A Desperate Fortune: A Book Review

Written by Susanna Kearsley, this novel follows two women; Sara, an amateur code breaker who has Aspergers and took the job mostly to have a job where she didn’t have to work with anyone, and 17th century Mary whose story has been unknown as her journal is written in code.

Again, this novel is written a little differently from all of Kearsley’s in that this time there is no paranormal anything. Not a bad bit, by any means, but something that the reader should be made aware of if you are reading this because it is written by her.

One aspect of the duel story lines that I enjoyed was that we got bits from the diary, but when we went back it wasn’t the diary entries we were reading, but the activities that then were recorded in the diary. So, there was a lot of detail and the author didn’t try to make the diary read like a book – it was a diary.

Sara’s Aspergers I think was handled rather well, but I think that this was a story where the historical story was far more interesting than the modern. I enjoyed Luc, he was sweet and clearly cared about her, but this was an instance when I kept just wanting to go back to Mary and MacPherson  to see where their story would go. That was the more interesting of the two, and honestly it was because there was an air of mystery of “would this have a love story” and what would happen to Mary.

This is a novel that really started to tie characters together (and has cemented that I will be writing up a “report” on all of her novels and a long discussion about them.) We had one of the love interests from Mariana and Denise, the house keeper, is the sister of Thierry from The Splendour Falls. So far, that I can easily tell, this is a first. Though, I think there may have been a few other references for novels I haven’t written a review on yes.

The writing was smooth, though Sara’s character was a little awkwardly written. Just a little bit.

Again, I would recommend this book to anyone – just give it a shot. Unless you don’t like a more relaxed read. Even the scenes of action and tension just flow.