A Terrible Beauty by Tasha Alexander
I've written about this series before here, and it's one of my favorites, but I'm not sure this one stands up to the rest of the novels.
Lady Emily and her hunky husband Colin Hargreaves go to Santorini with their friends Margaret and Jeremy in order to distract Jeremy from his near murder at the hands of his fiancee, which was the subject of the previous novel, The Adventuress. While there, she runs into her previous husband, who died in the very first book while on safari in Africa. The guilt and confusion that erupts from his sudden appearance, very much alive, is the undercurrent of the novel.
Oh, the lives of wealthy Victorians. I don't think we can even imagine what people went through. The veneer of modesty and politeness that covered the seamy underbelly of the vast majority of society, fragile as the sugar crust of a creme brulee. It's like reading the tabloids, if they had class.
Where Alexander really shines is in her descriptions of the different locales she places her characters into. She really brings the Greek landscape into sharp focus and makes you really long to go there and see them for yourself. Can anything really be as beautiful as she describes it?
But I have two problems. One is inherent to the nature of the characters. Being of the upper classes, they tend to lean toward the pretentious. I haven't felt it quite so strongly in the previous novels as in this one, and it was a little annoying in places. Luckily it wasn't so heavy as to put me off the book entirely.
The other problem is that it's starting to seem like the same story over and over. Another false identity? Is it really that easy? Because I have some creditors I'd like to bail on.
I don't think these things distract too badly from the novel, but they are some sticking points I hadn't experienced in the first novels. I just hope these problems don't become real issues.
Lady Emily and her hunky husband Colin Hargreaves go to Santorini with their friends Margaret and Jeremy in order to distract Jeremy from his near murder at the hands of his fiancee, which was the subject of the previous novel, The Adventuress. While there, she runs into her previous husband, who died in the very first book while on safari in Africa. The guilt and confusion that erupts from his sudden appearance, very much alive, is the undercurrent of the novel.
Oh, the lives of wealthy Victorians. I don't think we can even imagine what people went through. The veneer of modesty and politeness that covered the seamy underbelly of the vast majority of society, fragile as the sugar crust of a creme brulee. It's like reading the tabloids, if they had class.
Where Alexander really shines is in her descriptions of the different locales she places her characters into. She really brings the Greek landscape into sharp focus and makes you really long to go there and see them for yourself. Can anything really be as beautiful as she describes it?
But I have two problems. One is inherent to the nature of the characters. Being of the upper classes, they tend to lean toward the pretentious. I haven't felt it quite so strongly in the previous novels as in this one, and it was a little annoying in places. Luckily it wasn't so heavy as to put me off the book entirely.
The other problem is that it's starting to seem like the same story over and over. Another false identity? Is it really that easy? Because I have some creditors I'd like to bail on.
I don't think these things distract too badly from the novel, but they are some sticking points I hadn't experienced in the first novels. I just hope these problems don't become real issues.
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