Customer Reviews

Belle

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

 

 

Stephan and Annabelle (Belle) are a delightful couple who are perfect for each other. Stephan realizes this rather quickly, he just has to convince Belle...while avoiding Scottish Reevers and a myriad of other troubles on their way to Gretna Green.

Ms Jackson proves with this book that she can write with a lighter voice and still maintain her beautiful writing style. Readers will connect quickly with this engaging couple and truly enjoy this troubled journey to true love.

If life was fair and simple, Stephen Kirton would be happily married to a respectable lady. However, as far as Stephen is concerned life is unreasonable and complex so he knows his dream will never happen, as Polite Society will never accept a person born on the wrong side of the sheets let alone his commerce with the "lower classes".

Instead, he seeks a night of revelry at the hedonistic Ormstead Park where he is shocked to see Annabelle Winston, an unattainable fantasy from his less complicated youth. They share drunken kisses at night, but that morning she rejects his proposal of marriage to avoid scandal. BELLE flees, but Stephen follows because he knows she is the one person who could bring happiness into his bleak dismal world.

BELLE is a warm historical romance though readers will wonder if the hero is a Regency adult or a disenchanted 1960s youth failing to score during the summer of Love. Stephen is the duel edge sword of the exciting plot. Readers will either moan along with him as a charmer who deserves the love of a good woman or tell him to get a life. Belle is an intriguing individual whose fall from grace contrasts with her letters to her mother. Melanie Jackson provides a well-written tale, but readers need to decide whether Stephen is an immature whiner or a misfortunate antihero.

Harriet Klausner

Melanie Jackson has fashioned a fun romp, laced with historical detail and a lyrical feel. Stephen and Annabelle fall into each others' arms when they are nothing short of "foxed." Both have been jilted and are looking for what love really means. The opening, where we slowly discover through the characters' own points of view, just how incapacitated they are becoming, is really excellent writing. When they wake the next morning, compromised in reputation, if not in fact, and feeling the worse for wear, the chase begins with each trying to save the other from him or herself. Reavers, poison, and a series of delightful card games where the lovers play for stakes much higher than money, are barriers to their final bliss. But we know they are going to get there. Ms. Jackson has obviously spent time in the English country-side and in some wonderful inns. You can feel the reality of the settings right along with the characters as you join them on their wild ride to love.

Melanie Jackson takes a good enough story concerning equally misfortuned social outcasts (Belle and Stephan) searching for love and removes all its life by constantly shifting the point of view between these two leads, thus adding inconsistency and a serious lack of mystery to the proceedings. The author probably should have stuck with Stephan's point of view as the first chapter uses this and gives us a very engaging perspective on the story: this intriguing angle only to become breached upon the next chapter which is told instead from Belle's perspective. This makes for a writing style so detached that has to be read to be believed.
But who knows, maybe the book could've gotten away if its perspective was its only fault. Sadly that is not the case. The characters, by and large, are far too over the top to be believed, let alone enjoyed. The dialogue is so fancy and wordy that it never reads as anything above an absolute affectation constructed by its ill directed author. If I ever heard anyone of any era speaking in this fashion I would ask them what script they were practicing for.
The pretension ends not there, however. Mrs. Jackson apparently wasn't content with merely mechanizing the dialogue but also in her authorly description she substitutes wordiness for quality. And very big words too, oh yes; most readers will find it necessary to keep a dictionary open while laboring through her tediously placed $50 words. Do keep in mind that I love a big word as much as the next local intellectual, but Mrs. Jackson seems to believe that a big word makes an important sentence. And let me tell ya, there are some *bad* freakin' sentences herein (ex. "Had anyone served him such a trick he would have done his utmost to see them vivisected, not invite them to make love to him.) She proves as a counterexample that Hemingway had some things right.
Also the occuring sexual episodes come across more pornagraphic than romantic, epitomised by one especially gratuituous bathtub experience. In other words, don't read this book.

Most people who adore Melanie Jackson know her as one of the finest historical writers around. She draws vivid characters, who grab you from the start, that are intelligent, with sparkling wit and a sparkle in the eye. This time she paints her story with a lighter, whimiscal touch and scores another bullseye, showing you she is a talent to watch.

Stephan Kirton has been dumped - the lady in question having no ambition to marry the scarred, ...son of a Duke; while Belle had been abandoned by her betrothed, Quincy. ...

Their journey is one escapade after another, meeting Sweeney Todd, Scottish reivers and various others characters along the way and scandalising the whole countryside in the process!

This is one delightful read I could not put down!!

WISE WRITERS AND READERS Book of the Month...