damn whoever made the musical based on this book- there are direct quotes from the book! loved this as i loved the musical!! & it‘s really funny that we still don‘t know the first name of the main protagonist as she‘s always called something else

A slow, atmospheric novel with beautifully evocative descriptions of places and nature. I loved how calm the pacing feels, how the story takes its time to build the mood and slowly let the figure of Rebecca take shape. At first, everything feels ambiguous, almost slightly supernatural, but in the end it’s mostly psychological — seen through the eyes of a protagonist who overthinks and doubts herself a lot. I really appreciated her growth from being naive and insecure to becoming more mature and confident. My feelings about Rebecca changed too: from being fascinated by her to seeing her darker, more selfish side. And Manderley… the gardens, the flowers, the atmosphere — it all felt so vivid, I could almost walk through it.

Incredible!

Daphne du Mauriers Rebecca ist ein atmosphärisch dichter Roman, zu dem ich schon lange eine besondere Verbindung habe: Zuerst habe ich die Hitchcock-Verfilmung von 1940 gesehen, die mich sehr beeindruckt hat, später auch das Musical gehört, das ich als besonders tiefgreifend empfinde. Beim Lesen des Romans selbst haben mich die Figuren stark beschäftigt. Anfangs war mir Maxim de Winter äußerst unsympathisch, ebenso wie die namenlose Protagonistin. Ihre Tendenz, sich vieles schönzureden und stets Harmonie zu suchen, wirkte auf mich oft anstrengend. Dennoch gab es Passagen, in denen ich mich sowohl mit ihr als auch mit Maxim identifizieren konnte – was ebenso verstörend wie faszinierend war. Fast schon psychisch schmerzhaft war es zu verfolgen, wie beide sehenden Auges in ihr Unglück rennen. Die Namenslosigkeit der Erzählerin verstärkt auf eindrucksvolle Weise Rebeccas Übermacht und ihr Nachwirken über den Tod hinaus. Besonders hervorheben möchte ich den Schreibstil du Mauriers, welcher bildhaft, elegant und zugleich flüssig zu lesen war, wodurch man leicht in die düstere, spannungsgeladene Atmosphäre hineingezogen wird. 4,5/5⭐️

"One day the woman would grow old or tired or different, .... But Rebecca would never grow old. Rebecca would always be the same. And her I could not fight. She was too strong for me." No words I could possibly write could do this book justice. Wow. Wow. Wow. I was hooked from page one. The writing is so lyrical and beautiful, even though this book is written in first person (which I usually dislike). But for this one, it was absolutely necessary. Normally I can’t come up with theories- that’s just not the way my brain works, but with Rebecca I could and did. Though my theories weren’t 100% correct, the plot twist is diabolical. Daphne did such an incredible job with the character work. Every single one of them was amazing, even if most of them weren’t lovable at all. I wasn’t bored for a single page, and I annotated so much from the very first until the very last. And the ending was insane. Literally. A masterpiece.