Skye Cameron

by Phyllis A. Whitney

In a New Orleans summer, Skye Cameron sees Justin Law for the first time and knows she will either love him or hate him - no woman could be indifferent to such a man. Warned against this tall man who has been in jail for murder, Skye is drawn to him in a way she cannot explain.

Skye to put thoughts of Justin out of her head but if she could, it would not be enough. Justin is willing to fight for what he wants... and he wants Skye.

Genres: Romance, Gothic, Mystery, Fiction, Historical Fiction, Gothic Romance, Historical

207 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published January 1, 1957

About the author

Phyllis Ayame Whitney (1903 – 2008) was an American mystery writer. Rare for her genre, she wrote mysteries for both the juvenile and the adult markets, many of which feature exotic locations. A review in The New York Times once dubbed her "The Queen of the American Gothics".

She was born in Japan to American parents and spent her early years in Asia. Whitney wrote more than seventy novels. In 1961, her book The Mystery of the Haunted Pool won an Edgar Award from the Mystery Writers of America for Best Juvenile novel, and she duplicated the honor in 1964, for The Mystery of the Hidden Hand. In 1988, the MWA gave her a Grand Master Award for lifetime achievement. Whitney died of pneumonia on February 8, 2008, aged 104.

Reviews

[C. (Don't blank click my reviews, comment please! · Rating 3 out of 5]

I am a gargantuan Phyllis Ayame Whitney fan, excited to have nearly all her prolific oeuvres. Some of my favourite all time books are hers, from around the 1950s: “Mystery Of The Strange Traveler”, “The Quicksilver Pool”, “The Trembling Hills”, “Mystery Of The Green Cat”. The only one I gave a low grade is “Black Amber”, for a cat murder! I see that despite the most wrongful of acts, my least favourite has become “Skye Cameron”. It was published in 1957 and depicts 1880.

I can’t find a page where Skye may have mentioned her home state. I only see New England, the northeast. Nonetheless it is another contrast that Phyllis liked to draw between cultures. In the United States, the cultural impact is larger than north from south. There is a divide between modern and outmoded life. Skye’s Scottish Dad, Bruce, was crippled from an accident and their immediate financial resource was her Mother’s brother. Bruce taught Skye to think for herself and to walk freely. In New Orleans, she was asked not to leave the house unaccompanied at age 22. Robert Tourneau imagined that ladies were inferior and further restricted his household, based on the perceived decorum of high class Creoles. Skye and her coquettish Mother were unhappy and Bruce was helpless.

Phyllis’s weakest story still contains fine writing, so I had trouble describing what it lacked. It is a romance instead of the gothic mystery we expect, for one. There is no secret discovery or suspense and no action until the end. There is forewarning that her uncle will one day be difficult and eventually, he is. The synopsis was inaccurate and the novel did not produce any growth. Explanations and potentially interesting twists inundate the end, instead of being parcelled out early enough to invest us.

[Elliott · Rating 3 out of 5]

Skye is the main character, and she falls hard for a dude with, we're told, a gnarly dark past (he fled NOLA with his traitorous spy father and became a murderer), who is actually, of course, a totally solid guy who shoulders burdens in noble silence. Pretty much everyone else is a pain in the butt, and unfortunately, we spend most of our time with them. Skye's mother is an incorrigible flirt with no conscience, apparently, and Uncle Robert is a different kind of psychopath, and everyone wants Skye to behave like a "good Creole," which means never leaving the house without male accompaniment and loveless arranged marriages. I wish that there had been more action and intrigue in the story, more descriptions of New Orleans and less fiddle faddle about how Skye always pulls her hair back too tightly because she thinks she can't compete with her mum.

[Dayna Smith · Rating 4 out of 5]

Skye and her mother move from New England to her uncle's house in New Orleans with her invalid father. Skye believes her uncle is the only answer for her paralyzed father. She can't understand why her mother is less than loving towards him. But as her uncle tries to mold her into his image of a Creole lady and arrange her marriage to his assistant, Skye begins to see a secret evil lurking below the ever polite and sophisticated surface. A great example of a classic Gothic romance novel.

[Meg Lynch · Rating 3 out of 5]

I first read this book during my high school years. I think one of the reasons it appealed to me so much then is that the heroine is someone who doesn't really fit in -- which totally describes my high school years, and I'm sure those of others. Reading it again made that clear to me. As it turns out, the heroine does what she needs to do in order to fit in and she also goes her own way. (Within bounds -- this was published in 1957, after all!)

[Gill · Rating 1 out of 5]

Set in New England at the start, the action (perhaps inaction is a better description) moves to New Orleans and the struggle of the daughter of the house to come to terms with the tyranny of an uncle whose life she gradually comes to realise is centred around revenge for slights he has felt he received in his youth. It makes me glad to live in a more emancipated society than the Creole one Whitney is writing about. However it seems all a thin disguise for a romantic pot-boiler, as far from behaving in an independent and thoughtful way the heroine just seems to fall madly in love with an unknown and unsuitable man, who of course, comes good in the end.
Some of the detail about the restrictive lives of women in this society and this era were interesting ... but ....

A highly intelligent friend gave me this to read because she enjoyed it. Oh well, I hope she forgets to ask what I thought of it!

[Sarah Sammis · Rating 1 out of 5]

I read Skye Cameron as a bonus volume for the Southern Reading Challenge. Since it takes place in New Orleans in the post-Civil War reconstruction era, the book certainly qualifies for the challenge. It and Wish You Were Here are tied for two of my least favorite reads for the challenge.

Skye Cameron is a yank, and specifically a New Englander of a liberal father and an ex-southern belle who has somehow found happiness in a life style completely different than what she was used to. Skye takes after her father in her liberal ideas and her red hair. She is a disappointment to her mother and the apple of her father's eye.

Unfortunately for Skye (and for the reader) the book takes a disappointing turn when the father falls and breaks his back, ending up paralyzed and unable to care for the family. For a character set up as loving her home state and being self sufficient, Skye does the unthinkable and suggests to her family that they move back to New Orleans to live with her mother's family.

Thus begins nearly two hundred pages of Skye's struggle against the patriarchy of southern gentile society. Although she supposedly rebels throughout the book she is merely choosing one male master for another and slowly but surely coming to accept this horrible way of life as both normal and preferable to her life in New England.

All I have to say to the premise and to Skye's "growth" from a girl to a woman is: bletch!

[Elizabeth Barter · Rating 5 out of 5]

My mother picked up the pocket edition of Phyllis A. Whitney's 'Skye Cameron' after work one evening. I think she got it at the drugstore for about $2.99.I remember the tagline,one critic wrote,emblazened on the cover..."A heroine who could be kissing kin to Scarlet O'Hara".A line like that sucked me in immediately, and my mother knew it. A few years earlier, CBS broadcast the movie "GONE WITH THE WIND", and We loved it!Girls in their mid teens in the late seventies early eighties were carrying around one of two books. One was ' The Thorn Birds'and the other
was ' Gone with The Wind'.Both were been shown on Network television within 4 years of each other.
Because I liked romances at the time , 'Skye Cameron ' became one of my favourite novels, partly because of the big events of 'Gone With The Wind' and' The Thorn Birds'.So that tagline was an important factor.More importantly the book became a favourite of mine because it was bought by my mother. She left it subtly lying around the house, (yeah...right mom)under the pretense she would read it later. I got it first and I read
it over and over again in my teens and my twenties, to the point I had footnotes in the margins. It delighted me , but I believe the real reason why I loved it so much was because it was the first book my mother and I ever shared.

[Cathy · Rating 2 out of 5]

I'm reading my way through Phyllis Whitney. It was fine. I became very frustrated with both Skye and her mother and their decision-making and relationship with each other. I also hoped that she would end up with Courtney throughout, rather than with Justin (on the basis of meeting him once). Sigh. There was no way we could have figured out that Lanny was Justin's son. Except for bringing his ineligibility to marry to light, I'm not sure that that was a necessary or useful part of the plot.

[Sarah · Rating 2 out of 5]

I nearly didn't finish this one because it starts so slow, but the action picks up in the second half, leaving the reader with a fairly enjoyable experience. Fans of Victoria Holt and other older cleaner historical suspense romance will find a lot to like here. This used to be my kind of thing, but it isn't so much anymore, thus only 2 stars.

[Alo · Rating 3 out of 5]

It was a good book. I got a little irritated at the excessive details of the inside of the houses, I like it but I had hope it would have had more conversations instead of the details. Though that is my opinion and I am sure others will disapprove at me.

[Cws]

F Whi

[Annie · Rating 5 out of 5]

My other favorite Phyllis Whitney.

[Bethani Middleton · Rating 3 out of 5]

Great character development- she really explored the depths of the person and the story line wasn't bad either. :) Set in New Orleans, she mixed rich details with the allure of history.

[Lauren · Rating 3 out of 5]

I absolutely love gothic romances with all of the mystery and the strong female characters. Phyllis A. Whitney is an amazing author incorporating an unforgettable story with amazing characters.

[Laurie D'ghent · Rating 4 out of 5]

In spite of the cover, this was a really good book--engaging, surprising, dramatic, the whole shebang!

[William · Rating 4 out of 5]

Not a romantic suspense novel per se as much as a historical romance with some suspenseful elements, "Skye Cameron" is the story of a half-Scottish, half-Creole young woman who returns with her parents to New Orleans to live upon the charity of her mother's older brother in the 1880s. A fish out of water in many ways, Skye tries to navigate the unfamiliar customs of her mother's home town. Meanwhile, she finds herself a pawn in a game of vengeance centering around Justin Law, another atypical Creole who has returned to New Orleans after nearly 20 years away. Like the immediate Whitney novels that preceded it, particularly "The Trembling Hills" and "The Quicksilver Pool," "Skye Cameron" is concerned about its characters' growth, whether into adulthood/maturity, or into better versions of themselves. In that sense, it offers a more deeply textured experience than Whitney's eventual settling into fast-paced, contemporary romantic suspense travelogues, as she became entrenched as the American answer to Mary Stewart and Victoria Holt. The historical detail is thorough, and the novel makes for a fun read.

[Sierra Gemma · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read this romance novel when I was a pre-teen because I'd always been told that my middle name "Skye" came from the Isle of Skye and then, one day, someone said, "Oh, no, your mom had just read "Skye Cameron" and liked it." I don't actually think that is where my name came from, but my mom had read it and liked it, and so I thought I'd give it a read too. I seem to remember liking it then. I'm sure my tastes have evolved since then (I was also reading a lot of Nancy Drew and V.C. Andrews at the time haha), but I think I'm going to re-read it because I am currently writing about my relationship with my mother.

[Alice · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was wrote well enough but it was a dissapointment, till the very end of the book I was still waiting for the romance..........and I wanted Justin in the book more, he is scarcely in it and even at the very end he is talking about another woman rather than Skye.....so just very dissappointing as a romance. I feel this book was a brochure for New Orleans instead lol. Basically it could have been much better.

[Nanci Hughes · Rating 5 out of 5]

My favorite author

Love Phyllis Whitney's writing. Always full of romance and mystery. Another hard to put down author who never fails to please you with her novels. She is the ultimate writer who will captivate you more and more with each of her amazing books!

[Elizabeth Barter · Rating 4 out of 5]

A good old fashioned historic romance . I still enjoy it after 35 years.

[Elisabeth · Rating 3 out of 5]

2.5-ish stars. Melodramatic, of course, and entirely predictable as it gets closer to the end, but better of its type than most of the other Whitneys I've read.

[Julie · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is my favorite Phyllis Whitney book, it has such a beautiful story

[Christina · Rating 4 out of 5]

Sometimes problematic and frequently ridiculous, but still such a fun read! I read every Phyllis A Whitney novel ever when I was a child and teen and revisiting them now in my 40s is so much fun.

[Sally N. Inglis]

Per my diary, I finished reading this book on Jan. 14th, 1977. It was really good.

[Shawna · Rating 3 out of 5]

3-

[Lisa · Rating 2 out of 5]

I usually like old suspense/romance novels--I read a couple each year just for fun--but this one was just too predictable and silly. Her mother was pathetic, and I never felt any attraction for the character of Justin, so it was hard to understand Skye's attraction. Overall I found it unsatisfying.

[Lu · Rating 3 out of 5]

Read years ago. I was a big fan of Phyllis Whitney.

[Cheri · Rating 3 out of 5]

I have read many Phyllis Whitney books over the years starting in high school (my mom reommended). Not enough mystery thriller in this one for me but still do enjoy her writing.