Review: A Joy to Read: the Mountjoy Saga is back!
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 05 13, 2011
This is the first of the series, and a satisfying read! Elizabeth Aston's flowing, elegant style is at her best in taking you to the cobbled streets of this charming, medieval Cathedral town in Northern England, quiet on the surface but bubbling underneath with love, sex, hate and violence...and of course, a lot of envy and gossip; and since this is England, an equal amount of humour and non-conformity. The three ladies, "the three Graces", who fix the flowers in the Cathedral are unforgettable gossiping biddies!From the first pages you are transported into the life of the two main characters, two engaging young women in their early twenties, who are great friends yet totally different from each other. One is penniless and struggling to bring up her child alone, the other has everything, money (she is a Mountjoy) and an Oxford degree, but she has been jilted by her fiancé and has to figure out what to do with herself. How they solve their problems - and the problems only get worse as the story unfolds - is what the book is about. If you like a book that takes you away from your daily routine and makes you dream about other lives and faraway places (because British upper class has a way of seeming at times very exotic!), then this is the book for you.