Review: A lovely fairy tale for the modern age
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 11 21, 2013
Follow the White Pebbles by Lillian Summers surprised me.  I wasn’t sure what genre the book was when I started reading it, or what time period it took place in.  It drew me in slowly while I thought it was another story of a royal family in the long ago past, so precise was the way the presented characters acted, stiff and formal in their actions and thoughts, haughty and, yes, royal.  That soon changed with the discovery that Arthur and Madeline’s kidnapped daughter has been found after being taken 18 years before.It is almost as if time stood still for those 18 years for Elizabeth’s parents.  Even though their daughter is not what they expected, or understand, they still expect her to marry Justin Winters as was arranged at her birth.  Forced into the marriage, Justin marries more for the money than for any other reason.  He is sure he can maintain his playboy lifestyle despite family and legal agreements otherwise.  Jimmy, as Elizabeth calls herself, is not at all the type of woman he wants or is used to, uncouth, crude, and with no love of women’s fashion, but the lure of wealth wins out.In Justin. Elizabeth discovers that she does have value, and that she has worth as a woman and a person, now if she can just win Justin over.There are unexpected twists and turns, and the range of emotions is wonderful.  The characters are well drawn, too many books of late seem to cut all the characters from the same bolt of cloth, they sound the same, they think the same, and you could change the names and not know the difference between them, not so with this book.  The characters spring off the page with their own personality that’s true to their status in society, and true to themselves.Through most of the book the reader is not aware of the author at all, the characters and their situations and evolution tell the story in wonderful detail.A lovely, and lively modern day fairy tale with a great ending.Bravo.