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A review by georgiewhoissarahdrew
The Beautiful Stranger by Julia London
2.0
2.5 stars
There's some good stuff going on in this - the hero learning to love life, good background on the Highland Clearances, financial disaster looming for the heroine, love-across-the-tracks. All this and a murder trial too.
The story is well-laid out in the first part of the book - Arthur's sense of guilt at a friend's death driving him to sort out a Scottish creditor, Kerry trying to raise funds to make a future for herself and her clan family. Their meeting and gradual relationship unfolded gently and with a certain amount of humour. I don't know that I was particularly convinced by the relationship, though - Arthur seemed a little too self-absorbed to have fallen for dewy-eyed simplicity, no matter how loyal Kerry was to her family. However.
What let the second half down, ironically, is the sheer quantity of plot lines that were juggled - generally to the detriment of a realistic exploration of any. The financial plotline becomes overly complex - and then is, probably to everyone's relief, abandoned in favour of a more straightforward Sir Jasper de Vil type plot. So a bit of a tonal change there. More dramatically (yes, more dramatically,Kerry kills a man in self-defence, and, without stopping to cover her position, runs away to England with Arthur. Instead of exploring the effects of the killing on Kerry, the story decides to veer off to explore how difficult she finds life in England, clothes, bitchy comments etc etc. The killing is side-lined. Arthur, during this English phase, comes across as an insensitive clod, unwilling to marry Kerry, or leave her alone. When, finally, she returns to Scotland, he dillies and dallies before following her .
The climax of the story is a trial scene, in which both prosecution and defence trample over the niceties of legal procedure big time. Yes, we know (because an HEA is guaranteed) that it's going to work out OK - but that doesn't mean that the reality of how the law works can be completely dismissed just to engineer the ending. Wouldn't it be far more effective to have the H&H struggling to comply with legal verities and triumphing, than magicking them aside?
Overall, there was just too much going on for me (and not enough of it plausible), so the book was unsatisfactory as a result.
There's some good stuff going on in this - the hero learning to love life, good background on the Highland Clearances, financial disaster looming for the heroine, love-across-the-tracks. All this and a murder trial too.
The story is well-laid out in the first part of the book - Arthur's sense of guilt at a friend's death driving him to sort out a Scottish creditor, Kerry trying to raise funds to make a future for herself and her clan family. Their meeting and gradual relationship unfolded gently and with a certain amount of humour. I don't know that I was particularly convinced by the relationship, though - Arthur seemed a little too self-absorbed to have fallen for dewy-eyed simplicity, no matter how loyal Kerry was to her family. However.
What let the second half down, ironically, is the sheer quantity of plot lines that were juggled - generally to the detriment of a realistic exploration of any. The financial plotline becomes overly complex - and then is, probably to everyone's relief, abandoned in favour of a more straightforward Sir Jasper de Vil type plot. So a bit of a tonal change there. More dramatically (yes, more dramatically,
The climax of the story is a trial scene, in which both prosecution and defence trample over the niceties of legal procedure big time. Yes, we know (because an HEA is guaranteed) that it's going to work out OK - but that doesn't mean that the reality of how the law works can be completely dismissed just to engineer the ending. Wouldn't it be far more effective to have the H&H struggling to comply with legal verities and triumphing, than magicking them aside?
Overall, there was just too much going on for me (and not enough of it plausible), so the book was unsatisfactory as a result.