My Cousin Jeremy

by Susan Speers

[Kim Deister]

My Cousin Jeremy is one of those books that grabs you right at the beginning and keeps you there right to the end. Jeremy and Clarissa are cousins who fall in love at a very young age but are torn apart by Clarissa's cold and domineering father. In an effort to deny their feelings and to do the right thing, the two fall into other relationships, often disastrous ones. But no matter what paths they take away from each other, they always seem to circle back.

The characters were very easy to relate to, regardless of whether you liked them or not. Clarissa was very easy to love, as the doting woman to Jeremy. I often had to remind myself that I was reading a story set in a very different time in society because I kept wanting to tell her to stop being a doormat! Jeremy as a sympathetic character, but one I was often very frustrated with because of his behavior. One of my favorite characters was Dickon, although he wasn't a main character. He was such a sweet and gentle man in the story and I really liked him, Caroline was also a very sympathetic character, although not always the most likeable. All of the characters, regardless of their role in the story, were very well developed and made very real.

If you like a good historical romance, I definately recommend this book. It was very emjoyable!