The Fortune Hunter
By Daisy Goodwin
Published by St Martin’s and Distributed by Macmillan, 2014
Purchased and read on Amazon Kindle
Rating: Four
Stars (out of five)
This is one of those books that sat on my Kindle wishlist
for quite awhile. I read and enjoyed
(except for the ending!) Goodwin’s previous novel, The American Heiress, and I’d been looking forward to reading The Fortune Hunter, Goodwin's 2014 tale of royalty and romance in Victorian England. There are, however, a lot of books in the
world, so it’s no wonder that it sometimes takes months (over a year, in this
case) to get to a book I want to read.
At any rate, I enjoyed this one and I’m glad I finally got to it, thanks
in part to a pretty nice discount a couple of months back.
The Fortune Hunter tells
the story of a rather odd love triangle between young heiress Charlotte Baird,
dashing cavalry captain Bay Middleton, and Empress Elisabeth (Sisi) of
Austria-Hungary. At the beginning of the
novel, Charlotte meets Bay and becomes almost immediately infatuated. The two are both invited to a house party
thrown by the family of Charlotte’s sister-in-law to be, Augusta Crewe. Meanwhile, Sisi arrives to hunt in England
and stays at an estate neighboring the Crewes’.
Though she is a superb horsewoman, her host recommends Bay as a pilot to
guide her through the hunt. Their
relationship does not, shall we say, remain strictly professional. However, Charlotte loves Bay and he seems to
have feelings for her. Also, she’s extremely wealthy and her fortune
naturally attracts many suitors. As Bay
struggles to choose between Charlotte and Sisi, Charlotte muses over whether he
loves her or her fortune.
All of these people were real, and other reviewers have
pointed out that Goodwin takes considerable liberty with history. If I were well-versed in Sisi’s life or in
this era of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, it would probably bug me. Since I’m not, I didn’t care. The
Fortune Hunter is a good story with compelling characters. I particularly enjoyed the parts dealing with
Charlotte’s passion for photography; in addition to adding dimension to
Charlotte’s character, this hobby allows Goodwin to spin metaphors about image
versus reality, etc. All three
characters are caught between their own desires, their understanding of what
their partners/suitors want from and for them, and public perceptions, which
matter a great deal in Victorian Europe.
The stakes in this love triangle are high for all three characters,
which keeps it from getting tedious, at least for me (I have a low tolerance
for love triangles).
The one character I was never sure of was Bay. While this book’s ending didn’t inspire my,
er, disapproval, as did the end of The
American Heiress, it never quite explained what was, for me, the core
question of the book: Does Bay really love Charlotte? While I wonder whether we’re not meant to be sure of Bay, we spend enough
time in his head that I would have preferred some more solid
characterization. We can be pretty
certain of Sisi’s feelings and Charlotte’s, but our titular hero remains
something of an enigma. Generally, though, The Fortune Hunter is a well-written,
enjoyable historical romance(ish). I
enjoyed it, and I look forward to seeing what Goodwin comes up with next.
No comments:
Post a Comment