's Sons for an ARC copy in exchange for my honest review.

      Charlotte "Charlie" Cates is barely moving through the motions of life after the death of her young son. Her friends are worried, her coworkers have given up on her, and she's started having strange dreams about children. Except they aren't dreams, they're the future and Charlie can't ignore them. When an opportunity arises to work on a cold case novel about a missing child, she accepts and takes off to Louisiana. A long way from New York, Charlie becomes wrapped up in not only the mystery surrounding Gabriel Deveau's disappearance, but the mystery surrounding the family and those that are around them.

      The Gates of Evangeline is so much more than just a southern gothic mystery, there is romance, drama, and a pinch of paranormal. I was so wrapped up in this story and I really enjoyed the twists and turns as the mystery grew. Charlie is a character that I could really feel for, she had so much pain to deal with and faced the cold case of a missing little boy head on. The Deveau family is totally cliche, but it works. I would never have picked out who was involved, even though I had guessed the mystery fairly early on. No character is treated as a minor character, they had depth and each brought something to the story. I really enjoyed Charlie's interactions with Detective Minot, as well as with the staff of the Deveau family. There was always something sneaking past me as I read a major plot point and the surprises just kept coming.

      The mystery is predictable and sometimes the interactions between characters seem unrealistic. While well developed, some of the characters are so exaggerated that a true southerner will find flaws in their language and in Charlie's quick judgement.

      I really enjoyed The Gates of Evangeline and if I didn't know better I would say Hester Young is a seasoned gothic mystery author. As a reader, you know all the details about the beautiful estate and every character's involvement, I love that kind of atmospheric detail. I would absolutely recommend this to my women sleuth loving friends, plus it is the first in a trilogy that is sure to be great.
    • 4/5
      Charlotte is a New York journalist who is still grieving the loss of her child. Charlotte also has the "gift" or has visions. She is offered a job writing about a 30 year cold case in Louisiana. Having a vision/dream of the missing child she takes the job and travels to the Deveau estate with hopes of solving or helping the child in her visions. The Deveau's missing son is at the center of this whole story...the cold case. The mother is dying, the remaining son has secrets of his own and the two sisters are just in and out of the story, not very likable. It's southern gothic with swamps, a family with many old secrets involving betrayal, murder, money, love and twists and turns. Charlotte discovers the whole mystery as well as helping others with her "gift" and finding love for herself.I didn't realize until finishing the book that a second book is coming out in Feb. that continues Charlotte's story. Yes there are unanswered questions about Charlotte's family history and her "gift" sends her looking for answers. I enjoyed the book.
    • 4/5
      While I agree with other readers that this story had a lot going on it held my attention and I thought it was well worth my time.
    • 5/5
      After the sudden death of her young son, Charlie Cates begins to have vivid dreams involving children. But she soon realizes that these are not dreams - they are messages sent to her so she can help those who need it. One of these children is a little boy in a boat. This takes her from Connecticut to Louisiana where she has an invitation to stay at Evangeline - the sprawling estate belonging to the Deveau's. Thirty years ago Gabriel Deveau went missing in the middle of the night never to be found. Charlie believes the boy in her vision is Gabriel and while trying to find him, she uncovers many long-buried secrets within the Deveau famiy.

      This book has been on my tbr list for years. I'm sorry I waited so long because this book was great! It was well-written, the whole story flowed smoothly and the characters were three-dimensional. I especially liked Keegan, Charlie's son who passed away. I enjoyed the mystery and secrets surrounding a family who has been in Louisiana for hundreds of years. Just when I thought I had everything figured out the author would add in another detail or make me think back to something I read earlier that I thought wasn't important. There was never a dull moment. I absolutely loved it!
    • 3/5
      Evangeline is an entertaining mystery, set in Louisiana and brimming with a southern Gothic atmosphere suited to that locale. The story follows Charlotte, a single mother still reeling from the sudden death of her toddler son. The novel opens in the midst of her numbed and broken life, as she tries to force herself to care about the things that used to matter to her, such as her job or cleaning her house. But with the loss of the one person who meant everything to her, many of those things seem irrelevant, and she is just barely clinging to her sanity thanks to the interventions of her grandmother and close friend, Rae. When she starts to experience strange dreams that feature dead children and seem to predict the future, Charlotte is rattled, but they provide an impetus for her to quit her high-stress business job and take a contract writing assignment concerning into the mystery of little Gabriel Deveau's disappearance thirty years ago. An old friend puts her on the job, which is to create a true crime book about the Deveau family as part of an ongoing series of titles about unsolved crimes. Not long before the offer, Charlotte had had an unsettling dream about a small boy floating in a boat in a swamp, asking for her help. Her previous dream experiences lead her to believe that she may have been dreaming about the dead Gabirel Deveau, pleading with her to solve his mystery. Charlotte therefore decides to take the job. Since the Deveau family approached the publishers about making the book, Charlotte is welcomed into their plantation home in Chicory, Louisiana, as she conducts the necessary research. She soon discovers that her job is far more complicated than she expected. First of all, the Deveaus are more interested in her writing up an account of the fabulous Deveau family, as something of a publicity piece, and much less interested in her focusing on the Gabriel mystery. Also, only some of the family are aware and approve of this plan.
    • 4/5
      The Gates of Evangeline by Hester Young is very likely one of the top five books of 2015 for me. The characters are striking, the setting atmospheric, and the storyline intoxicating. It was a tough start for me, a hard topic, but once the story started rolling along it was hard to put down. The number of twists was for me a delightful surprise and I'm looking forward to more of Hester Young's writings. I highly recommend this book to anyone who truly enjoys a good Gothic story.
    • 4/5
      This was a great mystery story that kept me guessing throughout. It was also a great character study with many interesting people that also involved me in the book. With an added touch of tragedy and romance, this was an excellent read and one that I can highly recommend to most readers.
    • 5/5
      Great book! Really enjoyed! Hope there are more soon! Thx!
    • 5/5
      I loved this book so much!! So many twists and turns! I figured out a few things before the end but it was still so incredibly good!
    • 4/5
      Charlotte "Charlie" Cates has been deeply depressed since the tragic death of her son, Keegan. Everyone around her has been patient, but her job is on the line. Upon her return to work, she decides she doesn't really want to continue at a "fashion" magazine and the opportunity to write a book about the disappearance of a child in the South seems to be the job she needs. Charlie's search for the truth seems to be aided by the paranormal, psychic visions in The Gates of Evangeline by Hester Young.Charlie initially thinks she's losing her mind when she begins to have "dreams" about children. She dreams the daughter of her best friend injures her ankle and it happens. She has dreams about a young boy in a boat and assumes it must be related to the missing-child story, so she sets off for Louisiana. Unfortunately, her arrival at Evangeline is filled with a list of do's and don'ts, such as don't mention the true reason for her being there to anyone, especially Mrs. Deveau, the mother of the missing child. The last thing Charlie expected to find was romance, but she finds it with Noah Palmer, the gardener hired to restore the gardens at Evangeline. Charlie quickly connects with local police detective Minot after giving him a message from his comatose, dying daughter. Charlie's visions set her off on a search for the truth, but that search seems to run into dead ends and more twists and turns than she ever imagined. Is it possible to discover the truth about the disappearance of Gabriel Deveau after all these years? The Gates of Evangeline is part mystery, part Southern gothic suspense, and part romance with a bit of the paranormal thrown in just to spice things up. Ms. Young has provided a haunting story that is just as tragic as it is hopeful. I found this to be a fast-paced read that kept me turning the pages to see what was going to happen next. There are good guys (Charlie, Noah, Rae, and more) and not-so-nice guys (the Deveau sisters). I enjoyed the mystery and suspense, just as much as I enjoyed the romance and paranormal aspects of this story. The Gates of Evangeline presents tragedy after tragedy and rather than being a dark and dismal story, it is one about hope and second chances. I enjoyed everything about this story: the characters, the plot, the action, and the settings. I highly recommend you add The Gates of Evangeline to your TBR list. In my not-so-humble-opinion, The Gates of Evangeline is the perfect read for a late summer weekend or a fall weekend . . . okay, it's a perfect read for anytime! I look forward to reading more from Ms. Young in the future.
    • 4/5
      I really loved reading this book. I did not want to put it down. I love reading about clairvoyant people and when they can save children it is fantastic. This was a nice story about a woman who loses her child and has to rebuild her life. She gets a new job down south trying to find out how to find this missing boy and see if she can solve a thirty year mystery about a missing boy. The family hires her to write a book about the case and see what turns up. There are a lot of twists and turns and lots of intrigue. I loved it. I received this ebook from the Firsttoread program for a fair and honest opinion.
    • 3/5
      I liked this book well enough. I didn't feel like gushing about it when I finished but I did enjoy the story. This was one of those books that I found that I really liked some aspects a whole lot and other things in the book would lose me a little. In the end, the good outweighed the bad for me.Charlie is mourning the sudden loss of her young son. As you can imagine, she is going through the motions of daily living but is rather lost. When she is offered a job writing a book about the famous Deveau family, she decides to do it. Oh, did I mention the fact that Charlie has dreams about dead children that are frighteningly accurate? When she dreams of a little boy that lived in the big house, she wants to find out what happened to him.Charlie finds herself in the middle of several mysteries often working along with the local police. Will she be able to find out what happened the the little Deveau boy that was kidnapped over 30 years earlier? She is also spending a lot of time with the local landscaper, Noah, whose grandparents worked for the family at the time of the disappearance and she doesn't seem quite sure if she should trust him or not.I loved the parts of the book where Charlie dreamed about the ghosts. Hands down, that was my favorite thing about this book. I think that the way the ghosts were used in this book was perfect. It didn't overpower the story and just gave Charlie a little push in the right direction. The fact that should could only dream of children and had no control of her visions seemed right. I really liked the family dynamics of the Deveau family. They were as perfectly imperfect as I would have expected. I found that I was doubting just about everything about them which really made me question what really had happened. I also think that Charlie's grief over her son was well done. The guilt, the inability to move on, and the desperation she felt seemed authentic.I didn't really like the romance between Charlie and Noah in this story. It really seemed forced to me. Charlie didn't seem to know whether she trusted him from one moment to the next. I don't think that anything about building a relationship felt real between these two characters even though it was kind of sweet at the end.I would recommend this book to others. It was a very easy to read, well paced novel. There was enough of a mystery to keep things interesting with a few twists along the way that should keep most readers guessing. I liked the fact that the author included just the right balance of paranormal in the story. I plan to read future works by Hester Young including the remainder of this trilogy.I received an advance reader edition of this book from Penguin First to Read for the purpose of providing an honest review.
    • 4/5
      Here's a really enjoyable, traditional Southern gothic mystery. Evangeline is a grand historic home and Charlotte "Charlie" is a writer recovering from a brutal family loss. She also has the gift of having some of her dreams turn into events in the waking world.Charlie journeys from Connecticut to Louisiana to investigate the thirty year old disappearance of a young child from Evangeline, using the cover of writing the Deveau family's biography. She encounters a very helpful police detective, some friendly help in the big house, some nasty characters in the family, and the fading and confused elderly matriarch. And then there's Noah, a charming landscape architect, with whom Charlie shares an immediate vibrant sexual attraction. Their relationship, coming on the heels of recent divorces for both partners, is the most enjoyable and well written aspect of the story.The plot stays tight and the book is hard to put down. A charming debut novel.
    • 4/5
      3.5 An intriguing title, gorgeous cover, paranormal visions of children asking for help, the Louisianans swamps and the genre Southern Gothic and I was all over this one.Interesting story with Charlotte, recovering from overwhelming grief taking an assignment from an old boss to try to find out the secrets that those at Evangeline may be hiding. The kidnapping of their young son many years ago, the mother now elderly and losing her memory more day by day make this assignment very difficult. Of course Charlie finds out many things, some dating from the past, some not but many aided by the visions she seems to receive after the death of her own son.A good, fast read, family secrets of a very dysfunctional family exposed, some interesting characters and a killer in the most unlikely place as well a new love interest for Charlie. Though I have to, admit I had pretty much guessed where this was going it was fun getting there. Loved the police detective and his wife.ARC from publisher.
    • 5/5
      THE GATES OF EVANGELINE is a dark Southern Gothic/mystery that I enjoyed very much, even though I got tears in my eyes several times while reading it. Soon after the death of her young son, main character Charlie Cates starts having dreams of children coming to her for help. One such dream leads her to the swamps of Louisiana, where she gets entangled in a decades-old cold case of a missing child from a wealthy and powerful family.This book is the perfect blend of mystery, suspense, and romance, with a touch of the paranormal. Charlie is a sympathetic character as a grieving mother determined to do right by her son and help others. My heart broke for her. The mystery was so intriguing – hard to put down, for sure. I will say that I was able to figure out some parts of this multi-layered mystery, but others were quite a surprise. Lots of dark & twisty goodness here. Maybe not everything that happened was plausible, but overall this book was a darn good read.I’ve heard that this book is the start of a trilogy, which makes me a little nervous considering THE GATES OF EVANGELINE is perfect as a stand-alone novel. On the other hand, I’d love to revisit Charlie Cates and see what the future holds for her.
    • 4/5
      “The Gates of Evangeline,” by debut novelist Hester Young, is an entertaining, suspense-filled paranormal Southern Gothic mystery; it also has a delightful romance at the core. What I liked most was the very sympathetic and multi-dimensional female main character, Charlotte (Charlie) Gate. I couldn’t help but believe in her, even though she sees and interacts with the ghosts of young children. That I was able to believe in this character just goes to prove how successful the author was in being able to manipulate me, through the craft of fiction, and help me to escape into another reality. Besides the empathetic and authentic main character, the book is just a good, suspenseful, slightly eerie, and very sentimental story. It was the type of story specifically designed, in every detail, to appeal to the emotional lives of women. And that’s what I am, a woman. Frankly, I couldn’t resist. The author hooked me in and I read it quickly and with pleasure over the next three days. It’s the type of book that seems tailor-made to please the summer women’s fiction marketplace. Like most women’s fiction, this book is filled with a lot of heart, humanity, romance, and sentiment. It tells the story of four months in the life of Charlie Gates, a cosmopolitan, thirty-eight-year-old New York crime and fashion magazine journalist, who is assigned to write a book about a cold-case child disappearance that took place in the bayous of Louisiana thirty years ago. The case concerns a two-year-old boy named Gabriel Deveau who disappeared from his wealthy family’s estate, Evangeline. There was a ransom note and many possible leads, but no body was ever found and nobody was every arrested. At the time, the case garnered nationwide attention. Now, the boy’s two sisters want to capitalize on the notoriety of the case by publishing a book about it. Charlie is the journalist assigned to the job.Charlie agrees to take the job after having a dream during which she believes she saw and spoke with the ghost of the disappeared boy. Up until this point in her life, she had never had a vision and didn’t believe in ghosts or psychics. At first, she’s incredulous. But then she talks to her grandmother and finds out that the women in her family have often been blessed with the ability to see visions of the past and future. In Charlie’s case, her visions began shortly after the trauma of losing her own very young child, Keegan, to a brain aneurysm. While she gathers material to write the book, Charlie is invited to live on the Evangeline estate. As she soon discovers, “Gabriel Deveau is just another name in more than a hundred and sixty years of pain and sadness at Evangeline.” There she meets all the surviving eccentric Deveau family members, as well as the large number of staff members employed to run the estate. There seem to be suspects and hidden danger everywhere. There is also a terrific romance just waiting in the sidelines and it, too, is surrounded by mystery and danger.Read the book for the pure pleasure of escaping inside a good suspense-laden romantic mystery. It’s summer. Take a vacation through reading. Treat yourself to getting lost in another reality.