Customer Reviews

The Court of the Flowering Peach

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Katie Adair and her father specialize in all things China and work for the wealthy Llewellyn family who run trade ships between England and China.

Upon her father's death, Katie is urged into a marriage with Rupert Llewellyn since she, with her art skills and knowledge of the language and culture of china, will be a great asset to the family business. Katie is reluctant since Rupert is still carrying the torch for his former love, Selina, who has just married his older brother, Terence. However, Katie has nowhere else to go, and agrees. Amid scandal brewed up by Selina and Terence, both the newly married couples are sent off to visit China to carry on the family trade business.

In China, Selina becomes involved with socializing and men while Rupert and Terence are divided between business and Selina's scandals. Katie settles in quietly and strikes up a friendship with the Manchu Prince, Chen Yee. Eventually, Selina manages to dump a sick and delirious Katie with Prince Chen Yee and convinces Terence and Rupert to sail for England without Katie.

This is the chance that Chen Yee has been waiting for and forces Katie to become his concubine. Eventually, Katie comes to love him for all the attention and love he showers on her that she never received from Rupert. In the course of things, Katie becomes pregnant and has a boy child. Chen Yee is overjoyed since he has no children with the wife he hates and now has an heir.

Despite all this, Katie stubbornly sticks to the belief that she must return to Rupert and this eventually drives a wedge between Katie and Chen Yee. Soon Katie is replaced in the Prince's affections by another and she is left alone, a foreigner in a strange land. She desperately tries to contact Rupert upon his return to China and eventually manages to re-unite with him, leaving her son behind for a new life in England.

Basically, this book had a lot of realistic points about weak human nature and accepting circumstances beyond our control. Still, it made me dislike the characters rather than admire them and just left me with a bad feeling overall.