https://tamaranth.blogspot.com/2022/08/2022108-billies-kiss-elizabeth-knox.html ( )

I think this was on offer, but I’m not entirely sure what it was about the blurb which persuaded me to buy the book and read it. Something about “an Edwardian twist on The Tempest”, and a feeling the novel was sort of magical realism set some 100 years ago in the Shetlands. I knew nothing about the author, or even her most famous book, The Vinter’s Luck. Having now read Billie’s Kiss I can say many of the things its blurb promised it is not, although that does not make it a bad novel. Billie lives with her sister and brother-in-law. She is illiterate (actually dyslexic), a bit of a free spirit, and has been unable to find a situation of her own. Her brother-in-law is hired by a soap magnate, Lord Hallowhulme, who owns one of the Shetland islands, to catalogue the book collection in his castle there. Billie accompanies the couple. As the ferry approaches the island’s jetty, something in the hold explodes and the ship sinks, filling fifteen people. The magnate’s brother-in-law, Murdo Hesketh, a half-Swede who had served with the army in Stockholm but now works on the island, decides to investigate. This is by no means a murder-mystery. It’s the story of the Hallowhulme and Hesketh families, and the story of Billie, an innocent who gets caught up in pretty much everything that’s going on. It’s not an easy plot to summarise, and probably not worth the effort of doing so. Despite not being the book I was expecting it to be, I enjoyed Billie’s Kiss. The prose was generally good, if a little over-wrought in places, as indeed were some of the characters, and one or two of them tended a little toward pantomime. But it handled its time and place well, and Billie proved an interesting protagonist. Worth reading. ( )

Wanted to enjoy this because I wanted something more by the author of Dreamhunter.  Turns out this is set in Scotland and is bleak & wet... at least by p. 50 or so, and according to many GR reviewers.  I might try again someday, cuz others liked it, and said it was more about the characters than plot or setting.... we'll see.

Didn't work as either a murder mystery (too many side stories) or a romance (unlikeable main characters) - pity, it was a great setting for a novel. ( )

A tricksy novel. I think I'll enjoy it more at the second read (but not for a while). She's a terrific writer, but I floundered a bit in places (this may have been my lack of concentration, rather than the book's failure to lay things out clearly enough!) Interweaving of multiple themes is compelling, and the characters work well... Maybe I don't have the right frames of reference - it's a long time since I last engaged with The Tempest. ( )