In 1686 18 year old Petronella arrives at the home of her new husband, Johannes - a wealthy merchant - and his sister in Amsterdam, where she's made less than welcome. His wedding gift to her is an extraordinary miniature replica of their home, for which she contracts the services of a miniaturist to provide exact, tiny versions of the house's contents, which soon take on a life of their own. (You can google Petronella's Dollshouse and see it for yourself!) Escalating real life dramas are played out in miniature form and Nella starts to fear for the lives of everyone around her.
I loved this book - not just for the clever and intriguing story, but also for the background of Amsterdam at that time. It was a very repressive era, where religious fervour was rife, hypocrisy was ever present and gold revered as next to God. Both Petronella and her sister in law were trapped in that environment, and the journey that they take together, towards a kind of freedom, is fraught and unexpected and quite wonderful.