Customer Reviews

Smile of the Stranger

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

 

 

This novel starts off as a romantic fiction, but becomes more of a typical Joan Aiken mystery and adventure as you read on through it. You see the story from Juliana's point, little realising the plots and schemes being devised by the other characters. The book starts slowly, I felt, but like many of Aiken's works, builds up to a nail-biting climax. Not quite as good as its (sort of) sequel, The Lightning Tree (aka The Weeping Ash), but nonetheless, a great read if you like Aiken's other books.

I recently lost my copy of this book, "The Smile of the Stranger," so I ordered another. I love nearly all of Joan Aiken's books!

Unfortunately, the very promising beginning did not finish satisfactorily for me, I guess it probably had a lot to do with the characters' developments, especially Juliana's. I felt she was portrayed too naive, and too weak for my taste; With a young lady, even though she was only 18, but with her worldly experience one would expect her to possess some street smarts; and by taking care of her father all those years, she should have shown some fighting spirits; but they were so inconsistently behaved and really made me wonder if she was unintelligent or just a bad writing. The inconsistency of characters became very troublesome for me towards the end when Juliana's mother threatened Capt. Davenport to rape her daughter, and capt.'s refusal, and later Herr Welcker's reappearance, and Reagent's appearance at the party, ..... there were so many things going on towards the end and were not fully explained really left me feeling baffled. But I did enjoy the beginning and the balloon ride a lot. And I enjoyed quite few of Ms. Aiken's other works.

I thought this book was really sweet. I can't believe I was rooting for Captain Davenport, Count Van Weckler is much better. I thought it was nice that her Grandfather showed her he loved her. I also thought that the balloon ride was delightful this was a great book!