By Lucinda Elliot, Author, Wales, UK
Four Stars: Packed with Vivid Characters and Lively Humour
This story features a heroine I took to at once - it’s she who makes the jokes, she’s
stunning, sensual, ambitious, charming, clever – it’s outrageous that she’s had
the misfortune to be besotted by a prize philandering cad, the brutally
insensitive and sex obsessed Harry Drake for years, and she’s about to find out
that her birth control has failed as well....
Never mind, Marlena Mae Bellum isn’t a woman given to
despair or seeing herself as a victim – even though, or perhaps because – at
times it seems as though she’s the late twentieth century reincarnation of her
enchantress ancestor Cassandra Vye, the one time scourage of a small town in
Wyoming, who was also the recipient of a curse supposedly to blight the lives
of generations of descendants.
This book is an intriguing read which through earthy humour
and a cast of vivid and recognisable characters transforms a classic story – a
curse destined to cut across and link the lives of generations of a family –
into something new and intriguing.
Like many good stories, it isn’t one that is easy to define.
Roughly it can be called a ‘Paranormal Romance with a Historical slant’ but
that hardly does it justice.The supernatural elements in this book are subtly depicted; though undoubtedly there, they are brought into play through a series of synchronicities. Prosaic corruption in corporate business over land use is subtly connected to a past resounding with a tragedy which draws in the characters, cutting across time, individual personalities, plans and desires with a tangled skein of peculiar co-incidences.
This, the first volume of the series, isn’t a simple story.
Neither, as in real life, can the solutions which the characters use to try and
resolve their problems wholly satisfactory; but I was constantly struck by how
strong the female characters in this story are – whether it’s Marlena herself,
her hidebound, strictly religious mother or her dispassionate, cerebral
psychiatrist older cousin. Then , there
are the machinations of that wonderful siren,
Lila.
There are so many funny scenes and so much throwaway humour
in this that I find it hard to make a choice for a quote. The put down given to
the lecherous Harry Drake by gay woman
Stretch, ‘Keep it in your pants, buster. I’m batting for the other side’
is my favourite. Then there’s Chloe’s reflections on Harry Drake: ‘Poor Harry, always one day late and a dollar short in the when it came to emotional commitments’.
I was very impressed by this vivid writing and lively
characterisation and shall look out for the rest of the series. I recommend it
to anyone looking for a story which contains the spine chilling, the ridiculous
and the moving all seamlessly combined.
(Note: buy links for HOME SCHOOLING: THE FIRE NIGHT BALL are on Anne Carlisle's webpage):
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