Charmed Circle (Charnwood Library) - Hardcover

Barbara Whitnell

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0708988067 ISBN 13: 9780708988060

Publisher: Charnwood (Large Print), 1995

Synopsis

Adored by their parents, the four Rossiter children seem an ideal family to their next door neighbor, Rachel, but as Rachel spends more time with them, she begins to guess the terrible secret they all hide

About this title

From the Back Cover

The Rossiters seem like the perfect family--sophisticated, clever, and attractive. Watching them from the house where she lives with her grandmother, Rachel yearns to be part of their charmingly chaotic world. Then one day she's invited to their home, and soon enough, part of their exclusive inner circle. As her attachment to the Rossiters deepens, Rachel begins to understand that even the most perfect family has its dark side. Only Gavin, the eldest son, with his elegant looks and zealous intellect, seems without flaw. But it is Gavin who brings about her painful break with the Rossiters, and as the years go by and Rachel's own life takes shape, she begins to understand that this rift is only one crack in the dangerously fragile armor in which the family has encased itself.

Beautifully rendered against the enchanting backdrop of a small English village, A CHARMED CIRCLE is a captivating novel of romance, heartbreak, and family secrets, penned by a most talented voice in women's fiction.

From Publishers Weekly

The author of Loveday offers few surprises and fewer appealing characters in her tale of an English schoolgirl's neurotic friendship with selfish neighbors. Rachel Bond is packed off to boarding school as Britain slides toward WW II. While spending holidays with her doughty grandparents in a small town in the countryside, she falls in with the Rossiters, a privileged family who lead a noisy, colorful life next door. Lofty Diana snubs the newcomer, and her sister Alannah is a whiner, but Barney is solid and likable, while the vague charm of eldest son Gavin makes Rachel swoon. Over the years, everything the tight-knit clan does reinforces Rachel's sense of inferiority. The author semaphores so wildly that all is not right with this pack of narcissists that the sordid secrets she finally reveals fall flat, and she never satisfactorily answers the question of why Rachel would suffer for so long in the awful Rossiters' shadow. Readers who revel in stiff upper lips and romantic endings after much tribulation may enjoy this portrait of a very British circle, bounded though it is by cliches and stilted dialogue.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Charnwood (Large Print)
• Publication date: 1995
• ISBN 10: 0708988067
• ISBN 13: 9780708988060
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 576