Just in case you don't want to read a long review, I'll tell you right up front that I adored
The Amaranth Enchantment.
I loved it for all the normal reasons one loves Cinderella stories--poor girl being used and abused by wicked step-aunt meets handsome prince who is looking for a wife. It's hard to go wrong when you have such a deserving heroine and one who is so put upon.
But I loved it for so much more than the Cinderella tale. I fell in love with the characters.
I LOVED the characters. Lucinda, brave and smart and good and so ill-used. Prince Gregor, honorable and oh, so handsome. And how I loved the incorrigible pickpocket Peter!
I don't have a lot more to say about this one. The writing was good, but if it rose to spectacular, I didn't notice. The descriptions were vivid enough that I could picture where I was all the time.
This is not to say the writing wasn't beautiful. Here's a bit of it. I let the book fall open and this is what my eyes first encountered:
Twilight continued to fold into night, and the sky grew blacker and deeper. We had only a patchwork of lamplight thrown from curtained windows to light our way back.
So obviously Ms. Berry is no slouch in the "writing pretty prose" department. The writing, though, really served the story instead of calling attention to itself. It never pulled me out of the story and reminded me that I was reading someone's created world. So page after page as I read, I found myself sighing and saying to my fifteen-year-old daughter, "Oh, this is such a good book." (She read it as soon as I finished, and she agreed.)
I was sighing and thinking it was a good book because I was so invested in the characters. I so much wanted Lucinda to survive and thrive and get back that which had been stolen from her. I wanted her to have love and joy because it had been taken from her when she was so young and because she deserved better.
My guess is that if you liked A Countess Below Stairs and Book of a Thousand Days, you'll find yourself very much enjoying The Amaranth Enchantment. I look forward to the next offering from Julie Berry.
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