TBR Jar Review: Forever Amber by Kathleen Winsor (DNF)

As you can tell from the title I DNF’ed this book. The story was about a young girl in what I believe was 16th century England. The summary said the book would detail how she was left alone and penniless on the streets of London and how she rose above that and came to be the king’s mistress. It had all the makings of a trashy period romance and I imagine it would have been almost like a “Gone With the Wind” in a different setting. And when I decided to pick up this book I felt like I was in the mood for just that. But moods change and once I had started this book I just wasn’t feeling it. At all. So I decided to put it down after just a few chapters. 

What I did read was well written, but the main character of Amber really annoyed me. She reminded me of Lydia from “Pride and Prejudice”, petulant and selfish and feeling herself too good for her circumstances. She throws away everything to follow some random man who straight out tells her he won’t marry her, but she is just interested in the instant gratification of him taking her away from village life to the bustle of the big city. It would have been interesting to (hopefully) see her characters develop, but I just wasn’t in the mood. 

So instead I picked another book out of my jar and this one is “The Piper’s Son” by Melina Marchetta. It’s about a young boy whose family is falling apart, and while that doesn’t exactly sound like a feel-good book it does interest me more than Amber.