Caterina

Caterina Gomez #2

by Jane Aiken Hodge

Caterina Fonsa, the heroine of Whispering, returns twenty years later to confront the political intrigue and social turmoil following Napoleon's 1807 invasion of Portugal and to deal with dark secrets from the past that have returned to haunt her. 10,000 first printing.

Genres: Romance

256 pages, Hardcover

First published March 26, 1999

About the author

Jane Aiken Hodge was born in the USA, brought up in the UK and read English at Oxford. She received a master's degree from Radcliffe College, Harvard University.

Before her books became her living she worked as a civil servant, journalist, publishers' reader and a reviewer.

She has written lives of Jane Austen and Georgette Heyer as well as a book about women in the Regency period, PASSION AND PRINCIPLE. But her main output has been over twenty historical novels set in the eighteenth century, including POLONAISE, THE LOST GARDEN, and SAVANNAH PURCHASE, the beloved third volume of a trilogy set during and after the American War of Independence. More recently she has written novels for Severn House Publishers.

She enjoys the borderland between mystery and novel, is pleased to be classed as a feminist writer, and is glad that there is neither a glass ceiling nor a retiring age in the writers' world. She was the daughter of Conrad Aiken and sister of Joan Aiken.

Reviews

[Elizabeth Scheller Williams · Rating 3 out of 5]

Thank you Internet Archive for having this book! Hate to say it but it wasn't worth the time both reading in forever ago and again today.

[A.J. · Rating 3 out of 5]

Chapters: 18C
Pages: 256

First let me begin this review by saying that I read this book back in 2014. However, after I read a book, I always try to write out my feelings on the story when I finish. Sometimes, I’m moved to write a great deal to type up later. Other times, I just feel up to writing a very basic review. I never intended for it to take me six YEARS to get it on my GoodReads account, but it has. Obviously, by now, I don’t really remember much about the story, though sometimes my notes help jog my memory. So, if the following review doesn’t really say much or deal too much with the story or plot, that’s probably because I wasn’t moved by one or the other or both to write more than I did. However, such as it is I give to you.

Summary: It’s Portugal, sometime in the early 1800s. Two princes are fighting over the right to rule in their native country. Dom Pedro’s the liberal who’s seeking to overthrow his brother, Miguel, who currently reigns in Portugal with an iron fist. And the heroine, Caterina Fonsa, is secretly working to help Dom Pedro’s cause by drawing political cartoons that feature Dom Pedro as the hero for Portugal and Dom Miguel as her tormentor. But her activism must remain secret or she could, if Dom Pedro loses, find herself in a great deal of trouble from the opposition.

But trouble seems to hang around Caterina as if it were a veil. Her reputation in Oporto is tenuous at best. Her son, Lewis, the heir of her family’s fortunes, is now of age and steadily asserting his “right to reign.” Her best friend’s husband was killed by Dom Miguel because he was protecting her (Caterina’s) errant son, who’s spoiled, angry, and proud, and whose recklessness caused the deformation of said best friend’s younger daughter’s face. Then there’s some mystery surrounding Caterina’s husband, Lewis’ father—no one seems to know who he is.

As to love, Caterina’s being dogged by a former lover whom she’s long since gotten out of her system, and also by her longtime friend and business associate, Greville, who seems overanxious for her future in Portugal and wants to marry her.

All these worries amid a very tumultuous environment of war, death, and espionage. The tempest in this teapot is so close to boiling over for Caterina that it just may be too late to act.

My Review (with some spoilers): I don’t know if I’ve ever read this or if it’s a sequel to another of her books (it doesn’t say), but I must have done one or the other because I knew too much of this story too soon. I just can’t remember if this is my first or second reading.

As to how I felt about it, well, it was all right, I couldn’t stand Caterina’s son, Lewis, nor did I like Ruth much. Lewis was a jerk to everyone—spoiled he may’ve been as a child, but that doesn’t give one leave as an adult to be thoroughly unlikeable. And Caterina’s inability to cut her ties with the brat and live her own life elsewhere was annoying. Ruth was annoying, too, until the very end when she got some backbone and stood up to her mother, who was not only a witch but a freak (trying to hook your daughter up with her half-brother is sick!).

I thought Jeremy’s character was weird and annoying. Blackmailed by Rachel, Ruth’s witchy mother, because he lived a homosexual lifestyle with young black boys, he decides to become her (Rachel's) lover and gets in bed (figuratively AND literally) with her and wants to spend his whole life with her, etc., etc., only to have his lustful fire put out because she, pained by Ruth’s ultimatum to take a hike “or I’ll tell what I know about you,” looks unattractive when he finds her one day. The man’s a freak! He actually DESERVES her. But he manages to eke out from her grasp just in the nick of time.

For me, I think the only likeable people in the book are Frank, the son of Harriet (Caterina’s best friend), and Greville, (Caterina’s friend and associate)—oh, and Greville’s mother, Jenny, who makes an appearance only in the last chapter or two. I guess some would say Hetta, Harriet’s younger daughter, would be likeable, but, to me, she has a serious fault: She’s in love with Lewis. (Yuck!)

I don’t know if this was a sequel or if I’d just read this before, but now that I’ve made note of it, I WON’T be reading it again.

Grade: B-