GoodReads Giveaways - The Girls of Ennismore and Before the Rains

And now for two quick mini-reviews. I’ve been signing up for the Goodreads Giveaways and (much to my surprise) I’ve actually won books. At this point, I think I’ve received 12 books with a couple more on the way. Totally free. This is like the best thing in the world to me!

I’m working my way through the books and am determined to read and review them all. If I can’t finish the book, I’m not going to give a star rating, but otherwise, they’ll be starred reviews on Goodreads.

Book #1:

Before the Rains by Dinah Jefferies

I was very excited to win this book not only for the beautiful cover but because it features an interesting historical period and location. In this novel, a widow, Eliza, takes on a photographic assignment in an Indian princely estate. She takes this on to support herself but also to run from a conflicted mother-daughter relation and to run towards the memory of her father. Along the way, she becomes tangled up in courtly intrigues involving the British government and the royal family while also falling in love with the heir to the throne – a romance forbidden by both the British and the Indian states.

The author provides vivid and lush descriptions of the setting and ways of life; I was struck by the beauty described in the zenana, the rich adornment of the royals and the contrast with the impoverishment in the countryside. The period and location is also a unique one – set in 1930, the story takes place against the backdrop of a growing unrest with British rule of India.

For the beauty of the descriptions and locale, however, I was disappointed in this read. I disliked the heroine, Eliza. She came across as powerless and naïve; someone with little agency who gets pulled one way and another by the circumstances of life. I was also frustrated when she got involved in things she shouldn’t, all while thinking, ‘I have a bad feeling about this.’ The plot felt a bit contrived; things happened without being led up to and with no management after the fact – convenient twists inserted to liven things up.

All in all, the beautiful descriptions weren’t enough to transport me beyond the difficulty of not liking Eliza and a storyline that felt forced.

2 ½ Stars.

Book #2

The Girls of Ennismore by Patricia Falvey

Again, I was drawn in by a beautiful cover and the lure of an interesting locale and time period. This time, the reader finds themselves in the Irish countryside at the turn of the century, following a friendship over the years between two girls of different classes. Rosie and Victoria meet by chance one day and Victoria, who yearns for a friend, begs her father for the chance to spend time with Rosie. Rosie’s parents agree to her education in the ‘big house’ over Rosie’s protests and her life is forever altered. This pattern of conflict between the two is repeated overtime throughout the story with the push and pull of class expectations driving wedge after wedge between them.

I sympathized more with Rosie’s plight though the depiction of the expectations of Victoria’s class made me feel Rosie had more freedom for all her poverty. The historical details were richly described, and after a cursory look at the history of the Easter Uprising, it appears this event was relatively well described, down to the shifting support the revolutionaries received from their countrymen. Further, this is a story that lovers of Downton Abbey will enjoy with the broad array of characters of multiple classes interacting and coexisting in a complex array of rules, regulations and expectations.

All of this being said, I did feel that the romantic aspects of the story (there are two major romance arcs) came across as a bit overdone and melodramatic (even, at times, soap opera-esque).

I give this story 4 stars.

#historical #forbidden #romance #Ireland #India #Uprising #Royals #class #EasterUprising