Review - The Flight of Gemma Hardy by Margot Livesey

Title: The Flight of Gemma Hardy

Author: Margot Livesey

Publisher: Harper Collins

Publish Date:Jan 24, 2012

Hardcover, 447 pages

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Reading this book I found myself wanting to put the book down. I kept thinking, I'll read a little more and then see if I still like it. I really debated the entire way through this book. It wasn't that I didn't like this book, but I wasn't completely involved in this either. Or maybe it was just a really tough book to read. Margot writes this book like poetry. It was beautiful and in depth. It was much more intrinsic that I usually read. There is nothing light and airy about this book.

Gemma has a really tough life, but she has this wonderful spirit that just keeps ticking. I found myself rooting for her, but the circumstances seemed to get worse and worse til I felt bad. She is just destroyed at the boarding school and no one wants to help her. I can't imagine being that alone and still feeling the hope she pushes.

I want to tell you about her wonderful love story she finally has with this man who makes her feel alive and wants her to be more than she has ever had someone believe in her. She finds her true worth when she learns she can be a good teacher with her au pair. She has a few people who really do want the best for her, but life is not dishing Gemma much luck. 

I hate to tell too much about this book as the journeys she has intertwine each other. It is so worth the read, but it felt like I was trying too hard to read it too.

Summary -

 Acclaimed, award-winning author Margot Livesey delivers her breakout novel: a captivating tale, set in Scotland in the early 1960s, that is both an homage and a modern variation on the enduring classic, Jane Eyre

Fate has not been kind to Gemma Hardy. Orphaned by the age of ten, neglected by a bitter and cruel aunt, sent to a boarding school where she is both servant and student, young Gemma seems destined for a life of hardship and loneliness. Yet her bright spirit burns strong. Fiercely intelligent, singularly determined, Gemma overcomes each challenge and setback, growing stronger and more certain of her path. Now an independent young woman with dreams of the future, she accepts a position as an au pair on the remote and beautiful Orkney Islands.

But Gemma's biggest trial is about to begin . . . a journey of passion and betrayal, secrets and lies, redemption and discovery that will lead her to a life she's never dreamed.

hininininin