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Precious Bones, by Irina Shapiro
Download Precious Bones, by Irina Shapiro
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When the skeletal remains of a young woman and her baby are found entombed behind the kitchen wall of a historic Tudor house, Cassandra is overcome with grief. She seems to know who the young woman was, but not how she knows, or how she came to be there. Cassandra becomes inexplicably drawn to the house and the mystery of the "Bones of Blackfriars." As she begins to learn the truth about the Thorne siblings who occupied the house during the reign of Elizabeth I, her own life takes an unexpected turn, and she finds out that her fate is linked to the Thornes in ways she never imagined.
Extensively re-edited 11/2015
- Sales Rank: #140646 in eBooks
- Published on: 2013-11-21
- Released on: 2013-11-21
- Format: Kindle eBook
Most helpful customer reviews
84 of 91 people found the following review helpful.
Needs Work
By Keri M. Peardon
I find this story and the characters compelling enough to keep reading--I think there is talent there--but Ms. Shapiro is still learning her craft... and it shows.
Parts of the book get bogged down in unnecessary detail; it makes her main character's life sound boring and mundane. Ms. Shapiro would be aided in her revisions by the thought that every sentence is precious and needs to either move the plot forward or develop the characters. Lengthy descriptions of a house or doctor's office are boring; a sentence or two is adequate. Pick out those things that your character would be most likely to notice, because what she finds interesting speaks to her character.
Also, Ms. Shapiro needs to read her dialogue aloud. If she did, she would notice that it doesn't flow naturally. Real people (including people in the Elizabethan period) speak in contractions; her dialogue is stilted and unnatural due to a lack of contractions. She also needs to use "she said" (or "mused," "replied," "asked," etc.) more often because it sometimes becomes confusing as to who is speaking.
But the major complaint are the errors. Ms. Shapiro would be well-advised to hire an editor before taking her next book to press. There are numerous typos, grammar mistakes (most notably the inability to maintain the correct tense, great lack of commas, and poor paragraph breaking), and historical errors.
For instance, the main historical character is the orphaned daughter of a master stone mason and the family is starting to fall on hard times. She ends up marrying a titled nobleman of wealth. This would have never happened in the Elizabethan period. Marriage was a business contract only and Constance had nothing valuable to offer. Love didn't count as a ware.
I could have believed the situation if she had been his mistress--certainly that could have been a love match--or if she had a high title but money issues, or he had money issues and she was a wealthy, but common, heiress. But as it stands in the book, the marriage would have never taken place. And even if it had, she would have become "Lady Carlise" or "Lady Constance," (depending on if Richard had taken his full title and inheritance yet) and would no longer have been referred to by her common title, "Mistress."
She would not have borrowed a fine dress and jewels to go to court; the wearing of diamonds by someone like her was against sumptuary laws, and to do so in the presence of the other nobles and the queen would have been very ugly. She could have been imprisoned for dressing above her station.
Chest of drawers did not yet exist in the Elizabethan period; people were still storing their clothes in chests.
Pippa would have never been wearing a high-waisted dress; I have never seen any evidence of such a style in the late Elizabethan period.
The pistol Richard would have used would have been a matchlock, which means he would have had to light the match and position it just so before he could fire it. He would not have stuck it through his belt to pull out and use whenever he wanted.
Writers who are interested in creating historical fiction are warned of this in advance by other authors: make sure your historical elements are correct. Be fastidious about it. People who like to read historical novels are well-versed in the history and customs of their preferred time period, and they absolutely will call you out on any mistakes. For my first historical novel, I went so far as to add historical notes at the end to detail where history ended and fiction began--and why I chose to deviate from history.
19 of 21 people found the following review helpful.
Beautifully Written Historical Novel With A Fascinating Twist
By Bonnie Jo Davis
I loved this book and can't wait to read everything else by the author. This story is about a modern woman with an inexplicable link to a mystery that took place in another century. Cassandra is an author who writes best selling novels and lives in London. One day she sees a news story on television about a house in Blackfriar's where the bones of a young woman and an unborn infant are discovered during a renovation project. Cassandra feels very real grief and immediately realizes she knows who the story behind the bones. She visits the house, purchases a few days later and moves in right away. This action takes her boyfriend, friends and family by surprise because Cass can be impulsive but she is not reckless. After moving into the house Cass begins to have visions of another time and records the story for her next novel. The book then alternates between Cass and a woman named Constance who lived during the reign of Elizabeth I. The story is well done and although there is some violence and six it is very tame compared to every other book I've read. The ending of the book leaves open the possibility of a sequel and I hope the author considers writing it. As they say in England "Well done, Irina, well done!"
24 of 28 people found the following review helpful.
Let's Play "Count the Historical Inaccuracies"!
By Sea Laughing
When I initially wrote my review, I hadn't quite finished the book--and wasn't sure I would--but upon reaching the end, I subtracted one star. To be honest, the only reason I finished this book was because the blatant historical inaccuracies made me laugh so hard!
Why do people with zero knowledge of history always think it's easy to write historical fiction? Irina Shapiro exhibits a meager talent for storytelling, but her work is curtailed by her ignorance of the period, as well as a serious lack of skill in composition.
This isn't the worst book I've ever read, but Shapiro should attend a few writing classes or read a couple of books about writing before publishing again. I'd describe her writing style as "limp, passive and repetitive." Overused adverbs abound, as well as bland descriptions constructed with passive verb tense, poorly written dialogue with a dearth of tags, and too much meaningless inner dialogue dragging the plot to a crawl.
I had a hearty laugh when Turner told Cassandra, "Your story is so clich�" because this entire book is the definition of 'clich�.' When Cassandra interviews the local historian and states, "I'm trying to find as much as I can...I like to be accurate," I actually shrieked with mirth. (By complete coincidence, the heroine manages to find the only historian in England who knows the life stories of an obscure local working class family from 500 years in the past, but he doesn't know that James I was PROTESTANT, not Catholic.)
***CONTAINS SPOILERS*** (Though if you have any sense, it won't matter because you won't waste your time reading this book.)
Shapiro's lack of research into Elizabethan England initially irritated me, until the mistakes became so outrageous that I couldn't stop laughing. There are so many anachronisms: Elizabethan characters uttering everything from Valspeak to quotes that wouldn't be coined for centuries to modern psychological terms, parlors furnished with sofa and armchairs, the hero traveling around London in a posh carriage and wearing "coats" with his doublets ('doublet' is the Elizabethan word for jacket), and a maidservant pregnant with a bastard who plans to surrender her baby for adoption! Shakespeare also makes a premature appearance. (Is it really that hard to look up Shakespeare?) Yet it's clear Shapiro did do some research, as the process of drawing and quartering is presented in elaborate detail, as is Mary Stewart's execution (which we're treated to even though Mary isn't a character and the event takes place 'offstage').
It's hard to summon any empathy for the flawless modern heroine. Cassandra is young, beautiful, talented, successful, rich, famous, lives in a ritzy flat, has the perfect relationship...yawn. Could there be a more boring protagonist? Even her breakup with her original boyfriend is perfect, since a better lover is eager to take his place.
Elizabethan heroine Constance faces more adversity, making her more interesting, though she's basically a Vanilla Heroine, all beauty and not much personality. For most of the book, she's referred to as 'Constance'; then Shapiro switches to 'Connie' without warning, and thereafter alternates between the two. Another peeve: most of the female characters have names beginning with "C": Cassandra, Constance, Camille, and Charlotte, which evidently confused even Shapiro since "Connie" ends up chopping salad in Camille's modern-day kitchen during Chapter 52.
Dialogue is sparse, mostly polite chit-chat which fails to drive the plot; Shapiro tells the reader about most conversations instead of showing them. She spins elaborate descriptions of minor details, such as walking up to the door and knocking, but love scenes and fights are summed up in a few brief words. One disturbing element: the love scenes are vague and glossed over with euphemisms, but the rape scene is described in sickening detail. (That scene was another reason I changed my rating from two stars to one.) Death scenes are also written with close attention to gruesome reality, a startling contrast to the cardboard characters and unconvincing plot.
Too much of the book is a rehash of what happened before. For example, Chapter 56 features Richard thinking about everything that happened in Chapter 55. Then Chapter 57 begins with a broadsheet (in laughable "mock-Olde English") that repeats the events of Chapter 55 again!
Shapiro doesn't understand that conflict is the basis of a good story, or that overcoming obstacles is essential to a romance. There's only token conflict when each couple meets but it's soon forgotten, and what little dramatic tension initially existed dissipates. The villain's motivation doesn't make sense, nor do the charges brought against Richard after he defends his wife. Cassandra-the-famous-writer frequently states that she moves her characters like puppets, requiring only a beginning and an ending because filling in the middle is easy; I get the feeling Shapiro is describing her own writing style, which probably explains why the characters lack realism and the plot is so implausible.
***END OF SPOILERS***
If you're ever stranded on a deserted island with no other reading material available, then I recommend you read "Precious Bones." Until then, there are better ways to spend your valuable time...unless you're looking for a good laugh, but even that isn't worth the price of this book. Watch "Blackadder II" instead.
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