Sea of Lost Love
Apr. 20th, 2023 09:58 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
alobearSanta Montefiore really knows how to draw a reader in with a rich and engaging setting. In Sea of Lost Love, we begin in Cornwall in 1958, then travel to a remote town in southern Italy. It's all gorgeously rendered and very immersive.
However, with this book, I didn't connect to the characters and story nearly as much as with the previous one of hers I read recently. The plot is about a young woman who loses her father under strange circumstances and travels to Italy to try and find out what really happened to him.
But Celestria isn't a sympathetic protagonist - she's spoiled, selfish and mean. I realise her arc is a deliberate part of the story progression, but I found it hard to care about her problems at the start and hard to believe their resolution by the end, especially since she's cushioned at every turn by the vast wealth of her fairy grandfather.
Meanwhile, there are a huge number of other characters introduced very rapidly in the first chapter - mostly Celestria's family members, who are plunged into financial uncertainty by the father's death, and may have to sell the huge manor house - oh no! I'm sorry, but they came across as incredibly entitled, so I wasn't particularly sympathetic towards them either.
And then the end felt too fast, too neat and too easy, with too many coincidences, and too much money saving the day. I liked The Forget-Me-Not Sonata precisely because it *wasn't* neat and easy, so the conclusion of this book was a bit disappointing.
That said, it's still extremely well-written and kept me reading to the end - and I loved the sub-plot involving the housekeeper, Mrs Waynebridge - plus it really made me want to go to Italy!
So, I'll definitely be reading more by this author and hoping my first experience of her books is more indicative of her main body of work than my second.
However, with this book, I didn't connect to the characters and story nearly as much as with the previous one of hers I read recently. The plot is about a young woman who loses her father under strange circumstances and travels to Italy to try and find out what really happened to him.
But Celestria isn't a sympathetic protagonist - she's spoiled, selfish and mean. I realise her arc is a deliberate part of the story progression, but I found it hard to care about her problems at the start and hard to believe their resolution by the end, especially since she's cushioned at every turn by the vast wealth of her fairy grandfather.
Meanwhile, there are a huge number of other characters introduced very rapidly in the first chapter - mostly Celestria's family members, who are plunged into financial uncertainty by the father's death, and may have to sell the huge manor house - oh no! I'm sorry, but they came across as incredibly entitled, so I wasn't particularly sympathetic towards them either.
And then the end felt too fast, too neat and too easy, with too many coincidences, and too much money saving the day. I liked The Forget-Me-Not Sonata precisely because it *wasn't* neat and easy, so the conclusion of this book was a bit disappointing.
That said, it's still extremely well-written and kept me reading to the end - and I loved the sub-plot involving the housekeeper, Mrs Waynebridge - plus it really made me want to go to Italy!
So, I'll definitely be reading more by this author and hoping my first experience of her books is more indicative of her main body of work than my second.
