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Mar 08, 2015ryner rated this title 2 out of 5 stars
Celia Sands is a young actress who has just been offered a role in a play with a mysterious history. A stately Italian manor undergoing restoration is the setting, both where the play will be performed and where the actors will live and rehearse. It is also where the play was originally meant to be performed two generations earlier, until the lead actress, also named Celia Sands, inexplicably disappeared. Season of Storms was disappointingly predictable and transparent. I was confident (and mostly correct) early on that I knew how the plot was going to play out, and the majority of characters were almost laughably one-dimensional. There are some strange undertones in Celia's inner voice at several times throughout the book, suggesting that she is incapable of independent thought or action. The first quote that caught my eye as Celia was standing on a sidewalk, waiting for a friend but is chatted up by another man: "However appealing I might find the smile and the accent, I thought, it wouldn't do for me to be chatting with a strange man when Rupert came back, not with all of the lectures he'd given me over the years on the dangers of doing just that." What? It's dangerous to speak to someone? In a public place? She must have lived a pretty sheltered life. And here's another, a bit further into the story: "...and I couldn't very well use the computer without Alex there." Why? He had given her explicit permission to do so. Is she inept? Overall, a disappointing book. I suspect it was one of Kearsley's first endeavors and has been only recently republished after her success with more recent titles.