Catherine Gaskin's "A Falcon for a Queen"

[fallover]

This is a story of a young girl, raised in China, who arrives at her grandfather's farm in Scotland after her father dies. She comes to learn the details of her brother's death, which occurred unexpectedly while he was visiting his grandfather. She is barely welcomed, but learns to become a part of the land and its people.

I don't want to ruin the plot for readers, but this is a story of forbidden love(s). I found it particularly poignant. It could have done without the epilogue. Not that it was bad, but because there was so much nostalgia in it that I wish I did not know of.

[Cherchezlafemme]

Blech, blech, blech. *g*

Because a lot of sagas/clogs-and-shawls novels shared similar covers and fonts with gothic romances, I was suckered in reading a fair share of them before I realized that I was sick of reading books with unhappy or bittersweet endings. Gaskin is a main offender (along with Dorothy Eden), imo.

This book is good, if you take in the context of a story, but if you're expecting a "gothic romance", don't look for it here.

[paigenumber]

I don't particularly like unhappy/bittersweet endings, either, but sometimes the author can effectively make an unhappy ending work.