Tamasin spends his life chasing rainbows and leaves his daughter Nora firmly ensconced at school as he chases the biggest one of all and heads for the gold fields of Australia.
He soon dies and leaves Nora in the care partner/employer Charles Herrick also known as The Lynx for his dominating personality, Charles's son Stirling arrives in England to escort Nora to Australia, but they make a curious stop at a country estate called The Whiteladies named for the nunnery it had been at one time and Stirling seems to have a strange interest in the estate and it's inhabitants.
Stranger still, when Nora arrives in Australia the Herrick home is a copy of Whiteladies,
Nora soon discovers that The Lynx has a mysterious past of his own, falsely accused of theft in England and deported to Australia as a criminal.
As the Herrick family's fortune increases it leads them ever closer to the obsession of Charles enacting financial havoc on those
he blames for his false conviction.
Nora and Stirling return to England with Stirling bent on completing his father's plans for revenge, They soon insert themselves into the lives of the residents of Whiteladies as Nora fights to stop Stirling before his lust for revenge destroys all their lives.
Whew, that's more plot description than I care to give but there's not much on the product page, I found this book a bit slow paced at times and a tad too predictable, especially the murder attempts on Minta, I also found the alternating POV's between Sara and Minta in the latter part of the book quite distracting, A nice comfort read for a rainy day it's a good book, just not a great one,/stars. I forgot about the details about this book, but I remember the plot and a quote that gives me a chill, even today: You've spent your life preparing revenge.
You should've spent it searching for happiness,
These two lines summarize the tragic life, under difficult circumstances, It's quite shocking how influential the main male protagonist is, when his ideas are passed to his heir and then to a woman he's been fond of.
The revenge he seeks is a payment for a hurtful pride and prejudice towards him, but it's not some cliche that's been seen, over and over.
You need to read it, to understand it's full meaning and I'm also considering it to give this novel a new try, It was different than anything else I've read before or after and with that reason I've put it in my topBritish novels.
Of course, at the end of the year I may change it, but until that time, this work will stay among my favorite titles.
Zzzz Adolescence is a nightmare,
And no one warns you,
Nobody sits you down and tells you: Hey, listen, one of these days your body is going to start dumping a seriously overwhelming amount of chemicals into your system testosterone, estrogen, pheromones, and other assorted hormonal junk that's going to wind up doing a real number on you.
Mysterious drives are going to start engaging and the level of your emotional sensitivity will ratchet up about a thousand percent, There's going to be a lot of shame and despair and a fundamental sense of frustration that festers twentyfour seven, And as if that weren't enough, one morning you're going to wake up, look in the mirror and discover your appearance, to quote Eddie Izzard, has taken on a general "plague" theme.
Odd patches of hair. Pustule eruptions. Sheddings and oils and rank aromas, Sudden spurts of height and weight, even vocal tics and modulations all of which will be eversoapparent to the public at large and prove at the very least awkward for you or, and this is much more likely, devastating in the extreme.
And everyone's going to expect you to live with this, to deal with this, to find a way to behave inside this that won't adversely affect your grades or your ability to mount, for old time's sake, that sunny disposition we've come to know and love.
And so, you know, good luck with that,
Most of us had to trick to the truth of puberty on our own, And if you're like me and I suspect more of you are than aren't, you took a swift right turn to a book and thrust your nose in for the duration.
Those days were recalled to me recently at a library book sale, when I came across a tattered hardcover edition of The Shadow of the Lynx.
The story had been one of my favorites during that fraught stage of life and I added it to my stack on sentiment alone.
Would it hold up Strangely enough, that turned out not to matter,
Nora Tamisan had only her father to raise her, He was a dreamer an enthusiastic scallywag forever equipped with a scheme, an enterprise or an invention sure to make them rich, When he sent her off to boarding school for the brief period of time it would take to unearth his fortune in Australian gold, she acquiesced as a matter of course, understanding this was his nature.
And when word arrived of his death The time came to discover her own, Given over as ward to her father's business partner, she journeys to the land down under where her adventure will begin,
It's so clear to me why I cherished this tale, It's strong and straight and true, These are stock characters, no question about it, Types, tropes and clichés abound, along with the anachronistic gender perceptions that were a feature of the age, Yet when your head is swimming against a ravaging hormonal riptide, you're going to flail for solid ground, . . and, frankly, the more hackneyed the better, Trite is trite because it's familiar, and what's familiar is often safe, I was looking for a primary color in what appeared to me to be a dizzying sea of luminescence, and this is where I found it.
My ship made shore, and glory be,
This is why I find I can't begrudge a teen her reading choice, Been there, hon. Whatever gets you through. Go with that.
Books written by Victoria Holt are so cheesy, but sometimes that's exactly what you need, I've read a loooot of her books when I was/years old, . that was the last time I've read them, I absolutely loved them at the time, I'm thinking of reading one of her books just for the old times sake! Intricate Plot, Complex Love Relationships and a Surprise Ending!
Set in the Victorian era, this is the story of Nora Tamsin whose father died in Australia searching for gold.
Now, she is to travel there to become the ward of her fathers business partner Charles Herrick, who because of his startling eyes, is known as the Lynx.
She is attracted to his son, Stirling, a handsome man who is kind to her, But the Lynx has other plans and his effect upon her is overwhelming,
Holt does a great job of bringing us interesting characters, We see Australia as it was, the rough life on the edge of the bush, And we see the country life in an English mansion where secrets reside,
This story takes you from England to Australia and back again with complex relationships, Those who end up together will surprise you, Treachery lurks in England and the White Ladies estate where the Lynx was sent away in shame that was not of his doing.
He wants revenge and will do much to achieve it,
Fans of Victoria Holt of which I am one will love this, And the ending is a surprise!
I've read pretty much all of Victoria Holt's work, This was one of the first I read and the motivation behind choosing the next, Absolutely loved this storyline! A real page turner, .