276°
Posted 20 hours ago

Wideacre: Book 1 (The Wideacre Trilogy)

£4.995£9.99Clearance
ZTS2023's avatar
Shared by
ZTS2023
Joined in 2023
82
63

About this deal

Cons:I did not like Julia's weakness and passiveness as a character. She was not nearly as strong as Beatrice, and I was hoping that she would have a stronger and bolder personality. At first, the heroine is actually quite sympathetic. She lives in an era that subjugates women and refuses to see her as anything more than a breeding ground. And when Beatrice first makes her intentions to fight for Wideacre known, she does so as a reaction to the fear that she might soon be homeless, pushed out of her beloved Wideacre and forced to cater to the whims of some strange man to whom her dense brother decided to marry her. Beatrice clearly loves her father but she is even more devoted to the state of Wideacre. And even as a child, she is determined to live and die on the patch of land. Her dreams begin to shatter when she turns 11 and learns that her brother Harry is poised to inherit the land once her father passes.

Plot:It's been 11 years since Beatrice Lacey has ruined her beloved Wideacre. She leaves behind her daughter and son, Julia and Richard, to carry on the family name and run Wideacre. raised by their loving "Mama-Aunt" Celia, they are raised in the lands ruins while they learn the ways of the land. But the villagers are whispering; one of them is the favored child. Only one of them can feel the land and be connected by it. And over those tumultuous years, Richard and Julia will struggle for power over the control of Wideacre. Yet they do not know of their past, of their mother's past. This paragraph is one of the most simplest ways to describe these major theme that places through all three books. It is exactly this message that Beatrice, Julia, and Meridon struggle with in their own way. They think it all about the money, when it's truly not. They struggle to love others and they struggle to love their own land. It's this idea of happiness that both Beatrice and Julia failed at, but Meridon achieves. Books 1 and 2 had unhappy endings. People died and they themselves died. Meridon gets her happy ending with Will and the money means nothing to her in the end.After surviving such an unpleasant and poor childhood, it is just unbelievable how blinded Meridon becomes to the Haverings' machinations. I mean, seriously, it was so obvious they were trying to take advantage of her! I really wonder what Philippa Gregory was going for in this novel, because she certainly didn't give us a likable heroine in the slightest. Beatrice Lacey is one of the most horrible, nasty protagonists I've read...and honestly I enjoyed her scandalous behavior. I went into this novel knowing that she was a universally disliked character, and I think that really helped my overall enjoyment of this. Meridon, or Sarah, seems to have a balance of both her mother, and grandmother, and through out the book she discovers that for herself. When it came down to it, she didn't let her demons keep her from happiness. Beatrice Lacey was an unreliable narrator of the finest sort -- a complete psycho in some ways, but startlingly insightful in others. In contrast to Beatrice, Julia Lacey is intended as a positive figure. She doesn't conspire to murder & destroy for personal reasons, nor does she willingly enter into an incestuous relationship with her sibling. But peripheral characters from Book 1 have been burned by Beatrice & her dominating awfulness, & they ruthlessly stomp the smallest signs of willfull behavior (i.e., "Beatrice's witchery") within Julia's veins. The result? An unrepentant doormat of a heroine -- a woman who has no concept of what an abusive relationship is, a woman with absurd expectations of love, a woman who is nowhere nearly strong enough to renew Acre & still defeat her brother Richard. One or the other...maybe. But not both. The most irksome aspect of TFC is Julia's indoctrination into & acceptance of the abusive relationship with Richard -- she believes that indoctrination is a woman's duty, & she accepts Richard's domination as the natural course of their roles, even when his touch starts to repel her & she learns the full extent of his evil. Her voice is a peek into Battered Woman Syndrome, & it's extremely uncomfortable (as it's meant to be). Like most Gregory books, she explores the restrictive world of the female sex. These women live in a world where the only skills and talents that are valued are 1) the ability to marry well, and 2) the ability to produce healthy male heirs. Nothing else really matters. Your family's fortune can increase or decrease with every marriage and birth. You feel the pressure.

It also really annoyed me that Celia was so proprietary of Julia when Julia was really Beatrice's daughter! I don't think I've ever read a book where a character was so consumed by their home and lands (though Bess in "The Other Queen" also by Philippa Gregory comes close) that they would do absolutely anything for them. This was the case with Beatrice Lacey, the main character, protagonist & antagonist of Wideacre. I know a lot of people hate Beatrice, but I liked her 😂. (Though obviously, I didn't approve of everything she did.) She was a master at manipulation; I was impressed. By the end of the novel, when her age was revealed to be 20, I was so surprised. She seemed to be at least 23. The burdens of all the debts weighed heavily on her, and she was described as having slight wrinkles already. (Though she was outside in the sun a lot, so that couldn't have helped.) Also, 20 seemed too young to be that business-savvy. I hope she was at least 21 when she died at the end of the novel. She and Harry died too young, younger than their parents' premature deaths. This is a "historical fiction" novel (I put it in quotes because the only historical things thus far were petticoats and carriages driven by horses.), a story of Scarlett O'Hara/Marquise Isabelle de Merteuil type of protagonist who is a) horny, b) loves her land and c) is a manipulative psychopath. I was kind of impressed that Richard got away with all his crimes for so long. I suspected he had killed Clary, but I couldn't figure out what the reason for that was. He later revealed that she saw him raping Julia. When Richard told Julia he would have killed her had she not been pregnant and then remarried another girl, I kind of wanted to see that play out. Julia was no Beatrice, though she had the same gift for the land. Julia was Celia 2.0. Celia couldn't have raised Julia in her image better. I didn't understand the ending. Julia planned to kill her daughter once she was born to rid Wideacre of any heirs/squire, but instead she wanted the land for her daughter when she came of age. (After she accidentally gave her off to a Gypsy woman in a reverie.)I didn't like at the end how she was repudiating the name of Sarah when earlier she had repudiated the name of Meridon. When she found "Wide" and took her birthname, Sarah, I thought to myself how Sarah is such a plain name compared to Meridon. But now I got used to it, and I'm not too fond of the idea of her denying the name her biological mother gave her...

A well written book, highlighting the horror of the disparity between social classes, and last but not least, between men and women, most of which still very much goes on today in far too many places. From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Other Boleyn Girl comes the final book of the extraordinary Wideacre trilogy as the heir to the great estate comes home at last.

Publication Order of Standalone Novels

The Queen’s Fool takes place in the winter of 1553. Hannah Green is a fourteen-year-old girl pursued by the Inquisition who is forced to flee from her home in Spain along with her father. She is no ordinary girl though and has been gifted with the “sight” which allows her to see the future, a gift that is priceless in the Tudor court. Hannah ends up being adopted by Robert Dudley, the son of King Edward’s protector. Dudley brings her to court as a “holy fool” for Queen Mary and Queen Elizabeth. She ends up working as a spy and endangered by the laws against heresy, treason, and witchcraft. She must choose between the safe life of a commoner and the danger of the royal family. The Cousins’ War series begins with The White Queen which sees the throne of England at stake as the Wars of the Roses begin. Elizabeth Woodville is a woman of extraordinary beauty and ambition who secretly marries the newly crowned king of England. She ends up rising to the demands of her family as she fights of the success of her family. Now, her sons have become the central figures in an unsolved mystery that has confounded historians for centuries: the lost princes in the Tower of London. Since Richard is Beatrice's child, he would be the obvious choice. However, Richard isn't just a bully to Julia, the villagers hate that guy AND the animals hate him, which if you watch horror movies is a bad, bad sign, and he loves the land, but in a possessive way and yearns to be its sole squire. ALSO, his crimes get more and more outrageous as he matures and the book progresses.

Asda Great Deal

Free UK shipping. 15 day free returns.
Community Updates
*So you can easily identify outgoing links on our site, we've marked them with an "*" symbol. Links on our site are monetised, but this never affects which deals get posted. Find more info in our FAQs and About Us page.
New Comment