Review: Just barely managed to be passable enough
Rating: 3 out of 5
Date: 07 21, 2013
And barley, because out of the five relationships we are keeping tabs on, only one and a half are interesting. Out of five mains, we only spend significant time following two of them, and pretty much deduce the personality/characteristic of the rest based on a couple repetitive actions. I couldn't get myself to care for the oldest sister and while her reactions could have been understandable given the circumstances, it was handled in such a superficial way we couldn't just get ourselves to care.As pretty much everyone noted, the failing card of his story is the fact we don't know what the time set of it is and there is absolutely no way to deduce it based on the actions of our protagonists. Two things that particularly surprised me were the fact that 5 young ladies, one of which is about to get married spend three months on the sea with a bunch of men they don't know and no one seems to care or mind or find it strange. i get they have no parents and maybe the beau didn't either, but... One woulsd think at least a chaperone would be necessary?Likewise, in the same ship there is a severely ill young man who we don't know what he has (and we never do find out, either, and I'm not entirely sure our writer had a clear idea either) and the captain lets him in, despite not knowing and potentially putting at risk the health of his entire crew ("not consumption" doesn't really narrow down the myriad other possibly contagious diseases he might have had). We are told straight on that he's a very rich person's son and that they never doubt on splurging on him since they'd rather do that that spend time with him... Ok,. that's understandable but... Why didn't he have a nurse or someone qualified to help him with him during the trip? He can't walk and twice he looses his voice from fatigue and can barely move, how do they know which medicine to give him, with no one being a professional and his jars having no labels or indicators? Likewise, who helped him go to the bathroom? The youngest sister quickly becomes his companion and faux nurse, but I doubt she went as far as that, and we aren't given any indication charlie does, and our ill young man doesn't seem to have the strength to use the bathroom, if there is one in the ship, much less use a basin and throw it out of the window.I guess I just feel it would have been much easier to have an actual nurse/companion for him. In a ship full of men and with Gail so willing to take care of a highly unsympathetic charge, one could easily argue she spends the day flirting/he'd spend the day in the company of friend fishing and only return for nurse-ly duties one couldn't expect a young lady unattached to perform. Hell, if they REALLY wanted it, the nurse could act as the chaperone.I digress, the story is just nice enough, but one can tell it's not the work of a professional and it might be too much for time-period purists to handle.