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A review by saarahnina
Nellie by Cynthia Woolf
3.0
I took this off my Amazon account.
Sweet and unpredictable, at times.
This novel was definitely a worthwhile read for me, in a long time.. Particularly when you wish to escape reality.
The only trouble I had was that it followed many of the conventions of a fairy tale: Nellie, the damsel in distress (and let us not overlook her beauty), Blake: the hero, or dashing knight in shining armour (in the metaphorical sense, at least). And then finally, Madeline: the villain.
This was disappointing, to say the least. Though I don't know what I'd expected, many romantic novels follow the same- or similar conventions.
It's interesting that from all the characters, Blake was the one whom I had the most issue with. I'm still trying to figure out why that was, perhaps because he had that 'too good to be true' vibe and seemed very pretentious. For this reason, the novel lacked aspects we expect of reality. For instance, I can't even begin to fathom the idea that the character Blake claims he can't fall in love or doesn't believe in it and then later goes on to state that he felt in love with Nellie 'from the moment he laid eyes on her'. There were a number of similar instances , or maybe I'm just misjudging (and not supposed to be taking it all so literally, considering the character Blake was quite a 'sweet- talker' or charmer (of sorts). I guess that's another reason for my dislike towards this character.
I gather that I just have an anathema towards fairy tales: I could go on forever about my contempt towards them.
I, however, will give credit where credit is due: the writing style was very favourable. It really was just the content that irked me. I do always try to give novels a chance, so I did complete it. Else I'd not have left a review. It's futile to judge a book on the basis of a few pages or chapters.
Sweet and unpredictable, at times.
This novel was definitely a worthwhile read for me, in a long time.. Particularly when you wish to escape reality.
The only trouble I had was that it followed many of the conventions of a fairy tale: Nellie, the damsel in distress (and let us not overlook her beauty), Blake: the hero, or dashing knight in shining armour (in the metaphorical sense, at least). And then finally, Madeline: the villain.
This was disappointing, to say the least. Though I don't know what I'd expected, many romantic novels follow the same- or similar conventions.
It's interesting that from all the characters, Blake was the one whom I had the most issue with. I'm still trying to figure out why that was, perhaps because he had that 'too good to be true' vibe and seemed very pretentious. For this reason, the novel lacked aspects we expect of reality. For instance, I can't even begin to fathom the idea that the character Blake claims he can't fall in love or doesn't believe in it and then later goes on to state that he felt in love with Nellie 'from the moment he laid eyes on her'. There were a number of similar instances , or maybe I'm just misjudging (and not supposed to be taking it all so literally, considering the character Blake was quite a 'sweet- talker' or charmer (of sorts). I guess that's another reason for my dislike towards this character.
I gather that I just have an anathema towards fairy tales: I could go on forever about my contempt towards them.
I, however, will give credit where credit is due: the writing style was very favourable. It really was just the content that irked me. I do always try to give novels a chance, so I did complete it. Else I'd not have left a review. It's futile to judge a book on the basis of a few pages or chapters.