A very short read with a preposterous plot, and too little time to develop characters, or add sub-plot or, frankly, create a rich, immersive reading experience.
Here’s the premise: Marigold Kinderley is fourteen, and an orphan. Her uncle Terence is so terrified that she will succumb to illness like her mother that he insists on her taking no risks, and even keeps her on a special diet. She is finally allowed to attend a school for a term where she makes just one friend – Lady Sybil Dunmire. When Sybil is invited to bring another friend, Clara, home for the summer, she decides it would be fun to smuggle Marigold home in Clara’s place. What could possibly go wrong?
When Terence comes looking for Marigold, Sybil manages to send him off on a wild goose chase to Gretna after the school’s dancing master. And while he’s doing that, Marigold is learning to enjoy life, romping with Sybil and her six male cousins, being mothered by Sybil’s widowed mother, Alicia, and eating anything and everything. Terence is astonished to discover (when he eventually discovers the truth) that Marigold has not merely survived the experience unscathed but has thrived on it.
But where is the romance, you might be asking. Well, Terence and Alicia are the happy couple, and because this is merely a novella, and the childrens’ high-jinks take up so much space, it’s a very perfunctory affair. They meet, they’re attracted to each other, there’s a brief misunderstanding, it’s all sorted out. And that’s it.
There was the potential to deepen the characters sufficiently to make this a much better book, but frankly the whole premise is so over-the-top that I think it’s best left as it is. It’s perfectly readable, and even enjoyable (as long as realism isn’t on your wish list), but it’s the bare bones of the story, rather than the usual richly detailed affair. Three stars.
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