Very good. To Have and to Hold is a favourite book of mine and this is the last of the Wyckerley Trilogy - with the following swoon worthy information about Rachel and Sebastian "He seemed always to be touching his wife, her hand or her elbow, the small of her back, and Sophie found being with them exciting and unsettling because of the physical energy that crackled between them" - sigh.That said, this book was really good and I might go so far to say that I found it better than Christy and Anne's which I thought a little slow. The writing is beautiful and you really feel as if you are in Wyckerley. Sophie was a strong, lovely heroine and very modern for the time - she owns and runs a mine - definitely no your run of the mill historical heroine, Connor is not her social equal - something she finds hard to overcome at first, but once she falls in love, her desire to have him make something better of himself clashes with his pride. She was a modern heroine who discovered that unfortunately running afoul of society's could cost her everything. Her realization that all she offers Wyckerley as a wealthy patroness - her time in the penny readings, her time as choirmistress, her fairness as the owner and employer at the mine could also be her way of condescending to less well off people and something she does to be well thought of - Lady Bountiful is perfectly in synch with gaffney's writing in the previous books - her characters are extremely self aware or in their character arc become aware, sometimes of not very nice personal, but perfectly human characteristics.Connor was an interesting hero becos for once the hero is of a lower class, and then because he falls in love with Sophie, in the horrible situation of lying to her - at one point when things had progressed so far and he still hadn't told her his real name you really can't see how this is going to end well and it's a testament to Sophie's love that she overcame this betrayal. Notwithstanding the lie he is a decent man caught in a bad situation and you do feel sorry for him.Some nice surprises - Mayor Vanstone's regard for his niece and his support of her marriage - of course that could be becos Connor was an MP by the end, not going the obvious route by having Sophie be pregnant at the epilogue, Honoria Vanstone's ass kissing of Rachel Verlaine, the resurgence of Tranter Fox from Love and Cherish, the mining details for the period, the catch-up with some characters from the previous books - Sidony Timms.
This book was kind of traumatizing to read. The characters would be blissfully happy, then extremely miserable, then happy, the miserable again, over and over. And so it was very emotional, but by the end I was sort of wondering if the author really had to put them through so much agony, and really quite tired of the constant mood swings.Here is a graph:(And there was more, and more gradation, too, but those are the main points of happiness and misery. Also, my time axis is in no way to scale for the actual events, but I give up.)I was genuinely entranced with the writing, as seems to happen every time I read a book by Patricia Gaffney, but by the end I was just so damn tired of the constant vacillation. So much so that when the story got to the major tragedy, my reaction was more along the lines of, "Really? You mean the characters haven't suffered enough yet? Well, f*** you, too, author." While reading it, though, there was no way I could have put it down.Also, it seemed to be asking a bit much of my suspension of belief to think that a proper Victorian lady would jump in bed with her employee, a miner, no matter how much she loved him.And then WTF was with the ending? (view spoiler)[You're led to believe the brother's dying, nearly dead, then it cuts to several months later, implies he's dead, shows his love interest married to another man, and then reveals he's alive after all, with a new love interest. What?! I mean, I was perfectly happy with pairing Sidony and Holyoake in the previous book. But then what was the point of having her fall in love Jack? And having ladies'-man Jack fall in love and reform only to have her apparently abandoning him on his not-quite-deathbed? I know Jack was encouraging her to go with Holyoake when he thought he was dying, but he didn't die. So I was left feeling confused and kind of betrayed by the last chapter. And the new love interest seemed to come completely out of the blue. (hide spoiler)]
