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A review by wandering_reads
Bitter Orange by Claire Fuller
4.0
I started this in the morning and finished it by midday. I had to know what happened, and like any of these psychological mind-twists, the action doesn't come until the end ... and the truth. Ah, the truth!
Frances ends up in a run-down country house on a mission to survey the garden's architecture. She is also sharing the house with charismatic couple Peter and Cara. When she finds a 'Judas hole' in her attic bathroom and realizes that she can spy on them in their own bathroom, sometimes the temptation proves too great: she must look. She must know.
Not everything is peachy with Peter and Cara, but Frances is surprised that they actually want to get to know here. Over lush meals and picnics and swims in the lake, too much champagne and digging about in the proverbial skeletons in the closet, Frances reckons that she is becoming someone different, someone ... exciting.
After several misunderstandings and realizing that she has been completely taken in by Cara's spellbinding stories, Frances is left picking up the pieces of not only her own choices, but the choices she is left with by others.
What kept it from being a total five stars was some part the characters and the other part the way the narrative was structured. It goes back and forth in time as Frances remembers things, but at times this broke the flow almost like a hot day makes concentration impossible.
Frances ends up in a run-down country house on a mission to survey the garden's architecture. She is also sharing the house with charismatic couple Peter and Cara. When she finds a 'Judas hole' in her attic bathroom and realizes that she can spy on them in their own bathroom, sometimes the temptation proves too great: she must look. She must know.
Not everything is peachy with Peter and Cara, but Frances is surprised that they actually want to get to know here. Over lush meals and picnics and swims in the lake, too much champagne and digging about in the proverbial skeletons in the closet, Frances reckons that she is becoming someone different, someone ... exciting.
After several misunderstandings and realizing that she has been completely taken in by Cara's spellbinding stories, Frances is left picking up the pieces of not only her own choices, but the choices she is left with by others.
What kept it from being a total five stars was some part the characters and the other part the way the narrative was structured. It goes back and forth in time as Frances remembers things, but at times this broke the flow almost like a hot day makes concentration impossible.