Glittering Fortunes

by Victoria Fox

[Leah]

Victoria Fox burst onto the Chick Lit scene a couple of years ago with her fabulous novel Hollywood Sinners and since then she’s become a massive hit with beachgoers, with her glitzy door-stop books. It was announced earlier this year that as well as writing her glitzy beach books, she’d also be writing for Mills and Boon. When I asked her what that meant, she said the books were pretty much like her beach books but were set mostly in England. I was really looking forward to reading her first ever Mills and Boon Glittering Fortunes, and I actually think it’s better than her beach books.

Let me explain – I really, really like Victoria Fox novels. Hollywood Sinners was an amazing read, but I wasn’t so taken with Temptation Island. I have her third novel on my Kindle to read and I am now looking forward to it having loved Glittering Fortunes. It does seem that perhaps her beach reads are perhaps a bit too over the top – with the glamour, the secrets, the characters, the villians etc, but who knows? I could actually love Wicked Ambition and it may have just been that Temptation Island wasn’t for me. We’ll see. What I do know is Glittering Fortunes was an amazing novel. It did indeed have the Hollywood glamour we come to expect from a Victoria Fox novel, but it was a bit more pared down than, say, Hollywood Sinners.

I really loved the tale of Glittering Fortunes, I loved seeing the rivalry between the Lomax brothers, Charlie and Cato. I loved reading about their ancestral home, Usherwood. I loved Olivia most of all, I always feel these types of novels need a level-headed heroine to root for, and Olivia was that, along with Charlie actually because it was his brother that was the arrogant, awful man. I actually despised Cato. I wanted to maim him, in fact. I absolutely guessed the big secret, but that wasn’t the worst thing in the world. I enjoyed the back-and-forth between Cato and Charlie, and I loved rooting for Charlie and feeling evil feelings for Cato. When I first started reading the novel, it felt as though it would be a battle of good vs evil; Charlie and Olivia vs Cato and his Hollywood girlfriend Susanna, but I actually liked Cato’s girlfriend. She wasn’t as awful as I expected her to be, and she had some redeeming qualities, though she hides them quite well.

I really enjoyed Glittering Fortunes, I liked the tale of the Usherwood estate, and I really liked Olivia, she was a fabulous main character and I loved Charlie, too. I’d definitely recommend Glittering Fortunes. No, it’s not as big or blockbustery as Fox’s beach books, but I personally think it’s so much better. I am SO glad I decided to read the novel; it’s so easy to judge a Mills and Boon books by its publisher as soppy love stories, but this was a fabulous story. I look forward to her second Mills and Boon novel and I hope Victoria manages to keep up writing two books a year, to provide one massive OTT book and one with a fabulously wonderful story, set in the heart of England. It just goes to show, a book doesn’t have to be set on a tropical island to be brilliant, because I wanted to go and live in Lustell Cove. Do pick up Glittering Fortunes, it was an amazing read!