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thenovelbook's review against another edition
3.0
A writer finds herself drawn to a particular section of Scottish coastline while she's plotting her next book--but the book virtually starts to write itself as ideas flood her brain. Or are they memories? "Genetic memories"? Interesting premise, although not for the skeptic at heart. I viewed it as a more creative, intense way to tell a story that would have otherwise been a straight researching-family-history premise. Or that could have gone to the other end of the spectrum and been a time-slip novel.
It got bogged down (for me) in some of the political history of the Jacobites, which, no matter how hard I try to follow, makes my eyes glaze over. It was also a bit long for holding my interest steadily.
But the writing was quite literary in places.
It got bogged down (for me) in some of the political history of the Jacobites, which, no matter how hard I try to follow, makes my eyes glaze over. It was also a bit long for holding my interest steadily.
But the writing was quite literary in places.
salgalruns's review against another edition
4.0
I read this book on the recommendation of a TBR read, and am so glad that I did! The book brings historical fiction to a wonderous level and I have a renewed respect for authors that dive into this genre. While the first part of the book didn't grab me right away, once I hit about a third of the way through, I couldn't stop and continued until I finished the book.
The story takes place in a back and forth setting between present day and that of 1708. Carrie McClelland is a writer who is moved by Slains Castle, a location she inadvertently travels to in Scotland.
The only thing I really struggled with was Sophia's character in some parts. Overall, I saw her as a strong, independent woman, who was deeply connected to people (Countess, Moray, Kirsty, Anne). Yet, the almost ending and leaving her child? I suppose some could say it's the true act of a selfless parent, while I am surprised she was able to do it. Just didn't seem to make sense.
Overall, I loved it. The "inside look" at a writer's research was fascinating, and I loved the setting. I'll be looking forward to read other books by Susanna Kearsley.
The story takes place in a back and forth setting between present day and that of 1708. Carrie McClelland is a writer who is moved by Slains Castle, a location she inadvertently travels to in Scotland.
Spoiler
She decides to work from there and is amazed to find herself writing at lightening speed as the character in her book seems to speak to her. What she experiences is never really called time travel, but it sure has every element of it. Carrie's writing mirrors the events that happen in 1708, and her own life starts to take on elements of it as well.The only thing I really struggled with was Sophia's character in some parts. Overall, I saw her as a strong, independent woman, who was deeply connected to people (Countess, Moray, Kirsty, Anne). Yet, the almost ending and leaving her child? I suppose some could say it's the true act of a selfless parent, while I am surprised she was able to do it. Just didn't seem to make sense.
Overall, I loved it. The "inside look" at a writer's research was fascinating, and I loved the setting. I'll be looking forward to read other books by Susanna Kearsley.
matildathebookdragon's review against another edition
adventurous
emotional
hopeful
informative
inspiring
lighthearted
mysterious
reflective
sad
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
5.0
acrox13's review against another edition
5.0
One of the best books I have ever read! What an amazing story of love and life, the good times and bad times. The setting of Scotland made the book that much more romantic! I cannot wait for her next novel!
kathydavie's review against another edition
5.0
First in the Slains series, although each installment is a standalone. Their commonality is simply the concept of history, romance, and time travel. This particular story is set in Cruden Bay, Scotland, with the couple focus on Sophia Paterson and John Moray in 1707 and Carrie McClelland and Graham Keith in our day.
My Take
Ooh, Kearsley is right, this is a trip through time, only it's through the DNA memories of an ancestress. And I fell in love! In spite of the cold weather, the story is warm and cozy as Carrie tries to find her characters. A combination of Carrie's writing and research merges with dreams and the writing of 1707–08 and its real life actors. I adored the characters of both times: today's Carrie researching her book on the past and Sophia doing her best to survive with dignity.
It reminds me a bit of the Jane Seymour–Christopher Reeve movie, Somewhere in Time, in that Carrie dreams herself back in time and eerily knows too much about an ancestress of whom she was only vaguely aware.
I've read a bit on the Stewart cause, not much as I do hate reading depressing stories, and their cause was definitely depressing if romantic, and yet this is the first I've read of Louis XIV's reasons for helping James Stewart and his sons. And it makes the most perfect sense. It never has sat right with me that he helped. I never could see that he would gain that much, but this, Moray's words make sense.
Ach, the tension, the betrayals, the hopes, the fears, dammit! Kearsley has me on tenterhooks and crying. Although, I don't understand toward the end why Sophia must be parted from Anna, for surely the need is gone.
I love the bit where Colonel Graeme talks of the winter sea, "its face of storms and deaths and sunken hopes", and then there are other deaths, of how one has always carried on and events occur which change how one sees life, one's own life. As Carrie says, it's a winter of firsts for her. It's a winter of firsts for Sophia as well.
I know it's supposed to be "wrong" to use dialect, but I do believe a balance can be found between the flavor of a people and making them look foolish. And Kearsley was brilliant in her use of language: I loved the dialect she gave to Jimmie as well as the seventeenth century sentence structures of Sophia's time, for it made me so much more aware of where and when I was.
One reviewer is unhappy that it's not a Diana Gabaldon. It's not. But it is well-written and has the potential to pull you in to the lives of both times. I loved both and would love to know more.
I am looking forward to reading Kearsley's The Firebird, as it in the same vein of time travel, history, and romance albeit with different characters.
The Story
She's dreaming and knowing things she shouldn't. Names, the layout of the castle. And she's falling in love, much as the heroine in her story is falling.
The Characters
Carolyn McClelland had been born by the sea in Nova Scotia and is an author of historical novels. Jane is her sister (and also her literary agent) with a new baby boy, Jack Ramsay. Her husband Alan's choice, as the Ramsays had never named a dog that. They live in Aberdeen where Alan's company has a fleet of helicopters that service the oil rigs in the North Sea. The girls' father enjoys researching the family background. Sophia Paterson, the ancestress, had a father James, a mother Mary, and a sister Anna. Ross McClelland is related through a common ancestor back in the late 1600s.
Jimmy Keith has a cottage to let in the village of Cruden Bay where Slains castle ruins lie. Stuart Keith is one of his sons; t'other, older one, Graham, is a history lecturer in Aberdeen with a spaniel, Angus. Dr. Douglas Weir (Elsie is his wife) is very interested in the local history with a great deal to say about the Errolls and their countesses as well as plans of the new castle.
Characters in the novel Carrie is writing:
Sophia Paterson is an ancestor from 1710-ish who married a David John McClelland and moved from Scotland to Ireland. It's a name that Carrie appropriates for a character she dreams for her novel in which she's being passed from relative to relative, including an Uncle John Drummond, and lands with the Countess of Erroll where Mrs. Grant is the cook, Rory is a groom, Kristy is a maid who becomes Sophia's friend, and Billy Wick is the gardener. The Malcolms are old family retainers, Jacobites.
Other Jacobites include the countess' son, Charles, the Earl of Erroll and the Lord High Constable of Scotland. Captain Thomas Gordon commands the Royal William and is the commodore of the Scots navy frigates. Colonel Nathaniel Hooke was pivotal and a loyal subject of King James. James, the Duke of Perth, a.k.a., Mr. Perkins, is the countess' brother.
Lieutenant-Colonel John Moray, brother to William, the Laird of Abercairney, as well as two more brothers, Robert is a lawyer, and sisters. Colonel Patrick Graeme is Moray's uncle. The baby is Anna, named for Moray's and Sophia's sisters.
James Douglas was the fourth Duke of Hamilton.
The Cover and Title
The cover is a central blurry figure of a woman with long, curly red hair in a white gown with her back to us as she faces out to the The Winter Sea, a cold death when we face the end of things, things which must end so they can begin again, for "beneath the waves, a warmer current runs, one of spring, of life".
My Take
Ooh, Kearsley is right, this is a trip through time, only it's through the DNA memories of an ancestress. And I fell in love! In spite of the cold weather, the story is warm and cozy as Carrie tries to find her characters. A combination of Carrie's writing and research merges with dreams and the writing of 1707–08 and its real life actors. I adored the characters of both times: today's Carrie researching her book on the past and Sophia doing her best to survive with dignity.
It reminds me a bit of the Jane Seymour–Christopher Reeve movie, Somewhere in Time, in that Carrie dreams herself back in time and eerily knows too much about an ancestress of whom she was only vaguely aware.
"...struck again by all the little intersecting points between the world that I'd created and the world that really was."Wow...it's chilling how close Carrie comes to truth in this. The funny thing is that I know this is fiction, and yet Kearsley writes this so well that I come away believing it to be non-fiction. Partly because she sticks so closely to historical fact.
I've read a bit on the Stewart cause, not much as I do hate reading depressing stories, and their cause was definitely depressing if romantic, and yet this is the first I've read of Louis XIV's reasons for helping James Stewart and his sons. And it makes the most perfect sense. It never has sat right with me that he helped. I never could see that he would gain that much, but this, Moray's words make sense.
Ach, the tension, the betrayals, the hopes, the fears, dammit! Kearsley has me on tenterhooks and crying. Although, I don't understand toward the end why Sophia must be parted from Anna, for surely the need is gone.
I love the bit where Colonel Graeme talks of the winter sea, "its face of storms and deaths and sunken hopes", and then there are other deaths, of how one has always carried on and events occur which change how one sees life, one's own life. As Carrie says, it's a winter of firsts for her. It's a winter of firsts for Sophia as well.
I know it's supposed to be "wrong" to use dialect, but I do believe a balance can be found between the flavor of a people and making them look foolish. And Kearsley was brilliant in her use of language: I loved the dialect she gave to Jimmie as well as the seventeenth century sentence structures of Sophia's time, for it made me so much more aware of where and when I was.
One reviewer is unhappy that it's not a Diana Gabaldon. It's not. But it is well-written and has the potential to pull you in to the lives of both times. I loved both and would love to know more.
I am looking forward to reading Kearsley's The Firebird, as it in the same vein of time travel, history, and romance albeit with different characters.
The Story
She's dreaming and knowing things she shouldn't. Names, the layout of the castle. And she's falling in love, much as the heroine in her story is falling.
The Characters
Carolyn McClelland had been born by the sea in Nova Scotia and is an author of historical novels. Jane is her sister (and also her literary agent) with a new baby boy, Jack Ramsay. Her husband Alan's choice, as the Ramsays had never named a dog that. They live in Aberdeen where Alan's company has a fleet of helicopters that service the oil rigs in the North Sea. The girls' father enjoys researching the family background. Sophia Paterson, the ancestress, had a father James, a mother Mary, and a sister Anna. Ross McClelland is related through a common ancestor back in the late 1600s.
Jimmy Keith has a cottage to let in the village of Cruden Bay where Slains castle ruins lie. Stuart Keith is one of his sons; t'other, older one, Graham, is a history lecturer in Aberdeen with a spaniel, Angus. Dr. Douglas Weir (Elsie is his wife) is very interested in the local history with a great deal to say about the Errolls and their countesses as well as plans of the new castle.
Characters in the novel Carrie is writing:
Sophia Paterson is an ancestor from 1710-ish who married a David John McClelland and moved from Scotland to Ireland. It's a name that Carrie appropriates for a character she dreams for her novel in which she's being passed from relative to relative, including an Uncle John Drummond, and lands with the Countess of Erroll where Mrs. Grant is the cook, Rory is a groom, Kristy is a maid who becomes Sophia's friend, and Billy Wick is the gardener. The Malcolms are old family retainers, Jacobites.
Other Jacobites include the countess' son, Charles, the Earl of Erroll and the Lord High Constable of Scotland. Captain Thomas Gordon commands the Royal William and is the commodore of the Scots navy frigates. Colonel Nathaniel Hooke was pivotal and a loyal subject of King James. James, the Duke of Perth, a.k.a., Mr. Perkins, is the countess' brother.
Lieutenant-Colonel John Moray, brother to William, the Laird of Abercairney, as well as two more brothers, Robert is a lawyer, and sisters. Colonel Patrick Graeme is Moray's uncle. The baby is Anna, named for Moray's and Sophia's sisters.
James Douglas was the fourth Duke of Hamilton.
The Cover and Title
The cover is a central blurry figure of a woman with long, curly red hair in a white gown with her back to us as she faces out to the The Winter Sea, a cold death when we face the end of things, things which must end so they can begin again, for "beneath the waves, a warmer current runs, one of spring, of life".
decembermagpie's review against another edition
adventurous
emotional
informative
lighthearted
reflective
sad
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
5.0
patiolinguist's review against another edition
5.0
A feel-good, page-turning novel with a deeply satisfying ending. What more could one wish for?
margery's review against another edition
emotional
mysterious
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
3.0