Rate this book

Shorecliff (2013)

by Ursula DeYoung(Favorite Author)

3.18 of 5 Votes: 5

ISBN

031621339X (ISBN13: 9780316213394)

languge

English

genre

Historical Fiction

publisher

Little, Brown and Company

review 1: This book really tried my patience. It's a well-crafted story that will all solidify by the final chapter. However, in the interim you have to keep 11 cousins very close in age and 9 aunts and uncles straight in a summer house in Maine in 1928. I had to Xerox the family tree on the first page to help me attempt to keep everybody straight but I had a hard time nonetheless. The story is slow and told from the perspective of 13 yr. old Richard. By taking his point of view, I had to realize that his idea of something big happening is not what a middle-age woman like myself will feel the same way about. So bearing that in mind, it's not a bad book just a little lethargic for my taste.
review 2: The author did a great job with setting. I really got a feel for the old... more summer house and the grounds, including the beach and the cliffs. She used the setting to suggest a foreboding that didn't go along very well with the final scenes in the book. The story was populated by a large cast, with many if the characters falling in the same as range. I admit I had trouble keeping them all straight. What she did wonderfully was capture the relationships between cousins in a large family. The narrator expressed a wide range of emotions that felt very authentic to me. One character seemed to exist only to move the plot in a certain direction. There was much good writing in this novel, but it felt like the author had decided early on what the final shocking scene would be and she built up an often boring story around it. less

Download links for: Shorecliff

Advertising