Historical Fiction challenge – 16th century England. What’s In a Name – a book with a colour in its title. Reading Challenges: Color Coded Challenge – green (I don’t know why this book is called Green Darkness – if the book explains the title I missed it). For me the book would have been better as straight historical fiction. I didn’t think this was successful, but seemed contrived. Green Darkness is written around the premise of reincarnation, so the characters/personalities feature in both time periods. There are some books that are easy to write about – this isn’t one of them so this is a brief post. The Green Book included a variety of businesses, including hairdressers and drug stores. But once I got on to the historical part, set in the 16th century it was better, so I read on. I wasn’t enthralled by it and nearly abandoned it after the first few chapters set in 1968, because the characters didn’t come over as real and the writing in accents was awful. Lying unconscious and near death, Celia’s spirit journeys backward to a time four centuries earlier when another Celia loved another Marsdon. Richard’s growing depression creates a crisis in Celia, and she falls desperately ill. We meet Richard and Celia Marsdon, an attractive young couple, whose family traces its lineage back to medieval England. This story of troubled love takes place simultaneously during two periods of time: today and 400 years ago. I thought I’d read the book years ago, not long after it came out, but as soon as I began what I thought was a re-read I realised that this was completely new to me – I just thought I’d read it because I’d visited Ightham Mote, a beautiful 14th century moated manor house in Kent where part of Green Darkness is set. I finished reading Green Darkness a couple of weeks ago and have been wondering what to write about it or whether to write anything at all.

Green darkness book