"Wideacre” Phillipa Gregory

I ended up with this one, once again, from the local thrift store. Can I be honest? I hated it. Really and truly did not like this book one little bit. I guess what bothered me was that at the beginning I was reading along thinking it was OK…until suddenly it just wasn’t…and for me, it just never recovered. Let me explain – the story starts out about a girl in 18th century England. She loves the land and the estate she was born on. So much so that she assists her father in the management and running of it. She has a brother who seems uninterested, and a doting father. So, it’s all good right? This is going to be a book about the girl proving her worth, and since this is 18th century England, maybe marrying well. And maybe, if we want to be all progressive, even inheriting the estate. I was thinking Jane Austen “Pride and Predjudice” with a bit more of a ‘girl power’ angle. I was so, so, sadly mistaken. Our first clue is when she has an illicit affair with the gamekeeper. All well and fine, exciting even, maybe she’s going to really challenge conventions and marry him? But no, turns out she just thinks he can conspire with her to get the estate. The end result of which is that her father ends up being murdered…and then she tries to kill her lover to ensure there’s no one to tell how awful/guilty she is. Of course, the estate is left to the brother, and so of course, she has to sleep with him. You heard me right, she has to seduce him so she can still be in control of the estate. And the rest really isn’t worth telling…it just goes downhill from there. She pretty much manipulates everyone and everything and ruins a bunch of people’s lives. The whole time she imagines herself as totally righteous and smarter than everyone around her. I disliked nearly everyone in the book. The main character for being so generally awful, and everyone else for being so weak and stupid. I mean seriously, no one thought she was a little out of control? Maybe a little, I don’t know, CRAZY? I dislike books like this because the plot, to me, just reads as ridiculous. I never really understood why she was behaving so awfully, why the estate meant so much to her, why no one around her could see what she really was, until, of course, it’s much too late.

There’s nothing wrong with the actual writing. In fact, I have enjoyed some of Phillipa Gregory’s other books. This one though, to me, just epitomizes what I don’t like about her books. Lots of characters behaving irrationally for pages on end…lots of attempted shock factor, and ‘powerless’ women gaining control in all of the wrong ways. I sent this one back to the thrift store as soon as I could. I hear there is a sequel or two so I’m going to stay away from her books just in case I end up bringing home one of those.