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Government drone by day and book lover and geek girl by night!

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The Splendour Falls

The Splendour Falls - Susanna Kearsley The Splendour Falls by Susana Kearsley.

Mass Market Paperback, 380 pages
Published April 1st 1996 by Bantam Doubleday Dell Publishing Group

Genre: Fiction/Historical Fiction

So I don't know what to really say about this book. It was an interesting book, but not at all what I expected. Sometimes that can be a good thing. I read one of Ms. Kearsley's books before, "The Winter Sea" and really loved it. I had hoped that I would love this book as much as I did that one.

The main character of Emily just seems a bit lost throughout this whole book. Going to Chinon in order to treasure hunt along with her cousin Harry seems like a way for Emily to get back involved with people and places after her parent's divorce. FYI Emily is not a teenager, she is a grown woman acting as if the entire world has gone crazy.

She finds herself drawn to a man, but doesn't want to be pulled in by him because she can tell with one look into his eyes that he would be about real love and commitment. Yes, us women hate those things.

I don't really know what to make of Emily. At times she just seems to find herself wandering aimlessly around Chinon or with her fellow companions from the hotel. She always seems to find hidden meaning in everything that she sees and she feels like something terrible could have maybe happened to Harry, though there's no evidence that anything did.

The plot of the book I thought initially would tie in better to the history of Chinon and King John (yes that King John) and his Queen Isabelle. I have no idea why there was even a prologue dealing with them and their "treasure". Once you find out what the treasure is I think you may roll your eyes. I did. A few times. Additionally, a French girl named Isabelle who lived in Chinon during World War II is part of the present day plot and has more to do with the story than the one dealing with King John and Queen Isabelle. Mystery sets in when Emily is still searching for her cousin and starts to become afraid that something happened to him once he reached Chinon.

The pacing was all over the place too. I think that because we had so many cast of characters and each one had their own motivations, issues, that a lot of pages were just wasted with a character talking to Emily about something and she would say "ahh I understand it all now". No not really, but it started to seem that way. For example, when Emily somehow clues into one of the characters having an affair with someone else I was just baffled at her reasoning. It made no sense to me and I am still wondering how this one character managed to do so since his "partner" on this trip was a stage five clinger.

I had a problem keeping up with what this book was supposed to be. I found myself getting bored with the book and honestly don't know what it was supposed to be really. A romance book with a mystery or a mystery book with just a hint of romance? The overall mystery of where was Emily's cousin Harry was just nonsensical when we get to the final reveal. I can't even with the other mystery that Emily got involved with and the final denouement with that as well. This book changed halfway through from being what I thought would be an exploration of Chinon and the history of King John and Queen Isabelle to a murder mystery plot that I think even Poirot would have passed on as being too simplistic.