Last night I finally managed to finish the last chapters of this book, which as I’d mentioned had been forgotten in my shelf for several months. I picked it up where I’d started it and must confess after I finished it I reread the first chapter.
Pretty much all characters are incredibly annoying – my margin comments went from “Girls suck” to “Boys suck too!” in a few pages. I’d read somewhere that this was recommended for Gossip Girl fans and it makes sense. Anyone who wanted to slap annoying Nate several times in one episode will want to do the same with Henry Schoonmaker, super rich kid who drinks, parties and gets it all stamped on the newspapers, much to his dad’s dismay. But now his dad is going int
o politics and he’s gotta pull himself together and start acting like a man. Which he means as a gentleman, I guess. It’s 1899.
To achieve such a feat young Schoonmaker must marry Elizabeth Holland (who, in the first chapter we find out, won’t be marrying him, as her funeral will instead take place in the day of the wedding), a nice girl, a very nice girl. She’s got a sister, Diana, who’s super annoying and fancies herself a romantic. They’ve got an incredibly bad relationship, to the point where I thought they were just girls living under the same, big roof. To my delight, in the end of the book there’s a conversation between Diana and their mother that made me skip in joy while listening to a
bad soap opera’s TANTAAAN. But anyway, their dad recently died and they are facing financial difficulties and selling of paintings and such and Elizabeth, the elder, must marry well. Very well.
There are maids and “friends” and minor twists, but mostly not very likable characters. Plus, to be quite frank, there are some dialogues that are really quite poor, almost like someone else stuck them (i.e. Chapter 38). My reasons to keep up and finish reading it fell on the time (the customs, the dresses, the mans
ions) and the wonder about whether or not my guess about Elizabeth’s death was correct (it was).
As I was reading it, I’d told myself I wasn’t going to read any other books of the series – after all, there must be other books set in a non-contemporary world, with much more likable characters wearing nice dresses a
nd attending balls, I just can’t seem to find them (suggestions appreciated). But the ending was so abrupt that even with a not-so-exciting first chapter I sort of want to see what happens next. And hope for a big happy ending after three books.
But maybe I can run away from its sequels…
theurlthingie 
