Denise

It was only physical pain, she could stand that. It was the other pain—the postponed, delayed, denied shadowy pain—that she couldn't bear. Not yet, not here, not when she was all alone.

Gone With the Wind is one of my all time favorite books so I always felt that one day I would get around to reading Scarlett. I had my reservations about reading this book because GWTW has such a magic to it and now that I have read Scarlett I realize those reservations I had were justified. I never expected someone else to create a work that was as great a masterpiece as GWTW but when a book is marketed as a 'sequel' to GWTW I expect some of the same style and for the characters to be the same as they are in GWTW.

This book just didn't capture the same Scarlett that readers love from GWTW. I was really confused with how Alexandra Ripley had Scarlett acting and where she had her going. We all know how selfish Scarlett can be but this book had her abandoning her children to go off 'adventuring' and finding distant relatives. I never would have thought of Scarlett going off to Ireland.

This book has a mix of old faces and new faces. But let's be honest, it is a whole lot more of new faces than old faces. Scarlett's children, her sister Suellen and Suellen's husband Will, and Rhett make small appearances in this book. I was yearning for some old familiar faces in this book. I feel like Rhett was there a decent amount in the first half of the book but then he disappears and reappears only for a bit until he is finally back in the story at the end. I can't really describe how I felt about this interpretation of Rhett Butler because I don't feel like he was in the story enough.

Let me tell you some of the events in Ireland were just outright boring. It was bad enough that I had to get used to all these new faces (that I felt were all using Scarlett) but then the plot starts to drag on and get boring. I didn't like the whole 'changeling' thing and didn't feel it was necessary. When I was reading about Scarlett giving birth to Cat I got as squeamish as I was when I watched the first Saw movie. I can't say that I enjoyed when Scarlett started spending time in Dublin as those events could be as boring as the rest of the Ireland parts.

I don't think that this was the best it could have been as a sequel to Gone With the Wind. Quite frankly I was expecting a lot more than this. I never really realized that I had my own theories about what I felt happened to all of the characters after GWTW until I started reading this book. I kind of like my own theories better than the events in this book but I do have to say that even though this wasn't what I expected or wanted I did manage to fly right through it.