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by Jane Jackson Phoebe Dymond is only twenty, but thanks to her late Aunt Sarah she is a trained herbalist and midwife. She hopes that this will be her life's work, but her uncle wants her to get married, for he is about to install a new wife into the house they share. The first she learns of this is at the dinner table one night, when plantation owner William Quintrell tells her of the arrangement he and Uncle George have concocted between them. Thus a frightened Phoebe is bundled off on the packet Providence bound for Jamaica and her new husband-to-be Rupert Quintrell. But as she is underage, somebody has to be her guardian, and that duty falls to the packet's new surgeon Jowan Crossley. But just as he doesn't know that the duty may be a pleasure, neither does Phoebe truly know what her uncle has let her in for. Back in the 1980s, I used to devour the novels of Victoria Holt and her ilk, and was sorry when the sub-genre ceased to exist. Here is something similar, but updated for modern readers. Phoebe has various trials to overcome but does not become that feminist anathema the gothic "female in jeopardy". Similarly, Jowan manages not to be a chest-beating alpha male. Best of all, the clichés which I had feared would appear failed to materialize, the greatest treat of all. Much has been written about the Royal Navy at this time, but little about the merchant ships and this also made a pleasant change. By the end of the book I realized with considerable delight that just about everything I thought was going to happen hadn't, so a great many people ought to be made to read it to show how this sort of thing can go in the right hands. If you used to like romantic suspense and gothic but think that sort of thing couldn't stand up these days then this is for you. |
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Dangerous Waters