My Review of Scarlett: 5 Stars
WOW. So very very satisfying. When I finished GWTW I absolutely had to get this one for some closure (and I read other people’s reviews to make sure I would get it… I’d have been *pissed* if this one ended sad or on a cliffhanger too!) But it didn’t.
Now, I will say early on, the characters seemed a bit clumsier than they did in Margaret Mitchell’s hands in the sense that Ripley would come right out and say things that Mitchell would show in the way the characters behaved, allowing the reader to draw the appropriate conclusions. But I was impressed with how well-researched the book was, so I either got past this, or it stopped happening so much as the book went on.
One other frustration from early on was that Scarlett’s behavior toward Rhett made me cringe with shame for her (“You idiot! You’ll never win him back that way!”) And this went on for a few hundred pages, to the point where I started to think the whole thing was going to be like a soap opera (whereas the original GWTW was an epic, and the historical setting was very important to the story.) But after one pivotal moment, all that changed, and Scarlett became the heroine we loved so much from the original book, and the one Rhett fell in love with, too. The rest of the book, from that point on, was utterly absorbing.
Down to the last 23 pages, I almost didn’t want to finish, because I didn’t see how she could possibly wrap it up happily. But she DID, and I was totally satisfied! Anyone who felt grief-stricken when GWTW was over should definitely read this, you won’t be disappointed!
