This had some beautiful writing and I was brought to tears a few times (I am always crying when I read Gaffney). But there is a Jewish & Romani villain that is really NOT GOOD, Gaffney! Outside of that glaring issue, I really enjoyed this book. ( )

So I’m working my way through Patricia Gaffney’s backlist – and just from the two books I’ve read by her, it seems she goes in big for the tortured, tragic romances that offer some piercing, poignant moments of beauty and happiness overcast throughout with the dampening foreboding of doom, disaster and love thwarted. Something comes in at the end, a blessed deus ex machina to relieve the stress and offer the lovers a chance at salvation, but the characters, and the reader along with them, have to traverse a steep, rocky path to get to the end that is supposed to be happy. This is certainly the pattern of Another Eden. If the resolution of the book wasn’t so problematic for me, I would have enjoyed it immensely. As it is, I’m very torn. Patricia Gaffney writes so wonderfully well – pardon my alliteration. Her fluid prose keeps up the pace, effortlessly gets into the hearts and minds of her characters, and weaves a beautiful romance between the hero and heroine. I loved the unique setting in particular. The sense of time and place - the gilded age of New York City - is vividly and expertly portrayed. Because of all this, I tore through the book.

Sara Cochrane is trapped in a horrible, abusive marriage. An impoverished noblewoman, she was bought at a very young age by the ambitious, American millionaire Bennet Cochrane for her title and the social leverage that was supposed to go with it. Unfortunately, that wasn’t enough to gain his entre into the upper echelons of New York’s high society. He’s punished Sara ever since for the continuation of their nouvo riche status, using their son Michael as a weapon against her. Ben’s treatment of Sara is truly horrific and painful to read. He’s grotesque, malicious, vengeful, bigoted and conceited.

Sara is pretty much completely in his power – though you could argue that she does everything she can to protect her son from Ben. But the price she has to pay for her actions, whether bartering to get her way or more openly thwarting her husband, is steep, so that she’s the one who ends up being abused, rather than the son. She bears up under the abuse admirably though. While I wouldn’t call her strong exactly, I guess her strength lies in her ability to endure. She’s vulnerable and suffering, but at the same time she isn’t broken, thanks to her son and her love for him. It’s what keeps her going and holds her together. He’s all she has.

Until she meets Alex McKie, the architect her husband has contracted to build their new house in Newport - a grotesque, overly ornate monstrosity of a building called “Eden” that violates all Alex's aesthetic principles. But it is his job, so he has to put up with Ben as an overbearing, capricious employer. As you might have guessed, the job gets more complicated for Alex once Sara enters the picture for him. Their relationship develops slowly and tentatively. The instant attraction is there, but neither of them act on it, and skirt around it for various reasons for a long time.

The forbidden nature of their love is the big issue, of course. And while it’s painful to read, because it gives each of them so much pain, before they even act on their love, and especially afterwards, at the same time their romance is beautifully written and developed. Alex is a bit of a mystery for most of the book. He’s a brilliant architect, very successful in his career, a genius, an artist, who at the moment is making his name with a big firm that’s more about money than art. It’s hinted that he came from nothing, that there’s a tortured past behind his casual, womanizing ways. It’s not till much later that we find out where he came from, who he truly is. So even though he stays kind of sketchy as a character, there’s enough depth to him, particularly when it comes to the nature of his art and his feelings for architecture, to make him sympathetic and memorable – more than just your usual rake.

Sara is a bit more of a problem for me. I hate that she’s constantly victimized, that she has to constantly sacrifice so much for her son, that she’s never fully open with Alex, that she never lets him help her or work with him to try and find a solution to their untenable situation. Apart from all the obstacles that already stand in their way, she makes it impossible for them to be together and perpetuates their misery. And the poor guy loves her anyway. When she finally takes it upon herself to act, she botches the whole thing and precipitates the very outcome she said she would prevent by staying away from Alex. She tries to do what’s best for her son, but it all blows up in her face. If she hadn’t been so eager to play the good little martyr, I can’t help thinking things could have been resolved in a much saner fashion.

As it is, the dénouement is awkward, contrived, and a bit over the top. Even worse, it involves a half hearted attempt to redeem the husband, which really drives me up the wall. I’m sorry. The man is an evil bastard who gets off far too easily. Castration, at the very least, should have been involved in his comeuppance. But that’s not half as bad as Sara’s cowardice once she and Alex are finally free to be together. I couldn’t believe her idiocy, her hypocrisy, her horrible treatment of Alex at this point. It was enough to knock a few stars off, but I relented in consideration of what had come before her unworthy actions near the end. So only one star off. And of course the reason she finally decides maybe she and Alex should be together is because of Michael. She’s been so blind with regards to her son throughout, so incapacitated by her fear of losing him, that I shouldn’t be surprised that she wouldn’t realize Alex is just what her son needs after such an awful father like Ben. Michael himself has to knock some sense into her and get her to see what’s right in front of her face. Ugh. So frustrating.

The ending is also anticlimactic, in the sense that that there is that awful hiatus after the evil husband is dispensed with, during which Sara loses her mind and my respect. Then she wakes up, chases after Alex, and the new happy family rides off into the sunset together. We don’t get to actually see the happily ever after, and I felt very cheated in this respect upon closing the book. My disappointment is all the more acute because there are some hints as to what this happily ever after would be like earlier on – Alex talks about a house he wants to build, a kind of masterpiece that he designed for Sara. It sounds so beautiful, and the idea of them together in that house is so nice, so right, that I wish we could have at least been offered that tangible image of their happily ever after. Instead, I feel left hanging, without a satisfying sense of closure or payoff for all the heartache I had to go through in reading Another Eden. I should have at least been allowed to see this other Eden realized in the end. ( )