Karleen Koen's sweeping saga contains unforgettable characters consumed with passion: the extraordinarily beautiful fifteen-year-old noblewoman, Barbara Alderley; the man she adores, the wickedly handsome Roger MontGeoffry; her grandmother, the duchess, who rules the family with cunning and wit; and her mother, the ineffably cruel, self-centered and licentious Diana. Like no other work, Through a Glass Darkly is infused with intrigue, sweetened by romance and awash in the black ink of betrayal.
(from goodreads.com)
I give this book 2 out of 5 stars.
Normally, I don't bother with romance novels. The plots are usually too cookie-cutter for me. There's a lot of love, lust, hurt, then resolution and everyone lives happily ever after. blah blah blah. This book, however, was a free download on my kindle and it had some decent reviews so I decided to give it a try. The characters were interesting and the storyline was not dull. The main character (Barbara) is a child (and yes, I say child even though she gets married) of 15. She has a soft spot for her grandmother and young children. Her grandmother and all the children in the story are very endearing. Koen does a good job making you like the Duchess and her grandchildren. My favorite part of the story was when a shocking turn of events sweeps through the family and reminds the reader of the cruel hardships and lack of proper medical healthcare that were rampant in that time of our history.
Contrasting the beloved relationships between the children and their grandmother is the sadistic relationship the children have with their mother, Diana. The author does her darndest to make you bleieve Diana is evil and to be feared. She manipulates and bullies people into doing what she wants. She is the perfect "bad guy" until you meet Phillipe.
Barbara has a girl-hood crush on a man (Roger) who's something like 3 decades older than her and her family arranges for her to marry him, which she does. She gets the man of her dreams and he gets her grandmother's prime real estate in London. They travel to France and she does some growing up. He starts to fall in love with her and she's sickeningly puppy-love-struck for him but their adventures in married life are not quite what one would expect. Roger is your typical historical romance novel hero. He's occassionally a jerk but the heroine always forgives him because he swoops in and saves the day or buys her expensive presents. See, the thing about Roger, though, is that he's hiding a very dark secret that, when it gets revealed, devastates Barbara and smashes her expectations to smitherines. This revelation was very well-written and leaves the book with a cliff-hanger that tempts me to buy the sequel, Now Face To Face.
In a nutshell, this book is about a girl who grows up to realize the world isn't what she expected it to be. I thought it was an "ok" read. I wasn't overly disappointed when it ended but, like I said, the cilff-hanging ending makes me want to read the sequel just so I can find out what happens. I may borrow it from the library because I just don't think I can convince myself that it might be worth money to read another one of these long-winded tales. Oh, did I mention it's more than 700 pages long? No? Well, it is. I've been known to enjoy long books because I hate when a good story ends but another 700 pages of this stuff? Meh, guess we'll wait and see if the next post I make is about the sequel.
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