A Splendid Ruin
Ratings6
Average rating3.6
This is a (very recently published) historical fiction that I just finished today - (a lot of the books I review I read a while ago or a few months ago...catching up on all the reviews is hard to do!) But this book made me want to take time off from reviewing old books and instead immersing myself in a new one. And I'm glad I did. It's a HF Cinderella re-telling that deals with revenge, balls, and all that. Perhaps a little cliche in the ideology, but wonderful writing and I love how the SF Earthquake was incorporated. Glad I took the time to read this.
4.5 rounded up. Each part almost felt like a different genre but this book was great and I was really really invested
The blurb for this reads like a revenge thriller but it isn't. Most of the book is the main character being tossed around by circumstance and making foolish decisions, then there's a “revenge” plot that doesn't really involve her and manages to totally keep her hands clean and an insipid romance. Everything is solved because of something outside the protagonist's control.
This story follows naive May Kimble who leaves New York when her mother dies to be with rich relatives in San Francisco at the turn of the 20th century. The first part of the story has May being overwhelmed, and then bored, by all the glamour of society. There are a couple of big twists, so I'm not going to give much more away about the plot. May goes through a lot throughout the story, and the narrative tells me she's a changed person by the end, but I frankly didn't believe it. This book is a good example of plot driving the story, of plot happening to a character, instead of the character taking action. I found myself rather annoyed at several instances, and I can think of only a couple times where May makes a decision for herself. Still, the story intrigued me enough to want to know how everything would end. I admit I was rather let down. The end seemed to fizzle out in the third act. There was really nothing remarkable here, but it wasn't a bad read.
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