Title: The Winter Sea
Author: Susanna Kearsley
Series: Slains #1
Genre: Historical; Romance; Fiction; Science Fiction; Time Travel; Cultural - Scotland
Goodreads Rating: 4.06/5 stars
My Rating: 1/5 stars
Pages: 536 (Paperback)
Publisher: Sourcebooks Landmark
Published: December 1, 2010 (Original publication: January 1, 2008)
Summary: In the spring of 1708, an invading Jacobite fleet of French and Scottish soldiers nearly succeeded in landing the exiled James Stewart in Scotland to reclaim his crown.
Now, Carrie McClelland hopes to turn that story into her next bestselling novel. Settling herself in the shadow of Slains Castle, she creates a heroine named for one of her own ancestors and starts to write.
But when she discovers her novel is more fact than fiction, Carrie wonders if she might be dealing with ancestral memory, making her the only living person who knows the truth—the ultimate betrayal—that happened all those years ago, and that knowledge comes very close to destroying her.…
First off, this was a DNF (DNF = Did Not Finish) for me around page five. But, I pushed onwards to page fifty before officially calling it quits. Perhaps if this book hadn't been painfully boring and if I didn't have shelves of other books to get around to reading, I would have tried to muster up some patience for The Winter Sea.
'At least,' I said, 'he won't begrudge the name you gave him. Jack's a nice, good, manly name.'
No, but little Jack might grow up to despise being boxed into the narrow and uncomfortable niche of "manly". One of the many minor irritations in this book. Classic, well-used, and strong are all acceptable compliments for a baby name, without feeding into the everyday sexist language that men and women are working towards breaking down.
Aside from the sexism, littered throughout the book, the glaringly obvious issue with this book was the painfully slow pacing of the plot. Unnecessary descriptions, thoughts, and dialogue were plugged into the gaps the slow pacing created. If proper attention had been given to some of those descriptions, a beautiful depiction of Scotland could have been created.
The lack of strong transition sentences within the same train of thought, and movement from one thought to another thought was what made this book incredibly difficult to want to continue reading. And when the transition is lacking, the flow of the book suffers, as well.
There were a few gag worthy obnoxious Scottish clichés throughout the book, including the depiction of Scottish accents; which came as a bit of a surprise to me since Kearsley did a fair amount of research for this book. Along with the poorly written Scottish accents, the dialogue felt forced and unnatural.
The transitions between dialogue, scene, and exposition (of the main character's life/circumstances and the history of Scotland) were awkward and poorly placed. Which was all highlighted by the one-dimensional characters in this book - the main character, Carrie, was particularly lacking in depth.
I always find it ironic when I end up reading a terribly boring and one-dimensional book about a main character who is a best-selling author.
I think that this book is a bad case of trying to tackle too much. When too much is going on in a book, the author tends to leave much of the content and the characters underdeveloped. I also believe that if Kearsley hadn't angled this book as "time travel" in a likeness of Diana Gabaldon's best-selling series, Outlander , Kearsley would have had the room to better develop this book.
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