kategci 's review for:

Bitter Orange by Claire Fuller

3.0

---

This was my first Claire Fuller and it was a solid okay. A lonely 39 year old meets up with a younger couple when she is hired to evaluate the grounds of an estate in rural England. The house had been occupied by German soldiers during World War II. It is now 1969, and Frances Jellico has recently lost her mother after caring for her through a long, debilitating illness. Frances has nothing else going on in her life, no other family or friends and jumps at this opportunity. Living solely with her hypercritical mother has not prepared Frances to interact and live with others. Some of the plot points strained credulity and the three main characters were not all that likeable. By the end, I was not invested in them and was not sorry to be done with them. Claire Fuller writes description beautifully, so you really felt you were in rural England. This may be a case of the wrong book at the wrong time; as the pandemic grinds on, I am turning to and reading more nonfiction.