Tuesday 21 June 2011

Strings Attached - Judy Blundell

Product Details  Even better than Blundell's first, I think.
Kit Corrigan's dream is to star in a Broadway show. She has a dance teacher who encourages her, and at 17, in 1950, she sets off for New York from Rhode Island with stars in her eyes. A part in a chorus is not long coming, and rooming with other chorus members is fun, even if you are poor. But then her boyfriend's father arrives one day and takes her off to a small furnished apartment with its own front door,and tells her that its for her and Billy, his son, once he has returned from the Korean war. No strings. Oh, but there are! shortly afterwards he turns up again with a small suitcase and asks her just to keep it overnight..... and that's how her payback begins. For she once asked him to do a great favour for her family, and even though she was only 12 then, they shook hands on the deal, and now he wants payback and more...... Billy, her fiance, is a troubled soul with a bad, bad temper from time to time. She loves him dearly, but is frightened of that temper. It's when he comes to her prior to shipping off to Korea that things start to fall apart - although the reader already has some idea of the troubles ahead.

The book roams around between 1946 and 1950, so you do need to concentrate on the date at the top of each chapter, but I didn't see this as a fault - rather as an interesting way of linking happenings up. It's aimed at the Young Adult market, but even my advanced years didn't stop me enjoying this one bit - and I can't see any reason why it should stop you, either. It has a sparse style, so the pace is kept up, and you want to keep reading. A good yarn, a thriller, a love story - with a few shocks to the system along the way.
[copy of my Amazon Vine review]

No comments:

Post a Comment

Early One Morning - Virginia Baily

I was attracted to this novel purely by the cover (as I suppose this is meant to happen!) and it has very little about the contents on the b...