2/22/2015

"The Orchid House" by Lucinda Riley book review




I finished the orchid house a couple of days ago, and I have now started the Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy. Anyway, this is my review of the orchid house.

The story line is quite similar to "The Lavender garden", it does have one parallel (The character Venetia) to it as well. The story begins by two people meeting some how, and an elderly person telling a story of their ancestors. The story has its origin in WW2, and is about love, hate and intrigues.



Riley tends to pull in the countries she's been living in, and she has done this here as well, this is about England, France, it has a Russian character and beautiful Thailand.




1938: 

The story brings you sweet young Oliva, and her parents has decided that it's time for her to try and find a husband. She then participates in the nobles proms and parties, and the first house hosting is Wharton Park where she meets a young man called Harry.
Now Olivia's origin is English, but she grew up in Poona, India. So she takes some time adjusting, and the French hostess, Adrienne, Harry's mother, calms her by showing her true emotions immediately, joke and shows her the more exotic places in Wharton Park.

*SPOILER ALERT* 
Olivia ends up marrying Harry, but their marrige hits a lot of bumps. WW2 starts, and Harry is sent off to Thailand and get prisoned.


Now I won't say anything about how, but this is the story about the love affair that almost costed Wharton park and a lot of peoples lives.
This story will capture anyone who loves historic fictional drama with war, love and intrigues.


2013 : 

(I think, I didn't check the exact date, but it's present).
In the story Julia Forrester is in deep depression after loosing her family, the famous pianist gets dragged out of the house by her sister Alicia, and ends up meeting an old acquaintance named Christoper Crawford, short Kit, the owner of Warthon Park.
Julie grew up there and had close relations to her grandfather Bill Stafford, who was a gardener at Wharton park along with his wife Elsie, who was a maid.
Kit finds a diary that he think is Bill's and give it to Julie, and since Bill is dead, his wife takes it upon her to tell the story behind the diary.
The story and diary leaves fatal consequences for both families, Wharton Park and reveal deep kept family secrets.
Other things is that another love story develops in present time, and in the end of the book Julie is left with a painful choice. Her action tightens the loose ends up and make a good ending for the book.





The intro

The intro was fascinating and very well written, it made me really feel like I was inside of Wharton Park in the 1930's.

The plot & the middle section

The plot is very interesting, I do love historical fiction and is very typical drama. So if you don't like drama books or romance cliches you might want to stay clear from this book.

The middle section is fun and is quite exiting most of the time, Riley is good with balancing multiple problems and stories at the same time, but of course, for high points in exitement, it also needs to be sections that are less exiting and a little bit boring.


The outro 

I did like parts of the outro, but in the very end it got a little bit too okay. It was a lot of random problem solving and it didn't seem planned. I think it could have handled a sequel or a sadder ending.


Rating

I gave 4/5 on goodreads, and that is "I really liked it".



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