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Tadiana ✩Night Owl☽'s Reviews > The Doctor's Dilemma
The Doctor's Dilemma
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Tadiana ✩Night Owl☽'s review
bookshelves: dated-social-attitudes, victorian, wallowing-in-misery-and-angst, whatever, squeaky-clean-romance, gutenberg-freebie
Mar 23, 2020
bookshelves: dated-social-attitudes, victorian, wallowing-in-misery-and-angst, whatever, squeaky-clean-romance, gutenberg-freebie
2.5 stars. This is a Victorian era romantic soap opera, with all the drama, self-sacrifice and long-windedness that implies.
Written in 1873 (I read it online at Project Gutenberg), The Doctor's Dilemma begins with an uppercrust, frantic young woman, Olivia, escaping from the rooms in London where she's been locked in for three weeks because REASONS, and haring off as far as she can go ... which ends up being the Channel Islands. There she shelters with a friendly fisherman and his aged mother in a remote cottage on the island of Sark.
One fateful day Olivia slips and falls down a cliff, injuring herself pretty badly. Enter the handsome doctor from the nearby island of Guernsey, and love at first sight. But the handsome doctor is also engaged to a cousin of his, which was a major thing to try to upend back in that day. Also the doctor soon realizes that Olivia is the nameless woman that he saw a newspaper ad for, by someone trying to find her. Sinister or good? He doesn't know. What he also doesn't know is that Olivia has other secrets she hasn't shared ...
Not badly written, for its day, but MAN, does this novel take the long and winding road to the expected ending. Maybe it was originally written as a newspaper serial? Because I can't think of any other reason (besides Victorian, which admittedly does explain a lot) for it to be so lengthy. I have to admit I skimmed most of the second half of it.
Recommended only if you really like old-fashioned romance and don't mind if it’s a super-slow burn.
Written in 1873 (I read it online at Project Gutenberg), The Doctor's Dilemma begins with an uppercrust, frantic young woman, Olivia, escaping from the rooms in London where she's been locked in for three weeks because REASONS, and haring off as far as she can go ... which ends up being the Channel Islands. There she shelters with a friendly fisherman and his aged mother in a remote cottage on the island of Sark.
One fateful day Olivia slips and falls down a cliff, injuring herself pretty badly. Enter the handsome doctor from the nearby island of Guernsey, and love at first sight. But the handsome doctor is also engaged to a cousin of his, which was a major thing to try to upend back in that day. Also the doctor soon realizes that Olivia is the nameless woman that he saw a newspaper ad for, by someone trying to find her. Sinister or good? He doesn't know. What he also doesn't know is that Olivia has other secrets she hasn't shared ...
Not badly written, for its day, but MAN, does this novel take the long and winding road to the expected ending. Maybe it was originally written as a newspaper serial? Because I can't think of any other reason (besides Victorian, which admittedly does explain a lot) for it to be so lengthy. I have to admit I skimmed most of the second half of it.
Recommended only if you really like old-fashioned romance and don't mind if it’s a super-slow burn.
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Reading Progress
March 22, 2020
–
Started Reading
March 23, 2020
– Shelved
March 23, 2020
– Shelved as:
dated-social-attitudes
March 23, 2020
– Shelved as:
victorian
March 23, 2020
– Shelved as:
wallowing-in-misery-and-angst
March 23, 2020
– Shelved as:
whatever
March 23, 2020
– Shelved as:
squeaky-clean-romance
March 23, 2020
– Shelved as:
gutenberg-freebie
March 23, 2020
–
Finished Reading
