The Hundredth Chance

I hardly know how to categorize this romantic drama, but it gets four stars simply because I read it in four hours and didn't have a clue it was 557 pages until I looked it up online to add it to the book record here. Whew!

There is no way not to give away some large chunks of the plot if I really talk about what I did and did not like about the story. The writing is engaging and the characters are vivid. There is a gentle thread of Christianity in the form of Mrs. Wright's encouraging speech and in a church service that takes up a brief scene, but Dell obviously expected her readers to be familiar with the passages and understand the implications of the moral points she was making by themselves, because she doesn't moralize in the books at all. Her opinion is clear if you add two plus two, but those who aren't familiar with Christian theology may miss a bit simply by reason of the subtlety of it all. It is, quite obviously, general market fiction.

I wanted to whack most of the main characters upside the head through most of the book. Their motivations were pretty clear throughout, and why Maud in particular believed she had no other course, but I didn't like it and I especially hated that big skunk Charlie.

Well-written and very nearly a melodrama but the writing talent saves it from that designation.

Content: a violent scene between Maud and her stepfather; several swears.