Mariana - a book review/recommendation

I’ve been having a hell of a time with the writing lately. Nothing seems right. The voice is wrong, the pov is wrong, the story feels flat, and I don’t really care about the characters. I keep searching for that right hook, or angle, or entry point into the story that will make the magic happen, and end up writing and deleting in an endless, pointless, cruel circle. Kinda depressing. (This blasted heat & humidity isn’t helping any, either.)

Up until recently, I’ve also had the same dissatisfaction in reading choices. I’ve started and stopped a bunch of books, in just about every genre. I think in part, I was searching for the right ‘voice’. Then all the talk started up on Harlequin/Silhouettes new Epic line, and I guess that’s what influenced me to pick this 50 cent Goodwill buy from out of the to-be-read pile: Susanna Kearsley’s Marianna.

**I’m not one to give a shit about Amazon reviews, but I did notice, just now as I was searching for the link, that out of 21 reviews posted, only one was single star, the rest were all 4s & 5s.

It’s a lovely, lovely, book. Correction, love story. Actually, two love stories, one in the present and one in the past. It has a Gothic feel, with the setting beautifully done, the characters fully fleshed out—and, for the most part, all very likable in their idiosyncrasies. Even though I figured out some of the plot twists, there were still numerous surprises along the way and the little mysteries re the various subplots kept me intrigued. I’ve never read The Time Traveler’s Wife, but there’s a bit of that riff going through this book, in the sense that the present day heroine, goes back and forth in time, reliving her life as “Marianna” and solving the mystery of that past life, while dealing with changes in her current life. It’s quite a lovely book. I’ve said that already, I know, but I just finished it, and I have a lump in the throat right now, while my heart feels ‘full’. This is an Happily-Ever-After that was well earned, and I one hundred per cent believe in. It’s doesn’t look like Ms. Kearsley has much of a back list, and nothing released since 2002, but a number of the plots seem interesting enough to see if I can track them done.