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Review of "The American Heiress" by Daisy Goodwin


Rating: 3/5 hunts.

The story was very detailed and told a nice tale about the life of the young American heiress, Cora Cash. Her mother is always looking to get the best in life for herself and her only daughter and in that case that involves marrying her into royalty or as close as she can get to it anyway. The pair travel to Europe and end up falling into company with a Duke. Cora gets the freedom from her mother she is searching for and her mother gets the title of mother of a duchess, so all is well. Sort of?

The story is told through alternating points of view and really has a handful of character stories within the story with each character relating off of the others stories. Sort of. Where as each story relates to the other, not all of it seems necessary to the heiress’ story overall.

I know that storytelling doesn't always have to have a grand adventure or a true lesson or feeling that you pull from it but at the same time I feel that it helps. This story was detailed and interesting to a point, but I just couldn't pull anything dynamic from it. Throwing in all of the jumping perspectives and extra information surrounding but not directly involving the heiress made it a hard story for me to follow.

I could see how some people would enjoy this book even if it didn't do much for me. I personally wouldn't read it again, but that isn't going to stop me from checking out the author’s other books.

~~~~~~~~~~Synopsis~~~~~~~~~~

Traveling abroad with her mother at the turn of the twentieth century to seek a titled husband, beautiful, vivacious Cora Cash, whose family mansion in Newport dwarfs the Vanderbilts’, suddenly finds herself Duchess of Wareham, married to Ivo, the most eligible bachelor in England. Nothing however is quite as it seems, however; Ivo is withdrawn and secretive, and the English social scene is full of traps and betrayals. Money, Cora soon learns, cannot but everything, as she must decide what is truly worth the price in her life and marriage.

~~~~~~~~~~Book Information~~~~~~~~~~

Published on June 21, 2011 by St. Martin’s Press.

Page Count: 468 pages

Genre: Historical Fiction, Young Adult, Romance

To purchase visit:

~~~~~~~~~~About the Author(s)~~~~~~~~~

Daisy Goodwin, a Harkness scholar who attended Columbia University’s film school after earning a degree in history at Cambridge University, is a leading television producer in the U.K. Her poetry anthologies, including 101 Poems That Could Save Your Life, have introduced Manu new readers to the pleasures of poetry, and she was Chair of the judging panel of the 2010 Orange Prize for Fiction. She and her husband, an ABC TV executive, have two daughters and live in London.

To learn more about Mrs. Goodwin, visit her website by clicking her image above.


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