Platinum

This was so much better than I thought it was going to. the cover art sugests it's going to be trashy and it is certainly better than that.
Tells of 3 very different women who all have their loves ruined by one particularly nasty Russian businessman. In the case of Emma, I could see part of the ruination comming from a long way off - but not the whole extent of it. Frankie struck me as being the least rounded of the three, seeming very young and rather wide-eyed in her innocence. Her fate was probably the least believable of the three. And then Peaches was some creation - and I had no inking what was going to happen to her until it was upon me. Then there's the question of how do these three disparate women ever meet each other. They do show more and then revenge is had.
It's all very glamorous, with the yachts and the parties and yet it wasn't just a shallow "bonk buster" so popular during the 80s. These women have substance and they come through in the end. I listened to the last few chaperts in the car in a traffic jam, bouncing up & down in my seat in excitement. It was really so much better than expected and I'm glad I listened to it. show less

I bought this book last summer in the sale and didn't expect much of it. Curiousity got the better of me and I was pleasantly surprised. Platinum is a fast, well structured, unpredictable and thrilling story. I had to get through the sense of doom you get in the first part of the book, because you have to witness the main characters's lives fall apart before they can take revenge, but it was worth it. Rees hasn't made this into a "She-Devil" tale (although I liked that story too!), but has added a lot more layers.
I could have done without the happy ending in the mines - that made it a bit much.