The Captive

The story took way to too long to get going and a mystery should at least let you go back and find the clues. The clues just weren't there and the reveal was slapdash. However, Rosetta is an interesting heroine and pretty fearless at times. She gets about everything thrown at her in a fairly improbable fashion and mostly does not act like a ninny. I just didn't need to have all her adventures before she ends up in the gothic mystery romance. Shipwreck, pirates, harem, oh my!

“The Captive” is in some respects three stories in one: Rosetta’s childhood, adventures abroad, and a murder mystery.

I felt most engaged with the early part of the story where Rosetta – the heroine and narrator – is growing up. I like her interaction with the servants, and how they entertain each other in the kitchen.

Another engaging theme comes later when Rosetta, in her late teens, adopts the role of governess for a difficult girl called Kate. Their relationship is the most interesting one in the book.

As for the plot overall, the narrative doesn’t live up to the expectations described in the synopsis. Shipwreck, pirates, harem, daring escape, etc., could’ve been handled much better. As usual with this author, there’s show more too much *telling*, as opposed to *showing*. The reader is often told what happened when the author could’ve dramatized scenes to show what happened.

The suspense elements are good but we have another typical Holt trait in that dangerous situations are resolved too quick and easy.

I liked most of the characters, especially Rosetta, Lucas, and Kate.

While the novel's different themes blend well enough, I feel more dramatization and action would’ve unleashed this story’s full potential. show less

“I was seventeen when I experienced one of the most extraordinary adventures which could ever have befallen a young woman and which gave me a glimpse into a world which was alien to all that I had been brought up to expect; and from then on the whole course of my life was changed.”

A book like this is a pleasure: and the pleasure that it is, is identification; identification with the other, with the character. It’s not a work of philosophy: once I read books like this, thinking the title was: ‘How to Avoid Sexism in Your Christian Walk (A Romantic & Philosophic Dialogue)’. Which I sorta get; but I can get a serious misinterpretation running, right…. (Of course, as a witch, I now see women & sex as distinctly less show more embarrassing 😸….). And yeah, before: a LONG time ago, I did read this book, in some other decade: a strange one, lol…. My experience wasn’t the same; I was just kinda turning the pages: just ‘clicking through’ (so to speak)….

Pleasure, and identification. The pleasure, of identification…. And that funny word, “woman”, right…. I read this, trying to pretend that I was the girl: that I was the girl, the captive…. It came, and it went, right. Sometimes her more ‘familiar’, to a masc-y sort, sort of plays were more difficult to pretend, because it was, ‘game-y’, almost, would be the gaming term, (also from another decade; all the other decades blur together, lol; here I am, already talking like an old man 😝), plot-y, if you will: just move the plot…. Whereas trying to identify with her, during her, primal, experience, was interesting…. Though during some of the ordinary society-ing parts: the concentration lessened, and I just sorta read it through, to some extent, right….

But yeah, as I predicted: I do think it is as sexual as “Aristotle’s Masterpiece”, the 17th century book about…. Stuff….

And I was like, Yes, I have read this: although that was when….

I remember the butler, Dolland. I remember reading, and I thinking, ‘I’ll have to read….’~right?…. The reliance on study…. As though there was a time, when I didn’t understand Dolland…. And it’s funny, I’ve had a number of these experiences: it’s a process—but re-reading my notes and re-thinking it over, for the final version: it’s like; I do think now, that I am loved; Erato and I, are kin…. It’s funny: it’s not, this wild hymn of freedom and realisation, and everything…. But it’s like…. Yes, I do think I am loved…. Erato knows me…. She sees me…. Though on just reading the beginning—the ending is necessary to the kind of book she’s doing, although it obviously partakes, albeit unexpectedly, of the whole nature of the book….—yeah, it was like, I was always Dolland: the male servant among the female servants; same room, different galaxy; and he was all I really knew, was myself…. The intelligent one, who never made it, and there was no money in it, though perhaps the effusive and inappropriate praise, right….

So it goes.

But what is it to be a woman, in that group of women: (I don’t know, now, is what I discovered—although I learned, that….)

And the roommate, I have, who’s the Only Man (TM), and who secretly hates and fears men, because he hates and fears women, in this obviously-I-want-you-to-know-shh-don’t-tell-anyone-you’re-crazy-I’m-just-a-man way (and there’s this guy at work: it’s funny, we’re not people who interact, against company culture to ape the human race when you’re a robot, right; and that’s fine (or whatever): but he calls himself ‘AJ’, which in English numerology is 1+1=2, and he’s young, and has an open, attractive face, and an a smooth, surprisingly low, voice…. And if I were a girl, I’d take him, although it’s fine, right…. But yeah, my roommate: once a man writes off women, all men become his enemies; we’re the orcs, and he’s the human; and I wanna be like: you know that’s not how this country casts you, right? Try living in the real world, woman-hater, lol)…. And it’s like, you clean the bathroom 499 times, and it’s fine: then one time, it’s not fine, and his residual need of the feminine/domesticity, comes out in bloody phobia of dirty things, such as is IMO slightly dishonourable, in a weird way…. (Literal dirt, is a sort of dishonour, too; that can be important to realise as well: but it’s like, if you’re an adult, and you’ve got a problem: you pull yourself together, you don’t reach for your copy of ‘The Gossips’ Guide to Preaching Hell’, right; pull yourself together….) Oh, and the guy at work who’s like that: not a manager, just the implicitly self-designated, “Greatest” (TM) guy, who we all get to be advised by: but he’s been quiet; although there’s always something fishy about that: I knew it wasn’t him, so to speak….

But yeah: guys ride you because they think you’re their woman—and you Still don’t know what it’s like for the women, not quite…. But I do know: there’s something I know…. Even though I am only Butler-Dolland, and on the one side of the cast of characters in the Shakespeare play, and not the other, right….

….No….? No….? (Trying to read handwriting) Oh, ‘no correspondence in my experience’: correspondence; ok…. But I don’t need that paragraph….

…. Anyway; the girl & her governess; I wouldn’t mind being a girl who had a governess, lol: oh, the friendships of women!…. To be happy: is to be like a girl, right….

(I forget exactly what line this is from: although ‘witches’ as an idea, pop up two or three times in the book; I also found it interesting how she used the word(s) ‘absorb(ption)’ (cf samadhi; only all femme-y; and unconsciously, I’m pretty sure), but I couldn’t so far get a searchable ebook: not for money, and not by begging, right…. …. But yeah: I can’t understand Cowans, or whatever you lot are. Witches are the ultimate tomboys? Unlikable tomboys, are witches?…. Girl-of-the-girls = tomboy…. Is that about it, then?…. Like, what’s the reasoning, for hating us, again? Which stereotype is the silver bullet; I can’t keep it straight anymore, why I’m doomed to gossip’s hell (and none of it even vaguely fits; sorry not sorry)….

But, I know…. I know that I, am….

…. (Listening to the boygenius girls having an existential crisis at a Buddhist monastery, writing horny poetry, in a song named after a folky artsy singer-songwriter) Yeah; pretty much: almost the stereotype of the age, so pedestrian, so familiar…. Except for the people whose main contribution to the play, is just to litter the stage with plastic—ie the great majority—that’s kinda what we all do; so pedestrian, right…. But yeah, I was writing about how I was reading the Dolly Alderton book, at the same, ‘Everything I Know About….’. And it was a similar experience, in the other sort of way; instead of ‘Aristotle’s Masterpiece: The Novel’, ‘Therapy Crisis: A Memoir’—same thing, right; different Marketing team meetings: that’s all…. And it’s like, much of Alderton is kinda…. Not pedestrian, exactly, but a ‘passenger’ feel: just kinda flows fast, the river does…. And then suddenly I became overcome with grief at this idea that I am the cause of ruin for women’s friendship circles, right…. And then, at one point, I just decided that I am loved; as Madonna once said: Nothing really matters….

…. Life in the null-culture, at school: not a science freak, not a Greek scholar, or Greek jock, or loser thespian nobody likes…. Pretty enough; not too pretty…. Just kinda having the easiest life, right: no great struggles or rewards…. And it’s funny, just like I was writing—I was much gentler before, in the first draft, than just now—I mean, it’s true, that is the hardest for me, to understand…. But it’s all just fear: if there were anything at all of note about her, she would have enemies—and close friends, which is almost as bad—and then something unusual might happen to her sexually—and not because someone just ran up behind her and grabbed her and carted her off, right: and anything unusual or different-sexual, is guilt, right: unless it completely happens inside her own passivity, and she astutely hates herself, a little bit, anyway….

Every girl is a goddess; but most girls are fools, right. Both are equally true, and nearly as important….

…. We’ll have to do something with your hair.

I do wonder what that’s like…. I think I’m luckier than any girl could ever be, actually being instead of getting to see…. But I don’t know; one wonders what it’s like….

…. The actor who thinks he’s a police detective: a regular Sophist, right.

…. The charmer in the foreground, the young idle man; the fugitive from justice (a charmer despite himself, hey hello How are you?) in the background…. Always two there are: a master, and an apprentice…. 🐸

…. I do think she understood psychoanalysis. Perhaps it wasn’t enough, or something…. But she did know, something, of what people said….

…. “We were too full of emotion in that moment for mere words.”
The dialogue does tend to give you a sense of the emptiness of mere talkativeness; I think it’s intentional…. Do people talk because they feel alone?….

It’s bad about class, and ethnicity. In a lazy, good-natured sort of way: just horrible, about those issues. I drafted a little about what it was like with that, up to this point, and there’s more later…. I can’t. It’s bad. Make up your own mind….

She loves the man; she loves him as he cannot love himself, right: for she knows him, and he knows only that he fears himself, and knows not that…. If only woman also loved her sister, deeply and truly: for sometimes I doubt (that in) her, you know….

…. “In the Seraglio”

“There are some things one does not wish to remember.”

I sort of get that; however, although it is a long section, it is, somewhat, short, given that it’s the episode that the whole book was written to relate, basically: and that every other part of the book, whatever, refers to it, obliquely, at the very least…. And of course it is true that songs are foolishness, that madness is well called foolishness, right—but there is a sort of distance, in the telling of the tale, that isn’t quite true…. Things are felt, that are not owned as felt, right….

…. “Eunuchs make good servants.”
~(nods, smiles) No pride.
(Weirdness is all on me, lol.)

…. ~Life was weird, but the one of them (the friend’s friend) had become Chief Eunuch, and the other (the friend) wanted to become Chief Lady, by & by.

Perhaps a more interesting novel: although that isn’t kind to say…. We are free to write whatever we chuse, did Jane Austen muse, so long as our owners in Marketing give their consent to our existence continuing.

…. I wonder what it would be like, to be the son of a monarch and a courtesan, to be brought up in a harem with the harem ladies and their sons…. And yet: it’s funny how ordinary this is. My family over your family; my son over your son. Legacy admissions at Harvard/quarrels among the harem ladies….

And then the subconscious’ desire to be punished, its desire to be guilty—the ‘I am not loved; and I hate change’; as opposed to the, ‘Oh, to be eaten! My what a marvelous adventure!’—and to ‘make right’ one’s personal ‘guilt’ through suffering: it all comes back; yes, a Very Sexual Story, in 1887—and at the end of the adventure comes the punishment, You were all so terribly wicked!…. (scraps off a few lines), et cetera; all so disgusting—ironically.

…. (Originally I copied the whole paragraph, but aside from copyright issues: it’s just so disgusting, right)
~(two demons talking about the administration of Hell) “I must learn how to deal with servants…. I was too familiar (with them)…. One could not blame them. What I needed was a certain indiscernible condescension….”
~there should be a special fire-chair in Hell for the theologian who fobs off any responsibility for people like that, right…. It’s like…. “But it’s all just a result of guilt about sex! (throws hands wide) Everything’s fine! This is a GOOD thing….!”…. It’s like, the English disease—with apologies to the Arctic Monkeys and the industrial towns of the north right…. See what guilt does to us; guilt makes wolves of us: wolves sipping tea, and calculating…. Wolves’ lions’ clothing, right, (Justin Timberlake imitating Barry White or whoever on those 20/20 albums) CS Lewis, this is dedicated to you, (dedicated to you), (blows strawberry bubblegum)….

🤔 Who should I sacrifice to my sense of guilt? 🤔

~(Psychedelic sequence which symbolises the entire manifested universe)….

…. It is curious how she describes how the good wife was ‘absorbed’ in her duty—and incidentally, I’m not convinced the presence and loss of the good wife thing was necessary to the plot; it was included purely because it was worth talking about: and a lot more interesting than much of the ‘essential plot’, right…. Everyone knows and orders you to believe, that the dutifully wife is more worthy, than CS Lewis: though if you were to take that serious, they’d spit on your shoes in the street, right…. (NYC academic conservative, on the busy street, in his, ‘don’t fuck me; I’m unfuckable’ outfit’: “How does that make Sense?! (waving coffee around wildly) I don’t know man: it’s called, being a conservative!….!”….—…. but yeah, the wife in ‘absorption’; another word, in another language, means ‘absorbed’…. It must have been a word without intent, so to speak, by Victoria, and of course, patriarchy is largely global; it’s a function more of time, than of place…. But yeah: you’re not supposed to see the good wife, as HOLY, right…. Although the paradox is, even the one living a holy life, does so in a society of unrelenting wickedness: wickedness that bends all, to its purposes…. Love lies not: you must obey her voice; but sometimes, she hides her face…. [“you can’t be bitter, if I’m out here showing my face”; I’m weird, I like the old terms, the range rather than the number: but I’m gonna make a whole playlist of Moderato tempo songs; Rick Springfield: Dance This World Away; Dua Lipa: Future Nostalgia; we’ll get a Weeknd track or two; we’ll have a good time….]. What strange questions, life asks, right…. I suppose the main problem is that people think of romance as something with a definite beginning, middle, and end—she says, ‘Oh, how I forever love you’; and then nothing more, but an endless expanse of empty page—it makes for an entertaining novel, ~as I once asked on Threads, re: a ‘woke’ movie, although you could ask the same of that one actually good movie Adam Sandler made: his Beach Boys movie, you know…. What’s the next step, after the movie is over? (I got blocked, for asking that, lol. You get blocked, for asking open-ended questions, for making people suspect, that there is a conversation to be had: they have to block you, to “protect”…. Themselves?…. To protect….?). You can have ‘action steps’ for business-looting of workers, environments, and nations; and essentially, there are action steps, for religion-family-woman-oppression/adult-child-silencing-and-indoctrination clubs, right…. But anything too close to the truth, whether popular entertainment—which many ordinary people do consider useless, specifically: impractical, almost abstract; intangible—or academic truth-telling: it’s like—now is the time to be vague, and to take no action….

But yeah; the woman and the novel: the beginning is definite, and unique; and the end is definite and final: the ‘goal’ of the romantic woman—does Love have goals?…. So that…. So that…. So that…. And then! And then, that’s it! ~right? What goals can there be, for final, as opposed to intermediate things?…. But no! The goal of the romantic woman, is to become this disposable wife forgotten by the world of story: and, perhaps, even by her own kind…. Definite beginning, definite end; loss of status, retention of role: discarded, though you have tenure, and a paycheck…. In one of the older English Bibles they liked to use the old word ‘froward’: the change-resistant negative thing, right…. And of course, everyone knows that the Beatles said, ‘Pools of sadness, waves of joy…. Jai Guri Deva, Om…. Nothing’s gonna change my world; nothing’s gonna change my world’….

Anyway.

…. ~And then, by playing mother, she learned the Secret….

…. I wonder which is really more like me: Classic Media Themes: the Amateur Detective 🕵️‍♂️ ; vs Classic Home Roles: the Household Manager, you know 👨‍🍳

…. She didn’t want him out of her life, the other one, but he nearly drives himself out entire, because he had to, according to laws, demand commitment and everything: exclusivity 💂‍♂️…. Give give give, woman: give give give, to me; and here’s a list of people, to stay away from…. Give me, yourself—and all of it!….

The ending is curious: it makes you wonder, more than if it had ended the other way…. But it DOES make you wonder….

…. (Looks up the big nine allergens) No, it seems that was being implied, was literally that Her Ladyship simply found GARLIC to be too spicy or whatever: too fancy and French and taste-possessing, for 1887 England…. Nobody has trouble digesting garlic, or anything like that….

…. Mostly about class it’s BS and I don’t want to discuss it’s BS aspects—Harry “generic fake dialect” Tench; ‘like a tartar’; I can’t even remember; for an ignored group of people, a lot of stink glances are thrown at the poor, right…. But re: the young girl-child’s father: a brief indirect look at lower-class English alcoholics in the 1880s: and adult-child crazy-crazy life, right…. It was all there; it all existed: it just wasn’t polite to talk about/non-lie about…. Which still isn’t something that’s VERY polite, lol….

…. Basically a patronising git (such a stupid get, as John Lennon would have it, eh?), with an unbalanced, overdeveloped sense of honour: but a fascinating line—
“…. You’re in another sort of seraglio now, one of your own making. You’re a prisoner of your imagination…. You’re living in a world of dreams….”

…. “…. One can’t be sure of Kate [the young girl-child]. She romances.”
~I’ll have to get a search that works, for “absorb” in this book, even if I can only do at the library; my own devices’ Google Books have decided that I ate up too much copyrighted material, already…. (Then sell it to me, dammit! {thumps table}….).

…. But yeah, sometimes girls take many, for their own reasons; most men, I think, would like say three or four: or perhaps many…. And yet even the woman of the people: she even wants not one only—but two: in her hopes and happiness and dreams, she’d always like to have two….

For always two there are: a master, and an apprentice…. 🐸

(Yoda cracks open his copy of ‘Persuasion’, and cackles in his weird way…. Yoda should cackle, don’t you think: he’s basically a little goblin….)

…. There is one character who speaks in a good, broad accent: I don’t know, ever since I started taking film seriously (checked out of the ‘books have, (gasps for over-breath) Words!’, club, right….), it’s like: I finally understand Alice Walker and Charles Dickens: the flattening of dialect into an imperial standard, is a serious crime against reality, right…. But anyways, yeah: there’s one dialect character who speaks real non-kitschy dialect, non-generic dialect, right: although oddly enough she’s a Yorkshire girl, even though the novel is largely, especially for the England parts, and despite the important London passages, a Cornwall book, right…. But anyway….

~(shrugs) If you get a copy of the book, you can look it up as easily as me, but this is to make it easier for me to get at, although I guess ChatGPT has it saved somewhere, too….

‘Gradely’: decent, orderly, good
‘Brass’: money
“There’s nowt as queer as folk, as we say in Yorkshire.”

(looks over) well, there was a little dialect, anyway…. (Actually even good broad dialect ~is~ largely about usage; dialect-specific unique vocab will tend to be sprinkled throughout, but dialect is also present in the usage and tone, of all of the other words, as well)…. Let’s see, I also wrote: not that this is airtight court-case Aristotle logic, right, but it’s suggestive, I think; I wrote: you take her away from Yorkshire customs, and put her in Cornwall = she decides she’s a rationalist, no patience for the old ways. The dynamic is different with people going to America, but getting cut off from old lands does tend to be a sort of trauma, even if it can play out differently—you don’t know who you are, but you decide to hold on tighter to who you imagine yourself to be, to take the American case, right; America’s whirlwind of chaos change and its comparative non-localism, certainly non-rootedness: just the Bible and Las Vegas, right; holding on tight to Bible, through the vertigo, in Las Vegas…. But the Bible is a book of universal, if or at least global, forms: it’s not a book of local customs, and America’s not really the country to go to for local customs, on the whole; local customs have been getting knock after knock on the head since that Pequot War sort of crap in the 17th century, right…. And then yeah, the other possibility is, this Yorkshire girl: the Yorkshire customs are back up there in the north, Cornishmen have their own ways, and anyway, where’s the Legend of Valley Q, Yorkshire, for you, now? So you decide you’re a little rationalist, you see…. A woman of the nineteenth century: everything as new as steam power, and riding the rails…. It has possibilities, but it’s a shock to the psyche, leaving the old places: and it can have a hardening effect…. Old rubbish, it’s to get gotten rid of, you growl! Here’s to the empire!….

…. And the idea of ‘legitimacy’ in birth, could only be kept up, through rage, at the end of the day….

…. It’s not the ordinary sequence and intensity of romance: everything is very much more, except all veiled and obscured—almost in ‘obscurantist’ fashion, (almost like an isolated 19th century religious village, in Poland or Russia, say, or in some other place: they had to be stubborn, they had to keep away from knowing things: you had to keep it away from the children, or sin itself would disrobe, if you learned, and weren’t stubborn, right….)…. I wouldn’t call it romance, in my ongoing attempt at forming a useful, narrow definition of the term. If you’re going to use it, maybe you should define it, and if you don’t limit it to a narrow sense, then maybe Das Boot is a romance because for five seconds the sailor looks at his girlfriend’s photo; people try to play Tolkien as a romantic, when madness seizes them like drugs; most adventure—not so much Tolkien and WW2 movies, but most adventures stories have a romance plot alongside, but it’s not the same quality as your classic Regency romance: which isn’t to say that one or the other is sight unseen better than the other, right…. [As an aside, romance is a form of culture, that had to be invented: its roots probably go back to the Middle Ages, at least in a weak, and prototypical form; but even in the 19th century, its sorta ‘classic’ period, right: it was still too ‘new’ for some people—your typical village types; even say in Tolstoy, romantic society is basically ‘the new Russia’, at least arguably, and it was all so new and uncertain and young and impious, right…. Other things always existed; sex, for example: and also loyalty, sure…. but if you’re going to use terms, if you think that reality can be divided up in useful ways, and you want to use terms: then you have to narrow your terms until they have some chance of ~being~ useful…. Romance, in a sense specific enough to be meaningful, did not always exist….]…. But yeah: and then, the other thing is: this is sex itself; guilt, itself; the root at the base, though highly obscured and marketed as though it were something rather different, right…. Everything hinted at: then downplayed…. And they’re not hinting at the course of ordinary courtship’s life, though guilt comes afterwards to seize and carry off, like an armed man….

Much of the actual plot is fluff, in my opinion, and filler from the emotional point of view. (And not terribly convincing: sometimes you point the unloaded gun for show, and your enemy all but rolls his eyes, like, Really?…. It’s a book, right; it isn’t the truth, and it’s not all that convincing…. Hesiod’s mountain Muses: “…. For we know how to say many false things, as though they were true, but we also know, when we will, to say true things….” And isn’t that, what life should be like, no?…. Instead, we live in the seraglio of lies, the palace of lies, the cathedral of lies, the detective station of lies: and we no longer know what use we make of language, or whatever choices we make, you know….)…. Just so much reticence and filler, right. Much of it, perhaps half the book, right….

Still it remains that sometimes Rosetta is a woman, and a “woman” indeed, right…. And so you learn: sometimes to be a woman is to be done unto, to have actions performed on one’s behalf: not ‘proper adventure’, right…. And perhaps I also could be a sort of woman, perhaps we all could be, who are not doctors and saviours and “men” fresh from the operating room or the millionaire’s bank’s right, perhaps I could also be a sort of woman, although, (stretches, extends himself, sighs and smiles and glances up like someone who probably has nothing to say: oh no officer; not me….)…. And yet also, I am perhaps, also, you might say…. A man.

…. Re: the actual murder and so on
~Although in the end, it is kinda a TRANSFER of guilt, not unlike the ostensibly feigned obligatory ‘who are we going to blame it on’ moments of putting your hand to your chin and recalling all your various ethnic, gender, or class enemies, right…. It wasn’t those people: but they still don’t matter, right…. It’s so ambiguous, whether those bad people are also okay (shrugs)…. But yeah, the guilt was transferred—religion happened?…. Did somebody get saved?…. And he was a likable sort, the other fella: but somebody had to pay….

…. But yeah: a veritable MasterClass in stepping straight on out over the sewer, and not to feel it beyond the measure, right….

…. Guilt and sex, and trying to be good: and family and religion and love. And the religionist romances [verb], and you must obey that: but the family customs are practical, and your little preacher act is just a luxury, that cannot turn aside the practical…. But perhaps, you could lie!

…. The ending is interesting: non-maximal predictability, although the very waiting for a final last perfect line to wrap things up has—‘book-y’ sounds too much like ‘bookish’, which it isn’t (most books aren’t, perhaps); almost like ‘game-y’: a game-y video game dynamic: that artificial non-naturalistic media-ness, the ‘game’ of media, right….

But you could think about it, sure; it was interesting. Not quite like that Taylor Swift Is Surprised Moment like she’s setting herself up to give herself credit for—it’s not THAT interesting; they’re just a pack of liars, right…. “We are English. We are Christians. We like MONEY, Catherine; we’re a practical race: give our kind some credit….” Ah, but that was a different book….

And yet it IS surprising, in surprisingly under-delivered ways, perhaps, and also, incidentally, in the ‘final score’, ‘box score in the paper the next morning’ aspect of ‘romance’ in that particular sense, right….

…. It’s not a word I’m confident, can be defined well, lol…. And sometimes it’s good; and sometimes, it bad 🤗

.... (searching the ebook for 'absorb' at the library)
"8 results; showing 3"
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This one has even more wierd plot turnings than most of this genre. As unlikely as most of these turnings are, the ending is even more far-fetched.

I stumbled upon this book in an old collection of my mother's, and didn't expect to like it nearly as much as I did. Very intriguing, if not a bit predictable.

After being shipwrecked with two men Rosetta Cranleigh finds out one is wanted for muurder she gets wrapped up in a murder mystery of who really did it. After getting back home Rosetta sets out to identify the real killer.

NIL