Review--The Red Ribbon by Rachel B Ledge

khudecek · Post by **khudecek** » 19 Dec 2014, 10:21

Three stars

I've read and reviewed over a 150 books in the last couple of years and have never said this. This book should have been longer.

The book is a good, clean romance with no sex (maybe a sporadic kiss or two) or cursing but it was filled with action and mystery. The story was compelling as were the characters. Had it not been for the wrong word usage on more than three occasions, a few misspelled words and the need for more detail in certain scenes, this would have been an easy five-star novel.

The beginning was hard to follow with the murder of Annie Blunt, Julia's best friend and Roland, her love interest being convicted of the crime on Julia's testimony. All that was really revealed was that Roland left with the ball with these two women then the next thing you know, Roland is being confronted in the roundhouse by Charles who tells him that he's married Julia. Hmm. Where did Charles come from until this moment? And until this scene, I wasn't sure if Roland was with Julia or Annie. It just wasn't clear.

Meanwhile, Clementine (Lennie), Julia's sister had fallen into the arms of a shipwrecked captain and was desperately in love with him and got pregnant only to be sent to Greece because he'd rejected her. Nothing at all was said about that. What a scene that would have made!

But that was the separation of the sisters who were so very close. The separation was devastating to them but had to be done because women didn't have children out of wedlock in those days. It was social ruination for them.

Meanwhile, Annie Blunt is coming to Julia in dreams and visions and showing her things about her murder that Julia didn't know. That gets pretty interesting.

Charles King, Julia's husband, is a nefarious creature. He's way too smart, cunning and deceitful. He's got a twisted sense of justice and is wealthy enough to pay people to keep their mouths shut or to do his bidding. He starts out by pretending to care about Julia and to be in love with her but the monster soon rears its ugly head and the story turns dramatically.

I don't want to put any spoilers in here because the book really is good and I don't want to ruin it for anybody.

It all comes together at the end but until the end, there are lots of questions to be answered. One thing I would have really liked to have seen was an apology from Julia. I think that would have been incredibly fitting under the circumstances.

This book would have been so awesome if it had been longer and had more detail. Some of the scenes were just begging for it yet they amounted to a mere mention or just dropped altogether. That was really disappointing.