To echo certain other reviewers’ comments, this is not Book 20 in the Daughters of England series. Rather, it’s a stand-alone novel the bears the title of the 19-book series that came before it.

Like some of the books in the series, this novel features a twin first-person narrative. Sarah narrates the first half, and her daughter Kate takes over for the second.

I preferred Sarah’s narrative of the two. She meets an actress practising her lines and from here she realises that she too wants to act. With a mother who sees sin in everything, and a father too laidback to offer Sarah any support, the only way to fulfil her ambitions is to run away to London with her actress friend.

This is set shortly after Charles II returns to England to claim his throne, so the theatres are all reopening now the tyrannical Puritan rule is over.

I was highly engaged in the first half of Sarah’s narrative. After a while, though, it became a bit static and, in some respects, predictable. Still, on the most part, it’s good reading.

When we get to the Great Fire of 1666, the author slows things down by going into dry second-hand reports, such as how the king and his brother took part in stopping the fire. If Sarah was caught up with them, it could’ve been exciting, but she was nowhere near, so it was pointless going into such detail when it bears no significance to her story. It’s facts for facts’ sake. I think ‘information dump’ is the term some readers use to describe this sort of thing.

In the most part, though, Sarah’s narrative proved enjoyable. Once we switch to her daughter’s narration, the novel takes a different direction all together. At first, Kate’s in London, but she at length moves to the country. I usually like a country setting, but in this book the London setting is more appealing because of the events that occur.

The problem with Kate’s narrative is the excessive dry facts relating what was happening in royal circles. We get many second-hand reports, some of which have little to do with Kate’s story. In certain cases, outside events do affect her life in the country, but even so, the info could’ve been conveyed in a more engaging way, such as through a dialogue exchange where someone involved first-hand in such-and-such a situation discusses it with Kate, or with someone else in Kate’s presence.

Below is a quote that highlights one of the many occasions where Kate’s narrative reads like a textbook:

‘Moreover, the other accuser, Oates's confederate Bedlow, claimed an acquaintance with Sir George and declared he had become on intimate terms with him in his duty to discover how base he was. Sir George replied that he had not seen Bedlow before this trial began and appealed to the court, asking them if they really believed he could have been on intimate terms with such a man.’

When I was reading the above quote it, like all similar dry accounts, changed the narrative voice. I was no longer hearing Kate’s voice.

On a similar note, when we do get first-hand accounts of scenes Kate (and Sarah) is featured in, several are ‘told’, not shown. The following quote uses reported speech and dry facts, which could’ve been brought to life with dialogue and dramatization:

‘I had been given a maid called Amy. She must have guessed that I was unused to such grandeur and asked me if she could help me to dress. I told her I could manage very well, as I always had, and she said that if there was anything I needed I had only to call her.’

‘Telling’ is one of this author’s ‘sins’. Descriptions like ‘He was clearly worried’ show a lack of imagination. When an author uses ‘clearly’ in this context, they aren’t showing the reader anything.

Kate is eleven when she moves to the country. She meets a nineteen-year-old called Kirk. Before long, Kirk the man is without doubt in love with Kate the girl, at one point saying how he wishes she’d grow up quicker.

This is one of several novels this author (under one pen name or another) has a grown man wishing a child would grow up faster so that he could marry her. The worst one was ‘The Scarlet Cloak’ (with the author writing as Jean Plaidy), in which a man is first attracted to a girl when she’s seven, just because she dances in a certain way. Similar to that book, in this one, Kirk feels that Kate is older for her years, as though this makes it acceptable. I find it all too creepy. Surely a normal nineteen-year-old would love an eleven-year-old in a brotherly way.

As the novel nears the end, we get ever more dry facts and second-hand accounts, plus a lot of repetition, mainly about how the people will resent it if the Duke of York becomes King James II and returns England to popery.

I like Kate as a character, so it’s a shame we couldn’t read about more of her personal experiences. It would’ve made for a stronger story.

A weird girl character called Francine interacts with Kate a few times. These scenes are particularly good and it’s a shame the author didn’t focus on developing them.

This novel could’ve been much better if the focus remained with the lead characters and their personal stories. ( )

It's unclear how this fits into the geneology of the whole series but then I am still searching for that confusing family tree. Sarah Standish leaves her family to become an actress in London in the burgeoning Restoration theater world, falls prey to the oldest trick in the book and lives through plague and the Great Fire of London. That seems like one perfectly good book but then we have the whole second half of her daughter finding a new family and mostly reconciling with her ne'r-do-well father as the scene is set for the Glorious revolution. Maybe one day I will read all these books in order but I am not sure they would stand up to the test. Carr(Holt/Plaidy/Hibbert) uses many of the same themes over and over again and plot points often stick out a mile. This was a fine way to spend some reading time being taken away but no great shakes. Also, very unclear what the cover art of my copy is all about. Who are those two women and where are they?

The novel was okay, not great. I wasn't hugely invested in the lead women and the ending was very abrupt. ( )