Thursday, October 2, 2008

Star gazing by Linda Gillard


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Genre - Romance

This is a wonderful romantic novel with an unusual heroine. Marianne has been blind since birth. Tragically widowed in her 20s when her husband was killed in the Piper Alpha oil rig explosion, she now lives in Edinburgh with her sister Louisa, a novelist who writes Scottish Gothic vampire romance. Now in her 40s, Marianne is lonely but determined not to admit it, spiky, prickly & resistant to help or pity. One night, she arrives home in the snow & loses her door key. A man appears, helps her find her key, they have a brief conversation about Puccini, and he disappears. Keir Harvey lives on Skye, and as he gets to know Marianne, he becomes determined to take her to Skye and “show” her the stars. As a sighted person, I can’t judge how accurate Linda Gillard’s portrayal of blindness from the inside is, but, as a reader, I was totally convinced. Keir is a heart-stoppingly attractive hero, and Marianne is so stroppy, you just have to love her & want this relationship to last. It’s unusual in romantic fiction to have a heroine who exasperates the reader as much as Marianne does, but, the book is all the better for it. There are more than enough bland heroines out there. Marianne is real & the journey she takes with Keir is a delight. Edinburgh & Skye in winter are gorgeous settings for the story, and Louisa & her Goth assistant, Garth, provide some lighter moments. This is a fantastic romance with real characters. I read it in one afternoon, unputdownable.

---- Reviewed by Lyn, Headquarters

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Thanks very much, Lyn, for your great review of STAR GAZING. I'm so glad you enjoyed it. :-)