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I remember reading an article a long tme ago, by Bill, I think about how one of the reasons he set BGO up was to warn booklovers about what not to read... so here goes. It's 1921 or therabouts and Gwen, 19, innocent, with violet eyes, beautiful and appeallingly clumsy has come to Ceylon to reunited with her new, much older, desperately good looking tea planter husband who has brooding eyes, a previous wife he won't talk about and has trouble at mill - sorry tea plantation - with workers who want their rights. There's also an American woman with designs, a spiteful older sister, a faithful ayah who knows things but won't say, a mysterious small grave in the grounds, a dog called Spew (really!), a dashing Singhalese artist, a "secret" that is mentioned in the blurb and which is so flipping obvious that you don't need to read a word of the book to work out what it is, a fiesty cousin who is not afraid to flout convention and a herioine who shows her vulnerability by falling over the whole time. If Mills and Boon style writing cut with a heavy dose of channelling Rebecca and a plot that depends utterly on people not telling each other really important things rocks your boat then sail away. I've been reading it for my bookgroup and got deeply depressed at having to waste time on it when I could have been absorbed in something so much better. I'm afraid I'm going to lie through my teeth and pretend I finished it rather than reading every tenth page for the last two hundred just to get a vague idea of what happened. Believe me there were no surprises.