This book was written back in 1993 and was one of the many Historical Romances which my mother bought. I decided to take a dive, and I mean take a dive for she had bags of these kinds of novels in the basements, into my mother’s storage to find some old romances and this one was among the first I randomly pulled out.
I remember reading it as a young teen and adoring it for it reminded me of the old western series I liked to watch like Macahans though it was surely more inspired by books like Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell. The book I read is in Swedish which means that I cannot speak for the English version. To give you a clue why the Swedish version is named Förödande lekar which is translated to Devastating Games. Look at the English title and then look at the translation… We Swedes are notoriously bad at translating, especially titles, from English to Swedish. Most of it could be summed up to, it did not have enough flare.
The Swedish version had a very traditional writing style similar to that of Pride and Prejudice, clearly trying to emulate an older style to give you a sense of the history. Unfortunately, it often comes across as a bit pretentious and I am surprised that I adored it to that expense when I was young… and dumb.
The book starts in America to the south. The main character Elizabeth Cadwalder is the youngest daughter of a prestigious family in New Orleans in Lousiana. She might be cute but looked like a child with an underdeveloped body though being 16-17 years old. Much unlike her older sister, Melanie who was beautiful, gaining the admiration of all she encounters.
But tragedy struck when Melanie flirtatious ways bring tragedy to the family and force them to flee Lousiana to settle in the north. There to escort them is the handsome but ruggedly James Thomas Montgomery who catches Elizabeth’s affection immediately but he could only see her as a child compared to her sister who makes it known that she is interested in James.
What follows is a journey about growth, new places, people and dumb but cute romance meant to entertain you. This story is not deep and is not meant to be either. There are some displays of deeper subjects in the form of racism, class differences and gender discrimination but those do not surface too often or are too prominent to change the story. They are merely there to bring flavor to the otherwise rather standard romance.
The plot is divided into two parts, a rather slow journey that could have been expanded upon. In fact, I would have preferred it to be the entire book. A journey is a good way to make two people become closer through trials. Here it is a pretty smooth journey with only one incident that is pretty much summed up with and then Elizabeth took care of James by reading for him.
This journey ends by around the middle of the book and then it becomes chaotic as the writer apparently thought that the story was too boring and decided to push in everything common for those reading romances. Misunderstandings that could easily have been avoided if Elizabeth and James simply spoke to each other. Elizabeth pretends to be Melanie. Pregnancy, they have to save someone from being hanged, drama and a crazy priest. You name it, it’s in there. It creates a faster pace but leaves character development in the cold.
Not that the characters were complex by nature. Elizabeth can be summed up to kind and naïve. James is dull. The best characters are the sister who is either someone you loathe or are delighted to read about. She is so arrogant that she cannot even comprehend that someone could not like her, and does not always trick people with a cute face only to seriously mess things up before blaming everything on other people. Then we have the native American she falls in love with and the whole thing is just hilarious. The Black Hawk, which is the translation from Swedish, is the most patient man I have ever encounter but as his friends say, he might just be daft to love a woman like Melanie.
I liked this book when I was young and dumb. Now when I’m older and even dumber, I still enjoyed it even though I could see the flaws. I could forgive it as I went into it looking for a silly but entertaining romance that could occupy me for a few hours.
It did and so I do give it a 7 out of 10. I cannot give it more as the male love interest was to bland, the plot was a mess which is no excuse for any book. It could at least have been clean so that the romance had time to grow. As it stands, it was love at first sight and is shallow at best. I had to add a point for Melanie who frankly was the one who pulled this story along. If you hate her, then you will hate the story. I cannot for the life of me not understand why she wasn’t the main story as her romance was far more interesting. What do you think? Has this one some redeeming qualities?
With Kind Regards
Senefer
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