Saturday, September 21, 2013

ARC review: Under the Jewelled Sky by Alison McQueen

 
*Many thanks to Net Galley and Sourcebooks for providing me with an advanced reader's copy of this novel in exchange for an honest review.*
 
Synopsis(via Goodreads):
 
 
London 1957. In a bid to erase her past and build the family she yearns for, Sophie Schofield accepts a wedding proposal from ambitious British diplomat, Lucien Grainger. When he is posted to New Delhi, into the glittering circle of ex-pat high society, old wounds begin to break open as she is confronted with the memory of her first, forbidden love and its devastating consequences.

The suffocating conformity of diplomatic life soon closes in on her. This is not the India she fell in love with ten years before when her father was a maharaja’s physician, the India of tigers and scorpions and palaces afloat on shimmering lakes; the India that ripped out her heart as Partition tore the country in two, separating her from her one true love. The past haunts her still, the guilt of her actions, the destruction it wreaked upon her fragile parents, and the boy with the tourmaline eyes.

Sophie had never meant to come back, yet the moment she stepped onto India’s burning soil as a newlywed wife, she realized her return was inevitable. And so begins the unraveling of an ill-fated marriage, setting in motion a devastating chain of events that will bring her face to face with a past she tried so desperately to forget, and a future she must fight for.

A story of love, loss of innocence, and the aftermath of a terrible decision no one knew how to avoid.
 
This insomniac's opinion:
 
This novel reminded me of a hot summer evening. Slow-moving, languid and sensual. The forbidden love is written of so beautifully that the reader's heart aches for the lovers to be reunited. I truly loved this novel, even as the lives of the character's are painfully unraveled at the end.
 
Worth staying up all night to read?
 
Yes. Beautiful, yet painfully, romantic.
 
Rating: 4 stars
 
 


No comments:

Post a Comment