Wildflower Hill
Ratings3
Average rating4
15
Ratings3
Average rating4
Emma Blaxland-Hunter, a prima ballerina from London, must re-evaluate her life after doctors declare her knee unfit for dancing. At the behest of her mother, Emma returns home to Sydney, where she discovers her affluent and loving grandmother, Beattie Blaxland, has left her an inheritance: Wildflower Hill, an old sheep farm in Tasmania. When Emma settles in temporarily to clean out Wildflower Hill and sell it, she discovers a photo of her grandmother with a mysterious child.
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It's been a little while now since I read a truly gripping, wholly engaging book and I've been waiting for one to just click. I'd been sticking to tried and tested authors but it took me switching to someone new to find what I'd been looking for.
Right from the beginning Wildflower Hill was full of warmth and emotion. Starting with a prologue in which a grandmother tells her granddaughter that if she becomes a famous ballerina she will one day leave her a gift for the time when she can no longer dance anymore. Her granddaughter consumed only by her passion for dance tells her grandmother she won't need a gift but her grandmother promises it anyway.
The story then moves to a dual time story following ballerina Emma as a sudden accident ends her ballet career and she moves back home to Australia where her grandmother has left her an inheritance of a sheep station in Tasmania full of boxes filled with memories of her life as a wealthy businesswoman and also with secrets of a life she never shared with anyone. Running alongside this is Beattie's story, from growing up in poverty in Glasgow to finding herself on board a cargo boat to Australia pregnant with a married man's child.
The story was so well written, it sounds a little trite and predictable but that was the most refreshing part of this book, it had some truly wonderful twists in the story that made it stand out for me. Spanning the period between the two world wars and in a small town in Australia it raises great questions about how morally people could be misjudged and cast out for things today we wouldn't consider to be unacceptable.
It has such a lovely blend of tales of motherhood and love and the things we will do to try and keep our families provided for and safe. It was nice to find myself immersed so much in well constructed, strong and interesting characters.
I'm desperately awaiting the newest novel by Kate Morton this summer and had hoped to find a book as engaging as she writes to tide me over a bit till then. Kimberly Freeman was endorsed by Morton on this book and having read it I can fully understand why.
It's one of the few books I've read lately I would whole heartedly recommend without hesitation. It was superb and I'm now excited to read more by this author which have been hiding on my kindle for a while.
