My rating: ⭐⭐
The start of this book was promising. With a new set of
interesting characters, there was a chance to make a good story and an
effective plot. Unfortunately, that wasn’t the case and there wasn’t enough of
the likable qualities of Anne present to make up the deficit.
This is probably something that is edition specific, and I
checked in the front to find that this should be the exact same version as that
which was printed in 1919, but I absolutely hated the use of capitalised words
within sentences for emphasis. It was something that wasn’t in previous books
and seemed like a very unnecessary addition.
While the story of the Meredith’s was initially interesting,
eventually it just became a repetition of the same story, but with a different
child punishing themselves for stepping out of line. To keep interest in the
plot, for me, Mr Meredith would have had to have come to his senses sooner and
started acting like a proper father. However, the way the plot is, the story became
far too predictable and boring.
There’s a lot more that I could say about this book, but I
want to avoid ranting, so I’ll make one more comment, which fittingly is about
the final part of the book. Out of nowhere on the last page, the narration
starts to talk about the coming future, specifically the war. I completely understand
the relevance of this, with the book being published in 1919, but it seemed
completely out of place from the rest of the book and really drew me away from
the story. When reading a book that forms part of a series, you want to be
encouraged to stay in that world a little longer and by having that part tacked
onto the end, it did the opposite for me.
If there wasn’t only one book left in the series, I would be
severely tempted to stop reading after this book.
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