Wideacre: Book 1 (The Wideacre Trilogy)

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As the children grow, Julia has the same love of the land as Beatrice. She's just not evil like her. Richard on the other hand is an evil character who is only out for money has no regard for people or their feelings. I must say, he is the most evil character in a book that I have ever read. Couldn't stand him from the moment his name was mentioned in the book. Richard is always plotting and Julia and Acre are usually at the receiving end of his plans. Beatrice fought hard to protect her claim over Wideacre and, as a result, she lost everything. The Estate is in ruin and mostly bankrupt. But the story of the Laceys is far from over. Meridon, or Sarah, seems to have a balance of both her mother, and grandmother, and through out the book she discovers that for herself. When it came down to it, she didn't let her demons keep her from happiness. Even more impactful to the story than Ralph, though, is John MacAndrew, a brilliant doctor who falls for Beatrice at the height of her fight to gain control of the Wideacre estate. John falls in love with Beatrice, unaware of the evil residing within her beating heart.

Celia Lacey: Harry's wife, who later becomes the moral force for good against Beatrice's manipulative schemes. Her marriage to Harry is arranged, but she grows to love him for his gentleness. She is thrilled to accept Julia as her own daughter, as it is later discovered that she is unable to have children. When she becomes estranged from Harry, she falls in love with John, with whom she leaves and raises the children until they are murdered by Richard in The Favoured Child. In The Favoured Child (1989), John and Celia reunite and raise young Richard and Julia, but Richard inherits his mother's destructive desire to claim Wideacre. Meridon (1990) follows young Sarah Lacey, renamed Meridon and raised by gypsies, as she discovers her past as the daughter of Richard and Julia. I told my dad the plot of this story and he was like wtf, this sounds crazy! If we took all the parts from this book, the plot does seem OTT (over the top). But Philippa Gregory writes so masterfully that the story doesn't read like drama for the sake of drama. The whole book also has a touch of Gothic horror to it with Celia & the mom having a sense of there being corruption in the house (from the incest of Beatrice & Harry). I know I wasn't the only one who got Scarlett O'Hara vibes from this book... I feel like my review doesn't do justice to this book, and I'm sorry for that. This book was a masterpiece that I'm sure will stay with me for a while after finishing this book. This is my 1,400 book read on Goodreads. I'm so glad that a five-star read made that milestone for me. A good omen hopefully. I didn't like at the end how she was repudiating the name of Sarah when earlier she had repudiated the name of Meridon. When she found "Wide" and took her birthname, Sarah, I thought to myself how Sarah is such a plain name compared to Meridon. But now I got used to it, and I'm not too fond of the idea of her denying the name her biological mother gave her...

After the first book I didn't think that I would want to read any more, it was very good, but the main character was so vicious that it almost gave me nightmares!! Each book is the story of a daughter of the grand estate, Wideacre. Meridon is our heroine for this book. I can't say much without spoiling, but this one gives us a much different perspective on Wideacre, and it's little village. This is the best book of the trilogy, by far.

Barbara Comyns’ 1959 The Vet’s Daughter, about a dreamy Battersea girl who discovers the ability to levitate, with awful results. It’s a perfect novel, a masterpiece of domestic gothic. Julia Lacey: Daughter of Beatrice and Harry. She is passed off as Celia's daughter and later raised by her and John. Although less timid and naïve as Harry, her sheltered upbringing causes her to have less confidence and accept Richard's abuse. While she describes Richard as her childhood friend, bully, and betrothed, she has no feelings for him and attempts to escape from him by marrying the first man she falls in love with. However, Richard rapes and impregnates her to stop the engagement, and then forces her to marry him. She gives birth to a girl, whom she names Sarah, before she dies from a fever during afterbirth complications. Once again, the two major themes in this book (as in "Wideacre" and "The Favored Child") were the ideas of women's rights and the rich vs. the poor. Sarah learns the hard way about a husband's rights over his wife. Meridon/Sarah even dresses as a man on multiple occasions and finds it's easier to pretend to be a man and gain respect and entry into certain places. As far as theme #2, Will says at one point: BUT, don't all good things come to an end? Well, when she and her mother return to Wideacre, the shit hits the fan. Because they learn they're both Beatrice’s children, the products of her long incestuous affair with her brother. Don't secrets like this always rear their ugly heads at some point — just not soon enough...Harry is not only unintelligent but also ever absent. He also doesn’t care about Wideacre and is only positioned to inherit the estate because he’s a man and Beatrice is a woman. The injustice of it all drives Beatrice up the wall and she makes it her mission in life to bring Wideacre under her direct control. She was known to be a rebel in their school at Colston’s Girls’ School. Despite her reputation, she garnered a B grade in the subject English and two E grades in Geography and History at the A level. She had went into the journalism college in Cardiff and spent a year being an apprentice with the Portsmouth News. I really wonder what Philippa Gregory was going for in this novel, because she certainly didn't give us a likable heroine in the slightest. Beatrice Lacey is one of the most horrible, nasty protagonists I've read...and honestly I enjoyed her scandalous behavior. I went into this novel knowing that she was a universally disliked character, and I think that really helped my overall enjoyment of this.

Enraged by the sight of her father's corpse, guilty, and afraid that if Ralph were ever caught he implicate her, Beatrice decides she cannot allow him to continue living on Wideacre. She lures him over a mantrap and leaves him for dead.Cons:I did not like Julia's weakness and passiveness as a character. She was not nearly as strong as Beatrice, and I was hoping that she would have a stronger and bolder personality. The main character, Julia, is usually a pushover which can become extremely frustrating sometimes but you never hate her as you can clearly comprehend why and I even found myself rooting for her a lot.Richard, well Richard is just a massive twat who for most of it I had a massive desire for someone to just smash his head off a wall, I really hated him, so Philippa Gregory did a great job there. I had a feeling from the beginning that things wouldn't go well for Dandy. How would she have fit in Wideacre life... She has another theme that is pervasive throughout all her books - the responsibility of the ruling class to care for the lesser classes. It's extremely relevant even today - as congress debates restrictions on corporate greed, the progressive tax system, universal health care and the role and size of government. When I had read the Wikipedia on how Ralph killed Richard, I was angry at how Ralph felt he was entitled to kill any Lacey he wanted as its gatekeeper. I wasn't as upset when Ralph killed him because Richard wasn't good, but I still don't like how Ralph felt he had the right to get rid of anyone he thought wasn't treating the land right.