Bittersweet Book Review

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 About the Book

On scholarship at a prestigious East Coast college, ordinary Mabel Dagmar is surprised to befriend her roommate, the beautiful, blue-blooded Genevra Winslow. Ev invites Mabel to spend the summer at Bittersweet, her cottage on the Vermont estate where her family has been holding court for more than a century; it's the kind of place where swimming boldly is required and the children twirl sparklers across the lawn during cocktail hour. Mabel falls in love with the midnight skinny-dips, the wet dog smell lingering in the air, the moneyed laughter carrying across the still lake, and before she knows it, she has everything she's ever wanted: wealth, friendship, a boyfriend, and, most of all, the sense, for the first time in her life, that she belongs.

But as Mabel becomes an insider, she makes a terrible discovery, which leads to shocking violence and the revelation of the true source of the Winslows' fortune. Mabel must choose: either expose the ugliness surrounding her and face expulsion from paradise, or keep the family’s dark secrets and redefine what is good and what is evil, in the interest of what can be hers. (Goodreads)

My Review

 *Note: this book is not Christian fiction just so my usual readers know.

 I picked this book because it looked slightly intriguing. I pictured a setting sort of like the TV show Revenge only a different plot and sadly this book was a major disappointment. The characters have no depth at all. There is really no point to the story line and the ending couldn't come soon enough for me. Every few chapters is a detailed s*x scene between a new guy with the same girl. I'm not against non-Christian books by any means, but why must authors add so much s*x and detailed things that do not add to the story one bit. Nothing is gained in these chapters and the story drags on. So basically the main character, Mabel, stays with her roommate from college for the summer. While Ev is out sleeping with someone Mabel is trying to figure out this "mystery" which is rather predictable and the ending was no surprise. While discovering a boyfriend and nearly getting raped along with a handful of other details this book wraps up with some people dying, murder or suicide is the question. There is also a mystery about art pieces and Nazis.

While I have no doubt in my mind that this story could actually happen I think it could have been written a lot differently to tell the same tale. I am not usually this harsh when it comes to books but I just did not like this book one bit.

I rate one star.

"I received this book from Blogging for Books for free in exchange for an honest review."