Review: Not my thing, but very commendable.
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 03 4, 2012
Island of Secrets id not the sort of thing I normally read, being so far outside my preferred Crime Thriller and Sci-Fi genre's, that I was very unsure about it. However, having also read several of the very contradicting reviews, I stuck with it out of curiosity more than anything else.Once the story began to flow, though, I did find myself pulled along quite happily and I should say that I found no bad spelling, no "impossible to follow" plot and certainly, I found that this wasn't at all a bad read.Yes, there is a bit of moving back and forth between 1798 and present day, and the fact that the characters in each time-zone sported the same names WAS a little confusing in the early stages, but once I got things straight in my head, I had no difficulty following a clever, well conceived story with some good characters and some nice twists.If I'm being picky - as a lover of good descriptive - there were a few elements of the book I would have preferred to be stronger. The author allowed you to believe that characters with the same names were all very similar in appearance, with very similar relationships to each other, and although this wasn't a problem, it would have been nice to have a little variety thrown in there. They were however, well written and did manage to have slightly different character quirks between the times.In general, the rest of the writing was good and there were some good dramatic elements thrown into what was essentially a very considered plot.Picky things aside, I was pleasantly surprised by the whole thing and was very pleased with the ending, despite the fact an obvious alternative would have been just as good.Well done Tammie Clarke Gibbs. A very commendable work, worthy of 4 stars.