Customer Reviews

The Big Class (Black Lace Series)

The story centers around Cia Finnemore during the 30's, just prior to the outbreak of WW2. An English girl who travels to Italy with a member of The Big Class (a term used for the rich English) named Dianna as her travel companion. After sleeping with Dianna's son, and making a scene at the local lords manor saying she is his daughter, Dianna kicks her out to find her own way home.

On her way to England, circumstances thrust her into the arms of Giordano, a communist who publishes fliers speaking out against Mussolini's fascist regime. She falls in love with him, but eventually the Black Shirts come for him.

Cia manages to escape and make her way back to England, peniless. There she mourns the loss of Giordano but eventually gets together with an old childhood crush. Meanwhile, Angelina, the daughter of the Italian lord, plots to have Cia killed because her father changed his will to leave his money to Cia.

The story was only mediocre, but had a lot of potential. Plot elements seemed to flit around as if they didn't have much purpose. While the main story centered around Cia, and to some extent, Angelina, it seemed to focus on other characters more than it should. We would glimpse into the lives of other characters, who didn't have much to do with the overarching plot, for an inordinate amount of time, such as with Dianna. We meet her early in the book when she kicks Cia out, then she reappears later and we spend a good bit of time reading about her and then she's dropped. We spent some time with Angelina, but she still came off as two-dimensional with no clear basis for her motivations, and the rivalry ends quickly and unsatisfactorily. To many seeming plot elements come into play and then are suddenly dropped and forgotten. Even when Cia gets the bad news about Giordano in England, she is devastated, then she seems to recover quite nicely.

The sex in the book wasn't even up to Black Lace standards. While still erotic, the prose wasn't as crisp and evocative as other writer's in the series have achieved.

Not bad for a guilty read, but not the best either.