This is the first book by Victoria Holt
that I ever read, so I really didn’t know what to expect. I had come across some interesting reviews
and recommendations from readers who enjoyed gothic novels and historically
accurate events in them, which I also consider a must, so I decided to give it
a chance.
First of all, I researched a bit on the
author and I found out that ‘Victoria Holt’ was a pseudonym used by Eleanor
Alice Burford Hibbert to write novels which took place in the Victorian Era
(which is probably why she chose the name Victoria). She had other
pseudonyms for other historical eras she wrote about, which I found to be also
appealing and have since put in my ‘one-day-to-read’ list. Anyway, down to the story.
The Landower Legacy is a story about a
girl, Caroline Tressidor, who is dissatisfied with her parents, particularly
her father. Following the customs of the
times, they ignored their children and let the servants and governess raise
them, leaving the little ones with an emotional ache. The only one she had any type of emotional
connection with was with her older sister, Olivia. At the start of the story Caroline is 13 and
Olivia is 15, about to enter into her ‘season’, when according to the
conventions, 16 year old girls ‘came out’ in society in order to catch a
husband. Yup, that was the objective:
getting a desirably rich and handsome husband.
The drama of the novel begins at the time
of Queen Victoria’s Jubilee (celebration of being 50 years in power) and
Caroline and her sister are taken by her mother to watch the ceremony with a
friend of her mother’s Captain Carmichael, without the consent nor the
knowledge of their father. It turns out
that her mother and the Captain were carrying on an affair and Caroline
unknowingly told her father, so her mother was sent away to the continent and
Caroline was sent to her father Cousin Mary’s house, a fact she can’t
understand because her father utterly dislikes his cousin for not permitting
him to inherit the home that actually belonged to the said female cousin. On the way to Cornwall (where the dreaded
cousin lived), she met two young men, Paul and Jago Landower, neighbors of
Cousin Mary. These two men will affect
Caroline’s life in very different ways as is expected since both are tall,
dark, and mysterious, especially the older brother, Paul.
Up to this point, the story finally began
to pick up because it was somewhat tedious.
There is too much ‘unexplained events’, which are actually quite obvious
to everyone, except to the main character, of course. I thought that Caroline would fall in love
with one of these two Landower males from the start, however that was not to
be. She had to return to her home in
London where she was destined to fall in love and later on be rejected due to pecuniary
reasons, making our heroine be somewhat bitter.
Holt did depict well though the heartbreak Caroline went through, although
perhaps a bit exaggerated because the reader felt the whole time that she had
to get over it already since there were Landowers awaiting in the south of
England.
I must say that Caroline Tressidor’s
character evolution was well depicted.
She went from being a very innocent girl to a gullible teenager, to an
almost bitter young woman, to finally being a resolute young woman who held on
to her moral convictions, no matter what… even when she was tempted to do
otherwise by the person she loved.
Paul Tressidor was a conniving fortune
hunter who would do anything to not lose the ancestral home, and he did. He was a liar and took advantage of and used Caroline
to forget his horrible life, which he created.
It was very difficult to like him because he wasn’t shown in a positive
light; he seemed to be more obsessed with Caroline because she wouldn’t give
herself to him, and didn’t really appear to be in love with her. I rooted for them to be together because that
was what was expected of me as a reader, but he wasn’t what I really wanted for
her.
Olivia Tressidor was the typical ‘too good
to be true’ individual who had a tragic ending.
She never quite grew as a person and one could hardly believe that she
was as weak as she seemed. Although she
supposedly really loved her sister, she participated in hurting her in a major
way, which was the only time she actually showed some gumption.
I enjoyed reading my first Victoria Holt,
however I wasn’t ‘blown away’ with her writing style or her story. There were too many dragging moments,
particularly when the Heroine wasn’t with the Hero, which was more than half the
book. She describes the settings really
well, Cornwall really came alive for me and if I ever go to England I’d like to
go there, but a strong description cannot replace the general storyline. I wanted the Heroine to suffer more; she just
seemed to take it all in stride (except her heartbreak moment). Nonetheless, the ending was the most anticlimactic
moment and I REALLY expected more emotional conveyance. The author simply resorted to telling us what
happened in the end and how it was all ‘resolved’ and they lived ‘happily ever
after.’ The reader wasn’t given the
moment in which the lovers FINALLY come together after all their struggle and
share their love and devotion and whatnot.
That necessary joyful moment. I’m
aware she was trying to emulate the typical 19th century writing
technique a la Bronte and Austen, but since it was 20th century, it
simply didn’t work. I was utterly
disappointed and expected much more, seriously.
I hope that my next Holt book, ‘The Mistress of Mellyn’ doesn’t have the
same weakness at the end.
The Landower Legacy
Reviewed by Romina on Apr 13 2012
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