My other copy room bookshelf find this one didn't rank quite as high as Pearl Cove did, however it wasn't too bad. I confess that the beginning pulled me in, then my interest tapered off as the book went on. Thea the heroine is seduced into running off with a fortune hunter, who then rapes her in order to ensure that she has to marry him. When her brother shows up to defend her honor and take her home, they duel and both are killed. Ten years later Thea is notorious, a wealthy woman who lives on her own. Her reputation has sullied any chance of marriage and forced her younger half sister to marry a gambler and lout (great word isn't it? I like lout). Enter Patrick Blackburn an American planter from Natchez, Mississippi (a less sexier hometown I've never heard of, it ain't exactly Tara) recently arrived and visiting his mother who left his father alone in America to return to her beloved London. Remind anyone of Legends of the Fall? Me! His mother is being blackmailed about a youthful indiscretion and when he goes to deal with the situation who does he run into but Thea, literally, who is also being blackmailed by her loser brother-in-law to cover his gambling debts. She runs off into the night after hitting him. By a strange coincidence someone else has it in for bad bro and knocks Patrick out and slits bro's throat. A fine pickle everyone finds themselves in, and so the story goes.
The concept is good and the story held my attention for the most part, however the character development fell off in places especially in terms of secondary characters. Often people would pop in and out with no apparent purpose and often characters would suddenly have a huge scene or play a big role in the plot but you weren't really sure why or where the hell they came from. In my opinion this hurt the story, I like to know all the gritty details, or at least feel like I know exactly where I am and what everyone is about. In this case it felt incomplete. Good general plot, but it could have been better if the characters were better.
