Customer Reviews

Emma's Secret

5 star:		(13)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(8)
2 star:		(10)
1 star:		(19)

 

 

This book was very disappointing. So many things could have been developed to make it exciting but none of them ever were.
The book doesnt seem to really have any ending. It felt like the last chapter must have been left out. I have read Bradford before and this has got to be her worst.

Emma Harte is back! But that is hardly the whole story here.

Barbara Taylor Bradford has written a most satisfying continuation to the saga that began with A Woman of Substance. Combining the next generation of Harte's and O'Neils with earlier flashbacks of Emma and Blackie, this book is sure to captivate any BTB fan/reader.

The best aspect of Emma Harte's return is the fact that she is not brought back to life in 'soap opera' fashion. Instead, Barbara cleverly revives her legendary heroine through the discovery of her wartime diaries. It is in this segment of the story that a shocking family secret is discovered.

Who can nitpick with the small detail that the secret is actually not Emma's, but another member of her family. This is a stupendous effort to add another chapter to a brilliant saga for all generations.

Fans who have not yet read A Woman of Substance, Hold The Dream and To Be The Best are encouraged to do so. Emma's Secret is the 4th book in this series.

For many years I tried and tried to read A Woman of Substance. And while I read many of this authors other books, this title always eluded me and remained on a list of books I was someday determined to read. The beginning of 2005 saw me finally read this book or shall I say skim many pages since almost from the beginning I found the book too wordy and overly descriptive for me. When I finished it, I thought I read about as much concerning Emma Harte as I wanted to. Then other readers from my book group began talking about Bradford's new book Emma's Secret which filled in Emma's doings during the war years. And somehow I was enticed by the lure of this secret about Emma's past and finally decided to listen to audio of this book. Unfortunately by the time I finished the 12 CD's, I found there wasn't much of secret after all.

As Evan Hughes' grandmother Glynnis lies on her deathbed, Glynnis tells Evan to find Emma Harte in London. That this woman holds the key to Evan's future. Evan who bears a striking resemblance to Emma's beloved granddaughter Paula, journeys to London when her grandmother dies and is heartbroken when she learns that Emma has been dead for over 30 years. But not to worry. Evan is hired to be Paula's daughter's assistant and is not only taken in by a couple of Emma's great granddaughter's but becomes romantically engaged with another Harte, Gideon. While the rest of the family is also quite taken with Evan, most of all her looks they quickly realize that she isn't any relationship to the late Paul McGill, Paula's grandfather. And what could be better than when two of Emma's great granddaughters find her diaries from the war years. From there the story progresses to the end when we find out the secret which I'm afraid wasn't much of a secret after all. And while the main story is about Evan and her father's true background, there are also the familiar threads of a large family fighting over who will become the number one heir when Paula retires or dies. And as every wealthy family in books, at least, has to have a bad seed, Jonathn Ainsley is back with his hopes of somehow controlling Harte industries.

A stickler for reading all of the books in a series and always in order I wondered if I would miss reading the two books in between this title. But much to Ms. Bradford's credit, she does fill in her readers with events from all three previous books, A Woman of Substance, To Be the Best and Hold the Dream. But once again I found Emma's Secret like A Woman of Substance to be overly wordy and descriptive. Do I really care for all of the folds and creases of Emma's couture clothing collection or her objets d'art found in her Belgravia home or Pennistone Royal? In the end I imagine that the author missed her favorite character, Emma, and this was a convenient way to return to yesteryear and provide her loyal Emma Harte readers with another book. But on the plus side if you like large family trees and a family saga over many years, this book is definitely for you. But for me the lure of another new Emma book, Unexpected Blessings isn't enough of a lure. I'm afraid that I have reached the end of my time with Emma Harte and her family. I will continue to read family sagas since I do enjoy them but Emma and her families days for me are over and not a day too soon, I'm afraid.

I read Woman of Substance for the first time MANY years ago. I enjoyed it so much that I've read it several times since then... The sequels (i.e., Hold the Dream and To Be the Best) weren't as captivating as the original but they were 'good reads' nonetheless...

Emma's Secret is not of the calibre of those books. There isn't much of a story ... Emma's "secret "isn't really anything big or shocking... I think the only thing that I did enjoy was knowing more about Emma's family

The things that really bugged me about this book:

- It ends abruptly. When it ended, I actually flipped through it to make sure that I didn't miss any pages.

- For a sequel, it has SO MANY inconsistencies with the other books that you have to wonder if B.T.Bradford ever read her own books.

For example... they mention that Paula's father fired Jonathan and Sarah (they say it more than once) ... but we know that it was really Alexander ... someone finds a picture of 'Big Jack' and Winstor Sr.... and winston was wearing his 'navy uniform' .. but Jack and Winston never met after winston ran off to join the navy...

anyhow, there are numerous such inconsistences that really make it difficult for a 'fan' of the original books to take this book seriously

I've read all her books and loved them. Now I've struggled and struggled to read this one. I give up. I'm about in the middle and I can't take anymore! There's no reason to care for any of the people in the book or about their relationships. I ordered the book before it was published. I sure wish I'd waited to read the reviews and saved myself 25 dollars!

I loved a "Woman of Substance," so I jumped at the chance to purchase "Emma's Secret." As I read the book, I couldn't understand why some characters were not fully developed. Plot lines were hinted at, but never fully integrated. The ending left me with a "Is this all there is?" feeling. It turns out the story lines were incomplete on purpose. If you want to find out what happens to the characters, you have to wait until her next book, "Unexpected Blessings" is released. I realized that "Emma's Secret" and "Unexpected Blessings" are two halves to one book. I would rather have read one large complete book, than two halves of a whole.

Emma's secret was a terrible disappointment.. I have read all her previous books and inspite of that found it difficult to keep track of the vast cast of characters.. I had to frequently refer to her index. Finally the book just fizzled out. After hinting at some devious plot being laid by the villain he just upped and pushed off to HongKong. As one reviewer said this is probable a precursor to the next book. However it was highly disappointing. I did not expect BTB to do this to her readers.

I read the three books by BTB starting with A Woman of Substance and loved every one of them. Wonderful books with great stories and characters. I was very excited to read Emma's Secret. It was probably one of the worst books I have ever read. Please, don't bother with it! It is very poorly written. Characters tend to speak in a way that no normal person EVER would. I found that nothing really happened in the book until the last few pages. Even then, she leaves you dangling and lets you know at the end that more books are coming. I found that Emma's Secret was just a "filler" book to get to her others that are coming. It traps you in! Too bad - I wish she had put more thought in to continuing this series.

I have read and reread all of Barbar Taylor Bradford's fiction books and have all of them in hardcover. I especially enjoyed A Woman of Substance and the rest of the trilogy. I bought this book as soon as I learned about it and read it in just over a day. Initially I was ecstatic to be able to revisit Emma, her family and the clans, however, I was disappointed that there were glaring errors that do not coincide with facts and events from the original trilogy. I loved the trilogy, but I can't say the same about this book because some discrepancies between events in the trilogy and this book were very noticeable even with a fast read. For example, Paula's cordial relationship, if not friendship, with Robin Ainsley, is VERY surprising and the change in this relationship is not explained. In To be the Best, Kit Lowther and Robin Ainsley and their wives are persona non grata in the Harte family. If such a giant leap was taken in their relationship, it needs to be explained. Unfortunately, BTB doesn't offer any explanation at all for the improvement in the relationship between Paula and Robin. Also, when Sarah Lowther mentions the episode when she was thrown out of the family, she says that Paula's father fired her, when in Hold the Dream, Sarah and Jonathan are actually fired by their cousin, Alexander Barkstone. For those familiar with the trilogy, these differences will matter. It also seems like BTB lifted large chunks from the trilogy and transferred them to this book. BTB is a great writer, and could have done much better. Although the errors make revisiting Emma and her extended family less than satisfying, it was still interesting to see how the families of Paula and Emily have grown, and nice to see another slice of Emma's life. I am hoping to see more of Emma Harte, a truly amazing character, but only if the facts from the previous books are not distorted. If this book was written at the request of her readers, BTB should have been faithful to them.

I loved Bradford's Woman of Substance it was a book that kept me awake until the wee hours of the morning, I literally couldn't put it down. In Emma's Secret it appears she didn't have anything else to write about so she rehashed the orginal and it was boring certainly not up to her usual standards, I expect more from a Bradford book. I am sorry I bothered with this one.