A Moonlight Sonata

3 Star "I'm Hopeless" Review

What I like about Eva Ibbotson's YA romances is that they are sweet, and her writing is truly lovely. Absolutely, Meyer's Twilight cannot compare. Yet, if you've read one of her YA romances, you've read them all.

My first and still favorite book of hers is A Countess Below Stairs. I reread The Reluctant Heiress last night to see whether I would be keeping or swapping this book, and as I did so, I could see echoes of A Countess Below Stairs in the character of a young princess, the arts lover and republican, the perfect Mary Sue that everyone loves; in the narcissistic fiancee of the princess's love interest - not evil, just in love with her own self; and in the love interest caught in the beguiling webs of first love, and after realizing true love, just as snared by his own honor in accepting a life with a shallow beauty. The only difference between the two books is that he engineers the breaking of his own engagement, and in A Countess Below Stairs, his loyal friends and servants are responsible.

The similarities alone would probably send me running to Paperbackswap.com to swap this book for something else but how could I discard a book with such beautiful prose and love scenes?

"'I must go-- the aunts will be worried. Guy, I don't know if we will meet again, but--' Her voice broke and she tried again. 'Sometimes, when you're alone and you look up at--' Once more, she had to stop. Then she managed, 'If I cannot be anything else...could I be your Star Sister? Could I at least be that?'

Guy dug his nails into his palms. Everything in him rose in protest at the fey, romantic conceit. He did not want her in the heavens, linked to him by some celestial whimsy, but here and now in the flesh and after the death of the flesh, her hand in his as they rose from graves like these when the last trump sounded.

'Yes,' he managed to say. 'You can be my Star Sister. You can at least be that.'"

Where, oh where, is my Star Sibling?