I was going along with this one as a typical if somewhat mediocre entry in the Daughters of England series, a bit of a redo of The Drop of the Dice with a charming gambler and the heroine who can't figure out the things happening around her and is wracked with guilt, though this time it seems more believable trauma, when suddenly all the do-gooders don't seem to notice the actual mess they make of a young girl's life. Ugh. The Grace subplot was fairly clear early on and for a bit I thought that she might not even bother to wrap it up but it had a different ending than I expected. Australia has become a theme of "place to send characters we don't want to bother with" but does play a bit more of a role here. Overall, this suffers from some of the same problems of others in the series, it has to get this generation covered and the plot line is mostly, watch the girl grow up. It dragged in alot of places and most of the women seemed to have very little agency.

I formerly rated the previous installment of the Daughters of England as the weakest novel in the series. I changed my mind after reading “The Pool of St. Branok”

Like with “Midsummer’s Eve”, the Australian section often reads like non-fiction travel writing, which is fine if you don’t mind such digressions, but I’d rather stick to the story.

Like the previous four books in the series, we have a plodding narrative with little action and lots of repetition. The repetition in this case occurs between Angel – the narrator – and Ben. Like with several other books in this series, they have almost identical conversations about their relationship – or the lack of one. Because the author has done this in several novels, we know what will happen, and aren’t surprised if an obstacle – that is, for example, a husband or wife – should conveniently die.

A few times, the author ruins the suspense with lines like these:

>And so innocently happy I rode out to the pool, not realizing that life was never going to be the same again.There came one evening at the house in the square which was to change our lives, although I did not know it then.I shall never forget that afternoon. During it I experienced some of the most harrowing hours I have ever known. ( )