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Marbles and Towers
Dec. 22nd, 2025 10:19 amThe Marble Collector by Cecelia Ahern was one I was looking forward to reading as it looked like one of her heartwarming, contemporary tales of quiet family drama - and it probably was!
But I really disliked the female protagonist (she's introduced in a chapter where one of her charges at a nursing home has a heart attack and her only reaction is disappointment that she didn't get to pull the emergency cord...) and I found the scenes about her father's childhood dreary and distressing.
So, while I expect the way everything eventually came together was probably very sweet and (hopefully) involved some growth for the daughter, I found myself not invested enough to stick it out to find out.
The Forgotten Tower by Lulu Taylor is one of a specific type of book I've read a lot in recent years - split timeline, charting a family history in the past with events that have some kind of impact on a young woman's personal development in the present. Taylor does have a sometimes overly unpleasant focus on domestic violence and abuse of women, which did feature here, but didn't tip over the line into detracting from the story for me this time.
I wasn't overly keen on some of Georgie's attitudes and responses to situations early on, but her growth over the course of the book was satisfying, and I appreciated the way her background informed her actions and was eventually overcome.
Some aspects of the historical narrative were a bit over-the-top, and the ultimate explanation of some things seemed a bit tacked on at the end. But overall, it was a well-structured and absorbing read.
But I really disliked the female protagonist (she's introduced in a chapter where one of her charges at a nursing home has a heart attack and her only reaction is disappointment that she didn't get to pull the emergency cord...) and I found the scenes about her father's childhood dreary and distressing.
So, while I expect the way everything eventually came together was probably very sweet and (hopefully) involved some growth for the daughter, I found myself not invested enough to stick it out to find out.
The Forgotten Tower by Lulu Taylor is one of a specific type of book I've read a lot in recent years - split timeline, charting a family history in the past with events that have some kind of impact on a young woman's personal development in the present. Taylor does have a sometimes overly unpleasant focus on domestic violence and abuse of women, which did feature here, but didn't tip over the line into detracting from the story for me this time.
I wasn't overly keen on some of Georgie's attitudes and responses to situations early on, but her growth over the course of the book was satisfying, and I appreciated the way her background informed her actions and was eventually overcome.
Some aspects of the historical narrative were a bit over-the-top, and the ultimate explanation of some things seemed a bit tacked on at the end. But overall, it was a well-structured and absorbing read.
