{"id":5491,"date":"2024-06-02T20:08:17","date_gmt":"2024-06-02T20:08:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/marykingswood.co.uk\/?p=5491"},"modified":"2024-06-02T20:08:17","modified_gmt":"2024-06-02T20:08:17","slug":"review-fair-ellen-by-jayne-davis-2024","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/marykingswood.co.uk\/index.php\/2024\/06\/02\/review-fair-ellen-by-jayne-davis-2024\/","title":{"rendered":"Review: Fair Ellen by Jayne Davis (2024)"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\"\"Every book by Jayne Davis is a joy to read and this is no exception. Wonderful, well-rounded characters, a plausible plot and a writing style that\u2019s both literate and authentic; what\u2019s not to like?<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s the premise: when Ellen Barnes\u2019 childhood friend, Duncan Grant, returns from five years in the army to manage his inherited farms, Ellen realises that both she and Duncan have grown up. She sees him now in a very different way, and perhaps, in time, he\u2019ll start to see her differently, too? But before that can happen, he meets her beautiful cousin, Harriet, and he\u2019s smitten. He pursues Harriet determinedly, and before too long, they\u2019re betrothed. Ellen must learn to accept the inevitability of their marriage, even though she knows Harriet to be a spoilt and wilful girl, devoted only to herself, and not at all worthy to marry a good man like Duncan.<\/p>\n

But an incident at a ball leads to a rupture with Harriet. Duncan can\u2019t understand why Harriet appears to have turned against him, and enlists Ellen\u2019s help to restore him to Harriet\u2019s favour. Poor Ellen! Against her better judgement, she does try to help, even though she hopes Duncan will finally understand how shallow Harriet is. And even if he does, will he ever turn to Ellen instead?<\/p>\n

Of course, readers know the answer to that. Duncan is a smart cookie, and I loved his highly original method of finding out the truth about the incident at the ball, and thus the truth of Harriet\u2019s character. After that, it\u2019s but a small step to appreciating Ellen\u2019s good qualities.<\/p>\n

This is a beautifully written story, as always with this author, and really, there\u2019s only one thing wrong with it – it\u2019s too short. Being novella length, certain parts of the story seemed rushed. Both Duncan\u2019s courtship of Harriet and his realisation of Ellen\u2019s true worth were either skipped altogether or were too fast to be entirely believable. I wasn\u2019t convinced that Duncan could be steadfastly in love with Harriet, and then switch his affections to Ellen within a week or two, and the only reason I can accept it is because they\u2019re such good friends to start with. I would have loved this to be a full-length book, but even so, I enjoyed it so much it\u2019s definitely a five star read.<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Every book by Jayne Davis is a joy to read and this is no exception. Wonderful, well-rounded characters, a plausible plot and a writing style that\u2019s both literate and authentic; what\u2019s not to like? Here\u2019s the premise: when Ellen Barnes\u2019 childhood friend, Duncan Grant, returns from five years in the army to manage his inherited […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[115],"class_list":["post-5491","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-review","tag-davis"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/marykingswood.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5491","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/marykingswood.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/marykingswood.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marykingswood.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marykingswood.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5491"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/marykingswood.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5491\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5495,"href":"https:\/\/marykingswood.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5491\/revisions\/5495"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/marykingswood.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5491"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marykingswood.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5491"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marykingswood.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5491"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}