This book is described as one of the greatest suspenseful romances. I found it mostly not suspenseful and definitely not romantic! That said, it is still a good book and gets interesting after you get past the first half, which drags interminably. I thought the real story would never start!
The story starts in the future and comes back to a young lady who is very unsure of herself. She meets a wealthy older man and marries him. They travel to his family estate where everything is still run as his first wife, Rebecca, dictated. The second wife quickly feels extremely inferior to the mysterious Rebecca. Maxim, the husband, is very secretive and extremely sensitive. (At the end of the story, you get the impression that this may have changed, but from the initial glimpse of the future we know he is still very sensitive.) No one speaks of Rebecca much, except the housekeeper, Mrs. Danvers, who loved her to distraction. Everything winds up in a dramatic finish.
The second wife is a little annoying. She repeatedly excuses her timidity and reactions to being young and inexperienced, which is reasonable but this reader would still like her to have more of a backbone. Maxim isn't much of a romantic figure to my way of thinking because he is sooo sensitive. Even after everything has happened, he still turns white and goes into a downward spiral when his wife reads him a passage that reminds him of his family home! We learn he has a good reason for his morbid sensitivity, but that doesn't change the fact that you have to read about it for the entire book! Mrs. Danvers is by far the best character. She is fantastically creepy while being imminently efficient. Rebecca also feels like a very real character who plays largely in the story, even though she is dead before it begins.
This book is worth the time, if only because of its huge popularily! Be prepared for a very slow start.
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