Title: The Splendour Falls
Author: Rosemary Clement-Moore
Publisher: Corgi Books
Publication Date: 28 Jan 2010
ARC: 513 pages
Genre: Paranormal
Tags: Young Adult, Ghosts, Magic
Rating: 6/10
Goodreads Summary:
Sylvie Davis is a ballerina who can’t dance. A broken leg ended her career, but Sylvie’s pain runs deeper. What broke her heart was her father’s death, and what’s breaking her spirit is her mother’s remarriage—a union that’s only driven an even deeper wedge into their already tenuous relationship.
Uprooting her from her Manhattan apartment and shipping her to Alabama is her mother’s solution for Sylvie’s unhappiness. Her father’s cousin is restoring a family home in a town rich with her family’s history. And that’s where things start to get shady. As it turns out, her family has a lot more history than Sylvie ever knew. More unnerving, though, are the two guys that she can’t stop thinking about. Shawn Maddox, the resident golden boy, seems to be perfect in every way. But Rhys—a handsome, mysterious foreign guest of her cousin’s—has a hold on her that she doesn’t quite understand.
Then she starts seeing things. Sylvie’s lost nearly everything—is she starting to lose her mind as well?
Review:
Firstly, I will say that I did enjoy The Splendour Falls. It is an interesting and intriguing read, with paranormal and romance elements combined with a little mystery. One of the things I liked most was Sylvie, the main protagonist.
Sylvie’s character is great. She is quite a refreshing change to the many young girls who fall at the feet of male suiters. Sylvie is a very mature seventeen year old and I really liked the way she went about things for a girl her age. Being smitten with two guys didn’t reduce her to a girl who is unable function if they didn’t look at her that day, instead she is bright, witty and intelligent and very much her own person. Sylvie definitely knows what she wants and that’s to dance. To hone her ballet skills she has to train for hours and hours each day, which requires motivation, dedication and above all no distractions and to do this there has to be total focus. This shows Sylvie’s strength of character. And although she may never dance again due to breaking her leg, she doesn’t give up, instead she focuses her attention on finding information about her deceased father and her newly found family history.
Sylvie is definitely the main focus of this book and although there are other characters involved, we don’t really get to know them. Her dog Gigi plays a bigger part than the two guys, Rhys and Shawn, who are Sylvie’s love interests. At times it did feel as though it was the Sylvie & Gigi show. With that being said I loved Gigi, so utterly adorable. It’s just a shame that the other characters weren’t given the same attention. There is little in the way of romance in The Splendour Falls but it is alluded to. Obviously Sylve is attracted to Rhys, but the relationship didn’t develop quickly enough or as much as I would have liked it to. There are a lot of smart retorts, hand brushing and skin tingling but not a lot else.
The beginning of the book starts off really well and is very easy to get into with Sylvie’s character being instantly likable. But after around a hundred and fifty pages it plateaus and doesn’t seem to go anywhere. What follows is a lot of repetition consisting of Sylvie waking up, going to breakfast, walking the dog, going to the garden, sneaking Gigi upstairs to her room, feeling as though she is being watched, checking it out, freaking out and thinking she is crazy. Then going to sleep just for it to happen again the next day. Of course this isn’t all that happens. Some of her day is delving into her past and trying to learn about her family’s history and trying to understand the ghosts she is seeing. Unfortunately, the story is lost in too much padding. I also feel as though the book goes on for far too long. There isn’t enough story to warrant the five hundred plus pages, if it had been shorter it would have given a more tightly packed story and therefore a more enjoyable read.
However, I was impressed with the writing as it flowed really well even when the story dragged a little and the quality of writing didn’t diminish. Towards the latter part of the novel it did pick up pace and become quite exciting as all the pieces of the puzzle began to come together and my interest in the book and in Sylvie piqued again as I was pulled along with the story until the last page. At the end everything is wrapped up nicely and all the questions are answered. This is by no means an easy or quick read, but it’s one I would recommend.
Thank you to CORGI for sending me this book to review.
9 Comments
I have this on my TBR shelf…sounds like a challenge, but I look forward to it..thanks for the review!
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Enjoyed the review! I remember seeing the cover of this one on the bookstore shelf for the first time and thinking…now that's an understated cover, but interesting title. It definitely is one of the longer YA (newer) book releases and so the fact that it drags in parts doesn't really surprise me that much. Glad to hear that overall you liked it! Thanks for sharing….and happy reading!
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Hmmm…well your review is certainly food for thought. I quite like the idea of reading about a girl and her dog. How very Wizard of Oz LOL. Not so sure about the fact that the book is so long though. I might lose patience. I'll have to think about this one. Thanks for a very interesting review.
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this is on my list for the thriller/suspense challenge
look forward on reading it.
I like the main girl who doesn't turn gello when she gets attracted to a guy.
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Nice review. I chose this one to read also for the S&T challenge. Interesting enough when I saw 500+ pages I wondered if it might be overkill.
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This sounds interesting. I wasn't sure I'd like it, but I do like your review! Thanks.
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Great review! I'm very interested in reading this book and will have to add it to my request list at the library. Thanks for posting about it!
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you always give such great and honest reviews!
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Thank You For the honest review!! I hate when books do deja vu like scenes over and over again.
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