
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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