Edenbrooke

DNF'ed at ~25%.

i remember DNFing this book a few years ago but i decided to pick it up again since the ratings on GR is unusually high over more than 30k reviews. but wow, i was really struggling to get through it. this is also coming from someone who regularly reads mass market paperback romance novels, and especially those set in the Regency era. for these specific niche of books, you need to read it with a whole tumbler of salt sometimes because obviously historical accuracy or social commentary is not the order of the day - that's fine. what i had issues with in this book, however, is just how annoying the characters are, how stilted the writing was, and how contrived and unrealistic the plot elements are.

i really really didn't like Marianne even though i barely got to the quarter mark. Marianne is obviously being set up to be your typical “not like other girls” Mary Sue:

For being twins, Cecily and I were remarkably different. She excelled me in every womanly art. She was much more beautiful and refined. She played the pianoforte and sang like an angel. She flirted easily with gentlemen. She liked twon life and had dreams of marrying a man with a title. She was ambitious.My ambitions were quite different from hers. I wanted to live in the country, to ride my horse, to sit in an orchard and paint, to take care of my father, to feel that I belonged, to do something useful and good with my time. But most of all, I wanted to be loved for who I was. My ambitions seemed quiet and dull next to Cecily's.

you just know that some man or other is going to choose plain ol' “so beautiful she can't even see it” Marianne over Cecily despite all her explicit beauty and glamour. man, this is an insult to actual Regency novels from that period, where even though some characters may be broadly painted into “the homebody” and “the socialite”, they are never as black and white as it seems in this book.

but then the writing becomes really stilted (what the heck is “twirling” and why is Marianne obsessed with it? is it really just turning yourself round and round?) and weird. it becomes worse when Marianne's grandmother very randomly announces that she is going to disinherit Mr Kellet, her nephew, and make Marianne her heir. we are not given an explanation why, except a vague sense that we just need to have Marianne as a secret heir to a vast fortune to get the romance plots into play.

and yes, the grandmother asks her to keep it a secret for... no reason? just because the grandmother isn't convinced that Marianne wouldn't disgrace her as her heir? idk, everything seems so contrived. you just know that this inability to tell anyone that she's inheriting forty thousand pounds is going to be the thing that resolves the central conflict near the end of the novel.

the writing was also so... unappealing somehow.

I pressed the locket close to my heart and felt a greater surge of hope. Surely my mother's portrait had magical powers over my heart. Perhaps over my stomach as well, for I soon felt it calm and settle.

what?!?!?! i mean, of course she has a locket that holds the only picture she has of her dearly departed mother, and of course she loses said locket early on in the book. she'll probably find it again some time later for yet another contrived plot element.

i would go on about this but honestly i think i should spend more of my time on things that actually make me happy. i rarely give books 1 star but i really did not enjoy this one and am deeply bewildered that its rating is so high on GR.