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suzemo 's review for:
The American Heiress
by Daisy Goodwin
"Historical Romance," which is not romance-y enough to leave a romance fan satisfied and not historical enough to keep a historical fiction person entertained.
Cora Cash is an absurdly air-headed and selfish wealthy heiress from New England (1890s) thanks to her grandfather/father's flour empire. Everyone starts off attending parties and society things in New York and Newport and then her grasping/society-climbing-mother's goals are to make her some sort of titled bride and they all run off to England/Europe before Cora accidentally gets hitched to fellow-society-member Teddy (Van Der Leyden, who is, of course, not rich and doesn't want money! Oh, youth) - who runs off to be a painter anyway.
Cora meets manipulative-asshat-Ivo, who happens to be a Duke, and they marry (because lurve), and he proceeds to treat her like trash. He likes the money she brings because his moldering estate can be livened back up, and proclaims love for her while treating her badly and lying to her face. There's "mystery" of a sort (a great secret everyone in England knows about, of course) and then a very rushed ending where everyone is AOK (except for the reader, who is utterly unsatisfied). Teddy is left holding the bag, so to speak at the end of the novel, lest you think that this is a cliff hanger. Nope, just unsatisfying.
There's a B plot with Bertha, Cora's woman-of-color maid who starts to see manipulative-asshat-#2, Jim, who is Ivo's manservant (like duke, like manservant?). There is some interesting flavor with the differences she sees in how she is treated in England vs America because of her skin color, but we don't go too deep into that.
This book is very slow moving, you get plenty of descriptives for clothing and art work, and elites joshing with elites. If you screen played it, you could make it into a tidy 2 hour BBC/Masterpiece theatre special, and it very much has that vibe of "watching rich people be rich in a historic period. "
Cora Cash is an absurdly air-headed and selfish wealthy heiress from New England (1890s) thanks to her grandfather/father's flour empire. Everyone starts off attending parties and society things in New York and Newport and then her grasping/society-climbing-mother's goals are to make her some sort of titled bride and they all run off to England/Europe before Cora accidentally gets hitched to fellow-society-member Teddy (Van Der Leyden, who is, of course, not rich and doesn't want money! Oh, youth) - who runs off to be a painter anyway.
Cora meets manipulative-asshat-Ivo, who happens to be a Duke, and they marry (because lurve), and he proceeds to treat her like trash. He likes the money she brings because his moldering estate can be livened back up, and proclaims love for her while treating her badly and lying to her face. There's "mystery" of a sort (a great secret everyone in England knows about, of course) and then a very rushed ending where everyone is AOK (except for the reader, who is utterly unsatisfied). Teddy is left holding the bag, so to speak at the end of the novel, lest you think that this is a cliff hanger. Nope, just unsatisfying.
There's a B plot with Bertha, Cora's woman-of-color maid who starts to see manipulative-asshat-#2, Jim, who is Ivo's manservant (like duke, like manservant?). There is some interesting flavor with the differences she sees in how she is treated in England vs America because of her skin color, but we don't go too deep into that.
This book is very slow moving, you get plenty of descriptives for clothing and art work, and elites joshing with elites. If you screen played it, you could make it into a tidy 2 hour BBC/Masterpiece theatre special, and it very much has that vibe of "watching rich people be rich in a historic period. "