the
best of times is definitely not one the best books I have
read. The blurb on the cover of the
book reads: Treat yourself to a Vincenzi;
however, unless the person who wrote this is a sadist, I cannot
understand what there is about the book that can be equated with the
word treat.
That said, the beginning promises an interesting,
easy-to-read, uncomplicated novel, and I like the way Vincenzi
describes her characters, and their individual problems, before
bringing them all together in the dreadful accident on the motorway.
I also like her use of small sections, hopping from one person or one
strand to the next; however, in my opinion, at 900 pages, the book is
at least 600 pages too long, and it had most probably benefited by
tying together these different strands well before page 300.
Unfortunately,
the best of times very
quickly deteriorates
into a Mills and Boon type romance with much emphasis on handsome
(sexy) men and beautiful (sexy) women, all of whom are
motivated only by the prospect of marriage and the acquisition of an
attractive (usually well-off)
partner.
Although a sense of reality is definitely present at the beginning of
the book, it has more or less disappeared by the halfway mark as the
book descends into the realms of PG-rated
animated
fantasy with puerile sexual
overtones.
I
did discover
that
‘Penny
Vincenzi is one of the UK's best-loved and most popular authors’ (Amazon),
and that ‘she
is universally held to be the 'doyenne of the modern blockbuster' (Glamour),
so I am
possibly
on
my own in not liking her writing.
That she has such a wide
following
is, no doubt, an indication that there is a need for this kind of
fairly superficial novel, and she is to be congratulated for
recognizing the need and acting upon it.