A Specter of Truth by Kathleen Mckee
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I enjoyed reading this book with its many and various appropriate, and sometimes surprising, ingredients. There are touches of the Wild West, with threats of danger from the Native Americans and wildlife such as grizzly bears, as well as a sinister and overbearing stranger who claims to be related to the Mitchell family around which the story revolves. Lizzie, the main protagonist in the book, relates the tale and it is well done. All too often one finds lapses in awareness of situations and place by an author when they choose to use the first person narrative in their book – but not here. I grew to like Lizzie and her growth and development as the main character and before long I was rooting for her until the end. The author showed a wonderful skill in building characters and situations so that the elements of mystery thriller and romance, with twists and turns throughout, became both intriguing and believable.
Although the story’s plotline is based around Emmor Kimber’s school in Kimberton Village, Pennsylvania, and set in the early 19th century I forgot most of that and wanted to know about Lizzie and her family. As an educator myself I would have liked to hear much more detail about the system of education operating in a Quaker school in those times, but within the tale and not as an addendum at the end. Every so often I was reminded of the difficulties that challenged settlers in those far-off times when meal times and travelling, using horses or walking, came to the fore. Most children would have been expected to earn their keep with chores on the farm or around the home in the 18th and 19th century, and they would not have had opportunity to attend any type of “formal” school and this came across well in McKee’s writing. Occasionally, there were expressions and idioms used that I felt were too contemporary and therefore out of place and time for this historical fiction. Unfortunately, in addition to those lapses I found a few typo errors (pour vs poor and Harry vs Henry) together with a very annoying error of a mixture of past and present tense in several sentences. These editing lapses prevented me from giving the book 5 stars which essentially it deserves.


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Redway Acres by Trish Butler
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Reading book 2 in a series can be quite a confusing experience sometimes when you have never “met” the various characters before and their descriptions and relevance to both books 1 and 2 may escape the reader. This was the case initially for me when I started reading “Maria” and Mr Eldridge lay dying in his bed. I thought who was he and why was he dying? Gradually, as the story unfolded, the answer to the first question became apparent but I never found out what had been the cause of his death. It is often through such puzzling thoughts that one can decide whether a book in a series is a stand-alone novel or not. Generally I felt that most of the plot of this book could be read and enjoyed in its own right and that is to compliment Ms Butler for her writing skills. Sights, sounds and smells from the 19th century exuded from the pages. Her character development was excellent and most of the time I knew which of the very many protagonists was appearing “front of stage” for my attention. However, I felt that there were too many characters fighting for the main role with their own back story often pushing Maria into the wings or back stage. This became quite confusing for me when a lot of, possibly unneeded, detail about minor characters was also included.

My own favourite characters were Helena and Nathaniel, particularly in his ability to perform various admirable, often quite “acrobatic”, encounters on one leg! The plot has plenty of intriguing twist and turns throughout and I was left in shock towards the end of the book with a couple of events - but no spoiler here! So, in conclusion this Austen-like tale but with its various racy descriptions taken from the historical romance, bodice ripping genre is gripping in parts, but is too long. This is particularly so for myself as I cannot claim to enjoy any of the many other examples of the genre out there on the market. No doubt there is an obvious legion of such fans who will return again and again for more enjoyment from the Redway Acres series. Another issue, quite apart from the length of the novel that must soon be addressed is a large number of editing and punctuation errors, in order to transform it from good to excellent overall.


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