Customer Reviews

Another Eden (Leisure Historical Romance)

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Patrica Gaffney is fast becoming one of my favorite authors and offers quite possibly the most complex characters in Romance today.

Another Eden is the story of an unhappily married woman and the architect her husband hires to build their summer home. The hero is immediately charming but not particularly admirable at first. The heroine is admirable and long suffering to begin with but later shown to have her own flaws. As their friendship and eventual romance develops these very human failings endear them to the reader. Here is no card-board cut out of a posturing testosterone pumped male and no simpering ninny of a heroine. They are mutli-faceted and the obstacles they face are very real.

I particularly enjoyed the period of the book whis is late 1800's or possibly just after the turn of the century. It's an era not often visited in historical romances and it was quite refreshing and very well done.

and will not let go. Patricia Gaffney has written a beautiful, tender, romantic tale of two seemingly star-crossed lovers set in
1890's America.

Alex Mckie is an architect and has been hired by obnoxious nouveau riche Ben Cochrane to build an opulent mansion in flashy Newport. Alex has misgivings about building this ostentatious palace named Eden but he's a driven, ambitious man who's on the rise and he'll put aside his personal qualms about wasting his talents on this monument to bad taste.
Sara Cochrane married Ben at a young age in order to flee an alcoholic mother and an unhappy life in England. Ben married her because he thought marrying a peer of the realm would help him attain his ultimate goal: entrance into New York's exclusive high society. When Sara's title failed to gain them entry into the exclusive circles, Ben blamed her for the failure and needless to say the marriage turned sour. Sara could not leave Ben because of their son, whom Ben had no use for except as a weapon to keep Sara in her place.
When Alex and Sara meet, it isn't love at first sight. He's intrigued by her and wants to take her to bed, she dislikes him. This will change when Ben sends Sara to supervise the building of their home for the summer. Alex and Sara develop at tentative friendhip which soon evolves into something more complex. Sara is determined to ignore these feelings for her sake and the sake of her child, whom she's determined to protect agaisnt the reality of his parents marriage. Alex is not so willing to cooperate, he finds that he's falling in love with Sara and her son and suddenly his driving ambitions and his plans for the future are no longer so important. What's important is the seemingly impossible love and unquenchable passion that he and Sara feel for each other. Only she will not leave Ben for fear that he might take her child.

The angst and helplessness felt by Alex and Sara because of the impossibility of their love is heart wrenching.But what makes this a great story is that the reader can see Alex's evolution from an ambitious, young-man-about-town into a caring, responsible, loving man who's willing to give up all of his dreams and ambitions for the love of a woman. Like all of the other books I've read by this author, this is an extremely well written romantic tale. Highly recommended. :)

This is a wonderfully tender and swoon-worthy romantic novel. Sara is in her eighth year of marriage to monstrously unkind Ben, who uses their son as a pawn to keep his wife by his side. Sara nobly sacrifices all her naive young hopes/dreams of married bliss for the sake of young Michael.

Fueled by egomania and desperation to make the society papers, the wealthy Ben hires Alex, an up-and-coming architect, to construct "Eden," a ludicrously lavish home meant to impress. Almost immediately, Alex senses Sara's unhappiness and unsuitability as a wife to the obnoxious Ben. What begins, for Alex, as attraction to and curiosity about this troubled woman, gradually changes to an all-consuming passion and unrequited love. Sara, of course, develops similar feelings for Alex, but struggles to keep such emotions at bay - her son's and her very own life depend on it.

The two are thrown together as Ben quits town on business, leaving Sara to oversee the construction of Eden. Alex soon makes his feelings known to Sara, but endeavors to maintain a platonic relationship, as Sara wishes. There are beautiful moments of Alex slipping -- telling Sara she's lovely, whispering her Christian name just for the sheer pleasure of hearing it, fervently pressing her hand to his chest in entreaty for being unable to keep his feelings silent. All the while, all-consuming passion brims beneath the surface.

Alex is a magnificent hero - gallant, protective, caring and sensitive, and equally masculine.

Gaffney paints a vivid and enjoyable landscape of a young America (1890's) and it is quite evident she has done her research, yet the descriptive narrative is never obtrusive or ill-fitting in the story.

Of all of Gaffney's novels that I have read to date, I recommend "Another Eden" most highly (a difficult choice, indeed, but there it is.)

Happy reading.

The author has all the talent a reader could want - she can create a good plot - but these characters! I thought the vulgarity & cruelty of the husband "Ben" was written in a very heavy-handed way, and the heroine, Sara, was a little too goody-goody for my taste (the way she let herself be taken advantage of by that Tasha character, geez! Too much a doormat.)

The romance kind of got taken over by melodrama at the end. After a strong start, I lost interest about 1/2 through the book; ironically, right around the time that the hero & heroine confessed their love for each other. A reader shouldn't experience that loss of interest just at the most interesting point in any romance novel, yet that's what happened to me. I just couldn't care about these characters.

Not a keeper by any means, but 3 stars for a strong first half, and for the fact that the character of the heroine's little son was written in a realistic way (he's not cutesy; not overly talkative beyond his age).

So I'm working my way through Patricia Gaffney's backlist - and just from the two books I've read by her, it seems she goes in big for the tortured, tragic romances that offer some piercing, poignant moments of beauty and happiness overcast throughout with the dampening foreboding of doom, disaster and love thwarted. Something comes in at the end, a blessed deus ex machina to relieve the stress and offer the lovers a chance at salvation, but the characters, and the reader along with them, have to traverse a steep, rocky path to get to the end that is supposed to be happy. This is certainly the pattern of Another Eden. If the resolution of the book wasn't so problematic for me, I would have enjoyed it immensely. As it is, I'm very torn. Patricia Gaffney writes so wonderfully well - pardon my alliteration. Her fluid prose keeps up the pace, effortlessly gets into the hearts and minds of her characters, and weaves a beautiful romance between the hero and heroine. I loved the unique setting in particular. The sense of time and place - the gilded age of New York City - is vividly and expertly portrayed. Because of all this, I tore through the book.

Sara Cochrane is trapped in a horrible, abusive marriage. An impoverished noblewoman, she was bought at a very young age by the ambitious, American millionaire Bennet Cochrane for her title and the social leverage that was supposed to go with it. Unfortunately, that wasn't enough to gain his entre into the upper echelons of New York's high society. He's punished Sara ever since for the continuation of their nouvo riche status, using their son Michael as a weapon against her. Ben's treatment of Sara is truly horrific and painful to read. He's grotesque, malicious, vengeful, bigoted and conceited.

Sara is pretty much completely in his power - though you could argue that she does everything she can to protect her son from Ben. But the price she has to pay for her actions, whether bartering to get her way or more openly thwarting her husband, is steep, so that she's the one who ends up being abused, rather than the son. She bears up under the abuse admirably though. While I wouldn't call her strong exactly, I guess her strength lies in her ability to endure. She's vulnerable and suffering, but at the same time she isn't broken, thanks to her son and her love for him. It's what keeps her going and holds her together. He's all she has.

Until she meets Alex McKie, the architect her husband has contracted to build their new house in Newport - a grotesque, overly ornate monstrosity of a building called "Eden" that violates all Alex's aesthetic principles. But it is his job, so he has to put up with Ben as an overbearing, capricious employer. As you might have guessed, the job gets more complicated for Alex once Sara enters the picture for him. Their relationship develops slowly and tentatively. The instant attraction is there, but neither of them act on it, and skirt around it for various reasons for a long time.

The forbidden nature of their love is the big issue, of course. And while it's painful to read, because it gives each of them so much pain, before they even act on their love, and especially afterwards, at the same time their romance is beautifully written and developed. Alex is a bit of a mystery for most of the book. He's a brilliant architect, very successful in his career, a genius, an artist, who at the moment is making his name with a big firm that's more about money than art. It's hinted that he came from nothing, that there's a tortured past behind his casual, womanizing ways. It's not till much later that we find out where he came from, who he truly is. So even though he stays kind of sketchy as a character, there's enough depth to him, particularly when it comes to the nature of his art and his feelings for architecture, to make him sympathetic and memorable - more than just your usual rake.

Sara is a bit more of a problem for me. I hate that she's constantly victimized, that she has to constantly sacrifice so much for her son, that she's never fully open with Alex, that she never lets him help her or work with him to try and find a solution to their untenable situation. Apart from all the obstacles that already stand in their way, she makes it impossible for them to be together and perpetuates their misery. And the poor guy loves her anyway. When she finally takes it upon herself to act, she botches the whole thing and precipitates the very outcome she said she would prevent by staying away from Alex. She tries to do what's best for her son, but it all blows up in her face. If she hadn't been so eager to play the good little martyr, I can't help thinking things could have been resolved in a much saner fashion.

As it is, the dénouement is awkward, contrived, and a bit over the top. Even worse, it involves a half hearted attempt to redeem the husband, which really drives me up the wall. I'm sorry. The man is an evil bastard who gets off far too easily. Castration, at the very least, should have been involved in his comeuppance. But that's not half as bad as Sara's cowardice once she and Alex are finally free to be together. I couldn't believe her idiocy, her hypocrisy, her horrible treatment of Alex at this point. It was enough to knock a few stars off, but I relented in consideration of what had come before her unworthy actions near the end. So only one star off. And of course the reason she finally decides maybe she and Alex should be together is because of Michael. She's been so blind with regards to her son throughout, so incapacitated by her fear of losing him, that I shouldn't be surprised that she wouldn't realize Alex is just what her son needs after such an awful father like Ben. Michael himself has to knock some sense into her and get her to see what's right in front of her face. Ugh. So frustrating.

The ending is also anticlimactic, in the sense that that there is that awful hiatus after the evil husband is dispensed with, during which Sara loses her mind and my respect. Then she wakes up, chases after Alex, and the new happy family rides off into the sunset together. We don't get to actually see the happily ever after, and I felt very cheated in this respect upon closing the book. My disappointment is all the more acute because there are some hints as to what this happily ever after would be like earlier on - Alex talks about a house he wants to build, a kind of masterpiece that he designed for Sara. It sounds so beautiful, and the idea of them together in that house is so nice, so right, that I wish we could have at least been offered that tangible image of their happily ever after. Instead, I feel left hanging, without a satisfying sense of closure or payoff for all the heartache I had to go through in reading Another Eden. I should have at least been allowed to see this other Eden realized in the end.

A portrait of Gilded Age New York that isn't heavy handed with the period details, in Another Eden Patricia Gaffney easily describes the ostentation and stuffiness of the 1890's and how difficult it was to be surrounded by it.

Sara Cochrane is trapped in a horrible marriage to an industrial millionaire who wants to break into the cream of society. All of his actions are done with an eye towards social advancement. He's also never kind to her and she stays with him only out of fear of losing her son. Then she meets Alex McKie who is going to build an overblown new mansion on Long Island for her husband. Alex and Sara first become friends and then before they realize it, they've fallen in love without intending to. She won't leave her husband, though, and they quickly stop their affair.

The ending is a bit too convenient, but I enjoyed this book. The characters and their worlds are well-drawn and the last chapter is really sweet. This is a kind of happier version of the 19th century adultery novel!

This story is markedly different--thinner plot, les complex characters-than other of Gaffney's novels. It made me wonder if someone else wrote it, or if it was dashed off to meet a publication deadline. Its major weakness was the uni-dimensionality of the two major characters. They did not engage the reader as, for example, Carrie Wiggins and Tyler Wilkes did in Sweet Everlasting. Those two were fully developed characters who exhibited contentment,weaknessness,doubt,arrogance,satisfaction, fearfulness,joy, inner as well as outer strength,and struggles within their social contexts. This is Gaffney's strength as a writer-wonderfully engaging plot populated by complex and sympathetic characters who stay with you long after you finish the novel. Another Eden was a disappointment.

My second Gaffney, not as good as Lily , but well worth the money!