This post was originally published at Novelicious.com and is now at WritingTipsOasis.com. WritingTipsOasis.com acquired Novelicious.com in June 2022.
Reviewed by Lisa Spoors
Reading
the back cover of this book, it seemed like exactly the sort of thing I love –
glamour, scandal and gossip!
Rock musician Zach Anderson plunged to his death twenty years ago. Ellie and Miranda Morgan’s mother had an affair with Zach before his death, which is when Lucy came along. Now, on the anniversary of Zach’s death, the Morgan sisters are in the spotlight.
Ellie is a well-known name in the fashion world, Miranda is a high flying business woman and Lucy a successful model. Lucy, never having known her father, wants to know what really happened to him. As the sisters come together to help each other through this difficult time, family secrets threaten to break them apart.
Unfortunately I found this book slow – I very nearly put it down a couple of times because the story just didn’t seem to be going anywhere. The characters of Ellie, Miranda and Lucy were okay, but I didn’t feel that I learned enough about them to form a real opinion. The mysterious stranger, Ian, was quite intriguing – in fact it was him that kept me reading – but I felt he would have worked better had he been brought into the story earlier on.
I did enjoy the stylistic elements of the book – it was glossy and sophisticated and the descriptions of New York through Ellie’s eyes made me feel like I was there. And as much as I didn’t warm to the characters, the relationships between Ellie, Miranda, Lucy and their mother were certainly interesting.Overall I'm afraid that, despite its vibrant and well described settings, A Family Scandal didn't grip me in the way I hoped it would.
5/10