Beyond
the Cliffs of Kerry
By Amanda Hughes
Reviewed by Tarren Young
The writing of this book does not flow smoothly like
any of the three main rivers of Ireland mentioned in the story, it is harsh and
choppy. Perhaps this is done because of the environment Darcy McBride, the main
character, lives in – and has had to live in since she was a young child,
facing and surviving a famine in Ireland in the 1740’s. If Ms. Hughes chose to
use choppy sentence structure for the time periods purpose, I could potentially
understand, but I still feel that it doesn’t work and makes for a more
difficult and less enjoyable read.
There are a few plot twists that I didn’t expect,
which is cool, and I was getting into the romance part toward the end. (Literally,
like page 320 or something.) Despite how uneven, sometimes awkward and clumsy
the romance writing is, I do not appreciate how long it took me to get into the
romance.
As a reader, I also don’t appreciate wasting my time
on reading something that doesn’t draw me in right from the beginning. The
story starts in Ireland but, other than a beating by her brother, there is no
real action taking place until two years later – about 120 pages into the
story. As a writer of mainly historical romance myself, I stuck with it to see
what I could learn about the time period and the general character
roles/thoughts/actions of the time.
I am also very disappointed with this story because
it is written in third person and, although I typically don’t have a problem with
third person, the author gives us what every
character says and thinks. For
example, in one paragraph we have Darcy’s point of view, then Nathan’s, then
Jean-Michel, then another character. Sometimes it is within very short
paragraphs in succession, so that we never really get to know the characters.
We just have surface driven ambitions. This, to me as a reader, is very
distracting and there are very little transitions at all in the story.
As both a reader and a writer, I understand that,
considering the time frame of Darcy’s story, (it spans roughly five years of
her life) and the scenarios she is thrown into, there is a need for a lot of
characters. Darcy and her brother, her friends and family in Ireland, her best
friend and her husband and all of
their children, the Catholic Father they smuggle in, and the British military
that is stationed there for a while (we learn all the top men’s names.) We hear
of names from towns one or two over, we learn names from the ship she is on
while being transported to the colonies and, of course, the people she meets in
the colonies. Having to keep track of all the characters was a bit maddening. I
honestly felt there were too many characters in this story and, if we heard
ninety-percent of it from Darcy’s view only, then we wouldn’t have had the need
for so many characters. She could have just called them the British guards or
British Generals.
I am rating this story as 1.5 stars because this
story could have been told in 150 pages instead of 390, and the writing feels
more like a first draft than a final draft.
