Well, I had to add a new shelf for this book - romance. It's not something I usually read, but I wanted to read some classics that I never liked or read when I was younger. I didn't really even know exactly what I was getting into, but I really enjoyed the book, even though it was often hard to understand the language. But I could figure it out, for the most part, and there were some footnotes to explain a lot of it.

It was sort of a soap opera, where you think something's about to happen, then some silly assumption or misunderstanding keeps it from happening. I read that this was published in pieces over time, so this might account for this for the same reason the soaps do it - to get the readers to tune in next week.

The main family was pretty dysfunctional. The father had married the mother because she was young and sexy, I guess. But she was a real air head, and he totally lost interest and avoided her as much as possible. They had a bunch of daughters while trying for a son that never came. With no son, the family will lose their land when the father dies, because there is another male relative that is next in line.

Because the father pretty much ignored the family, some of the daughters turned out to be silly and thoughtless, but there were at least 2 or 3 that he did care about. One of the others, a 16 year old, was a total air head and cared about nothing except parties, clothes, etc.

So, it was a fun read, all in all, and much better than I expected. ( )