Post by Brad Nelson on Jul 21, 2024 16:28:08 GMT -8
What kind of book review, other than one that comes from me, would start with "Don't read this"?
It's actually pretty good for the first 60% of it: Boy meets girl. Girl lives in old, dilapidated mansion. Girl also meets girl. Boy with previous history with girl (and another boy) is standoffish. Then girl meets portrait of sad girl's brother who is in prison.
Girl is convinced by the portrait (he's soooo handsome) that girl's brother just couldn't be guilt of murder. Girl (she's a very rich girl) buys dilapidated house, makes friends with girl who owns it and organizes a scheme to try to rescue girl's brother from a French prison colony in New Caledonia.
Other girl (girl's paid companion) is jealous. Another guy is jealous as well. And yet another guy is jealous. Nearly everyone one in this tight group of six or so people has it as their life's ambition to marry someone else in this group.
Rinse, and repeat. It really is a silly imagining from an obviously female writer. But the setup was okay. It's just that when they get to New Caledonia by boat (she paid 20,000 pounds for it...did I mention she was very rich?), it gets a bit silly. I mean, there is no way in hell that these hard-bitten officials of the Île Nou prison colony are going to be so swept off their feet by a pretty blond to the point that they give her the run of the place and the pretty blond is able to run a successful prison break.
And in the end, boy gets girl, one boy gets no one, another gets jail, and a second pair of boy and girl get each other. I actually sort of did lose track of who was lusting after whom. But it's all so swell!
A good effort at a novel that just needed to have a bit of the nonsense evened out or removed. By all means, don't read it. But if you do, you can find it for free and it's very short.