Remembered Dreams (by Emma Dally)

(Amazon UK link)

This is a circular style historical novel by Emma Dally. It begins in 1990 then back-tracks to 1920. That enables it to look at the grandparents and parents of Josie, the woman introduced at the start of the book.

I usually quite like this style of book. Sure enough, it was readable and reasonably interesting, at least to start with. There are a variety of characters, with the main ones being readily distinguishable. In addition, and it felt as if the settings were believable.

Unfortunately, there is far too much detail, much of it irrelevant (in my view). Rather than having intertwined sub-plots, it reads like a family history with isolated incidents. Even the significant ones are just recounted in a few pages without any build-up or emotion.

It's good for an author to know the entire history of her characters, of course. But somehow the book feels as if it was giving the author's outline. It tells us everything remotely related to the characters, but without any gathering together to turn it into a story.

More of a problem for me is that none of the characters are particularly sympathetic. I couldn't relate to them, and I didn't feel any emotion while reading this book. Still, the style is easy to read and I kept going to the end, albeit skimming a little in places.

At the end there is supposed to be a dramatic revelation. But even that was disappointing as there were no twists or turns at all. The secret, held for decades, had become obvious to me during the course of the book.

Not really recommended - it isn't a bad book, if you like this kind of thing, but I doubt if I'll read it again.