Review: Entertaining light read
Rating: 3 out of 5
Date: 10 20, 2010
I mostly enjoyed this story. Other people have described the plot, so I'll just give my impression. This story was entertaining and kept my attention throughout. However, I found it hard to really engage because some of the characters weren't very likable to me. First, Maud's cousin Barbara is flat-out rude. She's often rude to Maud and says mean things, and Maud never really stands up to her. There's no backstory to Barbara to really flesh her out as a more 3-dimensional character, either. Further, Maud's boyfriend in Sweden, Lukas, is mean-spirited, self-absorbed, and also relatively one-dimensionsal, although the author does attempt to make him deeper through letters written by Maud's mother many years ago. This effort is a clever one but it didn't quite come together, as Lukas never makes it back from the negative image painted of him throughout most of the book. Finally, Maud's stepmother Kathleen is also quite one-dimensional. Although she really only shows up in a couple of scenes, as an important part of Maud's life some attention should have been paid to developing her personality.Overall, like I said, engaging enough to keep me occupied and I was never bored with the story. I only wish the characters were more fully developed.