This post was originally published at Novelicious.com and is now at WritingTipsOasis.com. WritingTipsOasis.com acquired Novelicious.com in June 2022.
Reviewed by Susan Lobban
When Peter Braga proposes to the love of his life June Cusack, instead of immediately saying yes, she says “ask me again when I get back from holiday”. June knows Peter is distracted by the opening of his new restaurant and she is looking forward to travelling with her best friend, so wants to say yes to his proposal when they really have time to focus. However. a lot can happen in a short period of time.
June returns from her holiday in turmoil and Peter is still distracted, but not by the restaurant. The proposal comes again but it is tainted and June eventually realizes that there will be no happy ending for them. Her love life may be in tatters, but her career is going from strength to strength, so June focuses on work and a new love interest arrives unexpectedly. Both June and Peter move on with their lives, but their paths continue to cross making it impossible to put their love truly behind them.
When the book begins all is well with loved up couple June and Peter. So Peter is surprised when June postpones his proposal to when he is less distracted by his fledgling business venture. A fairly typically start, but then something awful happens to June on her very first night of holidaying with her best friend. That drunken night she is escorted to her bedroom and propositioned, which she politely rebukes and promptly passes out on her bed. The next morning she remembers this and carries on with her holiday, but day by day she realizes that more may have happened while she was sleeping.
The way she deals with this realisation is where I lost any connection or interest with her as I do not think the aftermath was realistic – it is not something you just shrug off. Furthermore, Peter’s actions thoroughly annoyed me too, as before June leaves on holiday he is proposing wholeheartedly and the next he is in love with someone else. His girlfriend was only away for a few weeks – not a year!I was thankful for June’s work friend Kelly as she was the voice of reason and made June see sense and helped her through the years to follow. After June and Peter’s relationship crumbled, I did enjoy seeing their lives unfolding individually, but I had no desire to see them back together. Kelly, on the other hand, was a more likeable character and even though her life was a side story I wished happiness for her instead.
The Pink Pepper Tree is a easy enough read, but it was not one that I looked forward to picking up, purely because I did not warm to June. The twists and turns of her life intrigued me, but then she let me down by reacting in an unbelievable way. She simply let things happen to her and whilst her work life thrived, her love life was left in the doldrums, which was annoying as she could have made such different choices over the years.
6/10