Helpful Score: 3
This book kept me turning the pages right through to the end. One character, Lorna, was so easy to hate it was unbelievable! She was such a conniving, underhanded bitch! Isobel, her sister, was as easy to like as Lorna was to hate. The contrast between the two provided some tension to the story that kept building through to the end. The way it ended I could easily see a sequel being written to it. i hope there will be as I am left wondering what havoc will come from the events depicted in the final chapter.
Helpful Score: 3
Mary Sheepshanks is tops at combining British chick lit with the family saga. This book rocked beyond my expectations. The sequel, written under her pen name Mary Nickson, is Secrets and Shadows. This story so intriguing that I searched out a rare copy of the sequel through Amazon's used book service. My neighbor, who is of an older generation, also loved this book and wanted to read the sequel.
The story moves from a family in the English countryside who are working on a theater project in an old building on their property to their desperate plight to remain a family as affairs develop. It's got arts, family, romance, deception, quirky characters and just plain heart.
Put this one on your wish list and hope that the next person to get it doesn't put it on their keeper list.
The story moves from a family in the English countryside who are working on a theater project in an old building on their property to their desperate plight to remain a family as affairs develop. It's got arts, family, romance, deception, quirky characters and just plain heart.
Put this one on your wish list and hope that the next person to get it doesn't put it on their keeper list.
Helpful Score: 2
Mary Sheepshanks has written the follow-up to this book under her maiden name, Mary Nickson. "Secrets and Shadows" follows Izzy and Giles 6 years after the events in "Off Balance", and it's wonderful to finally find out what happened to those characters.
Hilarious!!! A quick, feel good read.
A sunday afternoon book...really quck and really good.
From cover:
For Isobel Grant, balancing marraige, children, a rambling old house, and an ambitious business project came naturally. Giles was her partner in love as well as work, and was just as excited as she was by the Arts Center they were building on the grounds of Glendrochatt, his family estate. It was a happy existence, which Isobel wouldn't change for the world.
But the arrival of two newcomers upset everything. One was Isobel's newly divorced and always competitive sister, Lorna Cartwright; the other was Daniel Hoffman, a renowned painter Giles had hired to paint the new theater's backdrops. From the beginning, Lorna seemed determined to place herself at the top of Glendrochatt's casual hierarchy, as well as in Gile's affections. As Lorna's schemes wove themselves into the fabric of daily life, Isobel's close-knit family began to unravel, and reserved Daniel soon offered far more than a disinterested, symapthetic ear. Suddenly Glendrochatt was a minefield of old emtional wounds and battling egos, and Isobel discovered that the peaceful balance she'd once taken for granted was more precarious than she'd ever believed - and that setting it right would take both a steady hand and a faithful heart...
For Isobel Grant, balancing marraige, children, a rambling old house, and an ambitious business project came naturally. Giles was her partner in love as well as work, and was just as excited as she was by the Arts Center they were building on the grounds of Glendrochatt, his family estate. It was a happy existence, which Isobel wouldn't change for the world.
But the arrival of two newcomers upset everything. One was Isobel's newly divorced and always competitive sister, Lorna Cartwright; the other was Daniel Hoffman, a renowned painter Giles had hired to paint the new theater's backdrops. From the beginning, Lorna seemed determined to place herself at the top of Glendrochatt's casual hierarchy, as well as in Gile's affections. As Lorna's schemes wove themselves into the fabric of daily life, Isobel's close-knit family began to unravel, and reserved Daniel soon offered far more than a disinterested, symapthetic ear. Suddenly Glendrochatt was a minefield of old emtional wounds and battling egos, and Isobel discovered that the peaceful balance she'd once taken for granted was more precarious than she'd ever believed - and that setting it right would take both a steady hand and a faithful heart...
