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A review by emmazucati
Master of His Fate by Barbara Taylor Bradford
1.0
I almost want to call this a ghost writer? I've never read a Bradford book before so I have to believe people are blindly loving it because of her other books? The bottom of the synopsis on Goodreads even has an error! It says "...master storyteller Barbara Taylor Bradford, Master of the Game is filled with drama...". I feel like I read a different story from everyone else and am baffled.
The back of the paperback says "From rags to riches", I guess to entice you about the saga, but no one has rags!!! They might not be wealthy but the main dude's family is not struggling in a way anyone could appropriately describe as "rags". It was quite elitist in a forced humble kind of way.
Also, Bradford is not Charles Dickens and people are no longer getting paid by the sentence. Everything was so repetitive that if you took out literally every other sentence, I'm not sure anyone would notice. I would occasionally try it, and the only thing I lost was the repetition of it all. It wasn't even that there were too many details. It would be like "She realized something was wrong. She turned to her friend and said 'Something was wrong'. They decided to get up and investigate because something was wrong". Which is also ironic, because nothing was ever wrong. Sure there would be issues, and bad things happened, but any bad thing that occurred was dealt with or forgotten within 15 pages. There was no arc to this, no interesting plot.
Also, I really don't need to know that all men care about is if a girl is a "natural red head". It's just super gross. And happened more times that anyone could possibly appreciate.
The descriptions of things were nice? I liked reading about Victorian London? But again, just like the book I am repeating myself to tell you that rather than adding interesting details, this book was fluffed up by repeating sentences in slightly different ways. All telling, absolutely no showing.
The back of the paperback says "From rags to riches", I guess to entice you about the saga, but no one has rags!!! They might not be wealthy but the main dude's family is not struggling in a way anyone could appropriately describe as "rags". It was quite elitist in a forced humble kind of way.
Also, Bradford is not Charles Dickens and people are no longer getting paid by the sentence. Everything was so repetitive that if you took out literally every other sentence, I'm not sure anyone would notice. I would occasionally try it, and the only thing I lost was the repetition of it all. It wasn't even that there were too many details. It would be like "She realized something was wrong. She turned to her friend and said 'Something was wrong'. They decided to get up and investigate because something was wrong". Which is also ironic, because nothing was ever wrong. Sure there would be issues, and bad things happened, but any bad thing that occurred was dealt with or forgotten within 15 pages. There was no arc to this, no interesting plot.
Also, I really don't need to know that all men care about is if a girl is a "natural red head". It's just super gross. And happened more times that anyone could possibly appreciate.
The descriptions of things were nice? I liked reading about Victorian London? But again, just like the book I am repeating myself to tell you that rather than adding interesting details, this book was fluffed up by repeating sentences in slightly different ways. All telling, absolutely no showing.