The Angel Tree

September 5, 2016
U.K.-based bestseller Riley (The Seven Sisters) applied years of writing perspective to this rewrite of her 1995 novel, Not Quite an Angel (written as Lucinda Edmonds), and the story shines through her smooth prose. But its expansion into a nearly 700-page behemoth is unjustified even by its sweeping melodrama, stretching across three generations of women from WWII into the 1980s. The story is too shallow and linear for an extended family chronicle and not nearly tight enough for a thriller. Greta Marchmont, who’s had amnesia for 20 years following an accident, returns with her best friend (and nephew by marriage), David Marchmont, to the estate in Wales where she spent her early adulthood. She stumbles across the gravestone of her young son, Jonny, and suddenly begins to recall her life’s events. She remembers that she struggled to raise Jonny’s disturbed twin sister, child star Cheska, by herself; to her shock, she realizes that she harbored romantic feelings for David. The novel’s framing, the roughly chronological revelation of decades of history, and the book’s length leave readers slogging through endless details to get to the plot points they know must be there.