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A review by robinwalter
Babbacombe's by Susan Scarlett
lighthearted
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.0
This was my second Susan Scarlett novel. At the end of my review of my first, Clothes-Pegs, I wrote
" The excellent introduction by Elizabeth Crawford mentioned that Streatfeild never promoted or pushed her links to the Scarlett novels, and on the strength of the rather neutral impression left by this one, that decision is understandable. " - Reading this one made it practically certain to me that concern for her professional reputation was the reason Streatfeild never confessed to being Susan Scarlett, and that her concern was 100% justified.
I started this book because I was looking for a sweet uncomplicated romance. The romance WAS very sweet, the complications threatened retinal damage from the eye-rolling they induced. The first and biggest complication was the evil cousin. About a quarter of the way through the book, I said this on social media
to describe Dulcie as 1-dimensional would be to credit her character with far too much depth. Do better, Ms Scarlett.
Sadly, that plea went unheeded. Dulcie remained a character for whom 1-dimensional would be excessively complimentary and her story arc was exactly zero degrees.
The other clichéd contrived complication was a CEO who, having built a successful department store out of a small grocery shop was apparently unable to fathom that he might have TWO female employees with the same surname. That bizarre brainfade fed into the other major "keep them apart" contrivance - the female lead's near obsessive fixation on what BOTH fathers might think. At one point her wannabe/future boyfriend said this
" The excellent introduction by Elizabeth Crawford mentioned that Streatfeild never promoted or pushed her links to the Scarlett novels, and on the strength of the rather neutral impression left by this one, that decision is understandable. " - Reading this one made it practically certain to me that concern for her professional reputation was the reason Streatfeild never confessed to being Susan Scarlett, and that her concern was 100% justified.
I started this book because I was looking for a sweet uncomplicated romance. The romance WAS very sweet, the complications threatened retinal damage from the eye-rolling they induced. The first and biggest complication was the evil cousin. About a quarter of the way through the book, I said this on social media
to describe Dulcie as 1-dimensional would be to credit her character with far too much depth. Do better, Ms Scarlett.
Sadly, that plea went unheeded. Dulcie remained a character for whom 1-dimensional would be excessively complimentary and her story arc was exactly zero degrees.
The other clichéd contrived complication was a CEO who, having built a successful department store out of a small grocery shop was apparently unable to fathom that he might have TWO female employees with the same surname. That bizarre brainfade fed into the other major "keep them apart" contrivance - the female lead's near obsessive fixation on what BOTH fathers might think. At one point her wannabe/future boyfriend said this
“Are we to spend all our days fussing what our fathers think?”
Given that he said that 82% of the way through the book, I couldn't help thinking of Phineas' catchphrase from Phineas and Ferb: "Why yes, yes we are"
In the end I rounded this up (way up) to 3/5 because the romance WAS sweet and because the story and execution was so paint-by-numbers mechanically formulaic that I was able to zip through it REALLY fast.