Love’s Shadow by Ada Leverson
Read: as a LibraryThing Early Reviewer’s book (The Bloomsbury Group, 240 pages)
Rating: 8 out of 10 (finished 3/28/10)
Synopsis: The heroine of Love’s Shadow is the delightful Edith Ottley. She lives with her husband Brace and her two children in a very new, very small, very white flat in Knightsbridge. As we follow Edith’s fortunes we enter the enchanting world of Edwardian London, bewitched by the courtships, jealousies and love affairs of Edith’s coterie – Hyacinth, Eugenia, Charles and Cecil, Vincy, Madame Frabelle and many more.
Overall Impression: This is the first book I’ve received from the LT Early Reviewer’s program, and what a delight it was! Let’s start with the cover, which was a big pink bucket of awesome. It’s one in a series of covers that I want to eat like candy. I just love the little scene that the designer created, and it really sets the tone for this tasty little book. Leverson (who was close friends with Oscar Wilde — and it shows) lays out little scenes between the principal characters in the book. The dialogue is superb — witty and so very on-the-nose when it needs to be, as are the comments that Leverson makes on British society. The entire book is about relationships between the characters — friendships and romantic interests. It ends on sort of a but-what-about-Edith note. I definitely need to read the other two books in the series to get the continuation of her and Bruce’s story. As far as I can tell, Bloomsbury has not released the other two, so I’ll have to dig them up in the library.
Oh, and I read it while in England, which made it all the easier to talk in a British accent in my head.
Pros: Witty writing, subtle yet hilarious dialogue, and wonderful comments about British society at the turn of the last century.
Cons: There were quite a few errors in the book. It doesn’t say anywhere that it’s an ARC, so I feel like some of these things should have been caught. You’re vs. Your for example. And one or two places with misplaced quotation marks (quoting text that wasn’t dialogue). Bah.
Extras: Visit Bloombury’s website,
Other books I’ve read by Ada Leverson: none
Other blogger reviews: Stuck in a Book
This sounds great! I love the cover too.
I love the covers of the Bloomsbury Group books too! And the books themselves are excellent too. Well, the two I read were, and by the sound of it, so’s this. What a pity that they didn’t also publish the sequels, though.
Definitely a bummer about the sequels. It’s like getting a taste but not being able to eat the whole thing!