The Gatecrasher by Madeleine Wickham
The Gatecrasher has been on my “to be read” list for so long that I had almost given up on it completely. I’m so glad that I didn’t! The moment I started reading Madeleine Wickham’s modern day novel of manners, I was hooked! The story has humor, suspense and questions morality that kept me flipping pages at a non-stop pace.
I loved the breezy, upbeat manner in which Ms. Wickham chose to tell the story. It was so fluid that it almost played out like a movie. Wickham, who also writes under the enormously popular pseudonym Sophie Kinsella (of Shopaholic fame) wrote The Gatecrasher in third person as opposed to the Shopaholic‘s intimate first. This distance allowed me to understand each characters’ personal obstacles in relation to to each other with equal sympathy. Even Fleur Daxeny, the central character of the novel who makes her living swindling wealthy widowers, becomes sympathetic and a character I really enjoyed reading about.
Wickham did a wonderful job developing her characters while keeping the plot moving forward. The Gatecrasher is a marvelous book for a rainy day or a trip to the sunny beach!
