I am totally going to give this 4 Lamb stars. As Lamb fans know, it's not a good read unless you have something really disturbing or twisted in the story. Slaps, forced seduction (who are we kidding, rape), name calling, possessive and/or cruel behavior...
Here, we have an h traveling with her fiance whom I believe she did love but I feel suffered a bit from Peter Pan syndrome (so we know he's not going to be the last man standing in this drama). The h, Prue (short for Prunella!!! which if you ask me supports the general consensus in the story that her mother was mentally off her rocker), is traveling from Australia where her mother took her at the age of 13. Originally from England, her mother had flipped out believing that her husband had been having an affair with the local feudal lord's wife. Well, a modern day feudal lord in that the family owns all of the land and has tenant farmers (though they mostly raise sheep). Her father's family had been tenant farmers for generations. The owners are the Killanes: Josh, sister Linsey and mom Lucy (the one Prue's mom accused her dad of having an affair with).
Now with her mom having passed away, she is going on a European tour with her fiance and stopping to reunite with her father along the way (she hasn't had contact with him for 10 years). The father tried over the years to reach out to her but her mother kept most of the correspondence from Prue and also watched her with an eagle eye to make sure she didn't reach out to him either, mostly through emotional blackmail.
The story proceeds along Lamb lines with a forceful Josh, a flakey fiance, a hostile Prue and a bitchy sister Linsey. There's the typical push and pull, the fiance taking off with the sister Linsey and Josh and Prue coming together.
So far typical Lamb fare. So what was the major disturbing Lamb note? This. The H makes a comment to the h early on that they had already kissed which surprises her as she says they never even shook hands. He mentions that he's known her since she was born until she left at 13.
So at one point in the story Prue has a dream about a party that she attended when she was younger:
She must have drifted off to sleep soon afterwards, because she dreamt of being at a party, a children's party at Killane House. Prue was wandering through the maze of passages and rooms, frightened by the boom of the wind in the chimneys, wondering where everyone else had vanished. They were playing some childish game; hide and seek maybe. She heard a sound in a cupboard and opened it; it was dark inside but somebody moved in the darkness, somebody's hand reached out and grabbed her, dragged her into the cupboard, slamming the door behind her before she could escape again.
"Got you," somebody whispered, and Prue screamed, high and shrill, but before she could scream again somebody kissed her.
She had never been kissed like that before; his mouth was warm and moist, it tasted of cider, which some of the older boys at the party had been drinking. Prue was too startled to kiss him back or to fight him off, she just stood there, wide-eyed and breathless.
"Who...?" she whispered, unable to see his face in the dark little space.
"Who? Twit twoo..." he mocked, and then suddenly pushed her out of the cupboard again just as a little crowd of her friends ran past.
Hmm you think. That's not too disturbing right? Obviously it was a young Prue and Josh. I even thought that maybe he made a mistake and grabbed the wrong girl. But then we get THIS:
"We kissed," he said, the sardonic glimmer stronger.
She frowned. "You said that before, but I don't remember ever kissing you!"
He laughed. "We had a Christmas party up at Killane House, for Lynsey, not me - all the children living on the estate, all our tenants' children, and friends of Lynsey's from school. We gave them tea and organised the usual games kids love: murder in the dark, charades."
Prue was very still, remembering her strange dream. "I was there, wasn't I?"
His dark eyes mocked. "Oh, you were there, sweetheart. You were wearing a very pretty dress, I remember - very simple white organdie in the Regency style, high-waisted, with a long, straight skirt and a little round neckline, a green velvet sash round your waist. You looked charming, with that red hair of yours hanging down in ringlets. You suddenly didn't look like a little girl, anymore. It was obvious you were going to be a beautiful woman before too long."
He continues...
"One of the games we all played was hide and seek," he said, eyes narrowed, and Prue took a sharp breath. "Yes," asked Josh, but she shook her head. "I didn't say anything."
"I thought you were going to - never mind," he said. "I hid in a cupboard up in the attic and after a while the door opened and..."
"Oh," Prue broke out, trembling, and he put a hand to her face, stroking her cheek, his index finger softly following the line of her mouth.
"Yes, you were there, and I pulled you into the cupboard and kissed you."
No, stay with me here...he goes on a bit more
Josh grimaced. "Then a whole lot of other people came past and you ran after them, and I stayed in the cupboard feeling pretty stupid. I was almost twice your age, you were just a kid, a little girl of thirteen - and I was in my twenties!
Let me clarify, she was 13, he was 25...
I didn't know what had come over me, except that you looked so different that night, you were lovely, and I'd been staring at you all through the party, thinking how you were growing up, and how gorgeous you were going to be."
Did I mention she was 13 and he was 25?
So yeah, that bit of crazy bumped this up to a 4. If you are a Lamb fan, you know what I'm talking about. You have to give bonus points for the disturbing.