Let me just say that I absolutely loved this book and could not stop listening to it. As with the previous seven, I chose to listen to the audio of this book. I definitely found that the books improved massively with time and this one in particular was the best.
Now, before going any further, it's important to explain the author. Lucinda Riley clearly always planned to write eight books, with the final one giving all the final answers and tying up loose ends. She announced this book at the end of the seventh. Very sadly, she was diagnosed with and died from cancer before she could write it. Happy for her, and everyone else, the whole thing could be completed and her vision of a story telling about Pa Salt and revealing all the answers was finished. Her son is an author and she made him promise to finish the series if anything happened to her (from what he said in the opening, at the time he didn't know that his mother was ill and I'm not even sure she did). Lucinda Riley also left behind all the information needed for her son to write the book as she saw it. So all the connections were mapped out, the final ending planned.
Harry Whitaker definitely did a good job of completing his mothers work. And this book was absolutely brilliant.
In six of the books, we saw six of the sisters, one by one, going off to find their birth families. But there was always left over questions. It did seem strange the way Pa Salt almost seemed to have a plan. At various times, it really did seem as though he deliberately selected the girls, with the intent of adopting seven with certain talents or backgrounds and forming his own Seven Sisters.
I spotted how he met Maia's great grandparents. You could see why, precisely, he would want to adopt Maia. But it wasn't clear how he could have, if he ever did, cross paths with the families of the others. There was something very strange about how he came into adopting all of them. Except for Tiggy, who's family explained that they pretty much asked for her to be taken in by Pa Salt and be given a better life than the one they could provide, on the condition that he would one day send her back to her family. But with the others, he seemed to be mysteriously in the right place at the right time.
The seventh book revealed that Mary, or Merry, as she was known due to her cheerful nature, was the only biological daughter of Pa Salt. However, she had been unaware of this for a long time and only recently learned that her Irish family, were not her biological family at all. But how was it, that all of a sudden, Pa Salts lawyer turns up with a picture of a ring that is the clue? Why did the lawyer and his team suddenly have information on location and name, when Pa Salt had spent so looking without success? What happened to Merry's mother? How, precisely, did she end up on a priests doorstep, with the ring?
Merry has been entrusted with all the answers in the form of Pa Salts diary, and she insists on it being copied in order for all the sisters to read it together. This book flits between characters, though focuses more on some than others. The bulk of it is Pa Salt, his story being told through his diary. In the modern day, I think the characters followed the most are Merry, Maia and Ally.
One of the first questions to be addressed is exactly who Pa Salt actually was and his name is revealed, with the sisters wondering how exactly they never wondered about this. Admittedly, I find it one of the least believable things that the sisters never actually noticed they didn't know their fathers name. Anagrams and Greek legends are a massive theme throughout.
The story of Pa Salt, begins in his childhood and we don't right away learn what caused me to be a lone child on the brink of death, although he refers to it as horrifying several times throughout. We learn about the various stages of his life and how he met different people and appeared in all the other stories, mostly without us noticing.
It isn't a very long time since I listened to all the stories, but I started the series around March this year and I didn't remember some of the minor details and characters. Fortunately, the other characters do help to fill in the gaps, remarking on how they've reached a point in the story where Pa Salt met someone from their family. It also explains why we wouldn't have noticed it was him every time he appeared.
It is all the story of how he moved around, met different people, how and when he came into money and was able to build Atlantis. It explains Merry's mother and what Pa Salt meant in his letter to his daughter about them being stolen from him. It shows us that he was not a man "collecting" children, he was genuinely a loving father, trying to do something for the people who were good to him in his life and protect each girl from a life that would have been worse. It was all about far more than him simply appearing in the right place at the right time. He didn't deliberately set out to adopt these children, most of the time it was about others asking him for help.
It wasn't just about the girls he adopted either. Lost and lonely children are a theme of the whole story. Atlas, Pa Salt himself, started as a lone child on the streets, helped due to the kindness of strangers. And he in turn helped many. The children living on an island. The orphans from a ship. The granddaughter of someone he admired and felt deeply indebted to. Then the six adopted girls.
It's also fair to note that several of the sisters followed the theme of looking after children. Electra noted it in her book, that three of the sisters (Maia, Star and Tiggy) had found partners with children that they had taken on. Merry, too, adopted a daughter.
The conclusion? I suspected which way the whole thing was going. I knew that there had to be a lot of lies and deception and something the sisters simply weren't seeing. It was obvious from the start that something was very off in the way Pa Salt died, was secretly buried and Kreeg Eszu apparently killed himself on the same day. Tiggy sensed something surrounding the secret lift and cellar and Marina's attitude towards it. Gayorg (please note, I was listening to the audio and I don't actually know how to spell the lawyers name, but that's what it sound like) was definitely behaving strangely in the seventh book. More, Claudia's sudden disappearance seemed odd and, back in the fifth book, something felt off at the way the Atlantis staff all stayed on the island.
It wasn't all praise from me. As I noted throughout my reviews, why did ALL the sisters, have to find romance? OK, I'll be fair, Merry didn't. She's widowed after a few decades of marriage, clearly has no interest in a new romance and there was never any hint of her finding a new one. Ally's story started with her in a relationship, abruptly and cruelly losing her fiance and subsequently having his baby. But then in the seventh one, it was annoyingly obvious from the moment they met, Ally and Jack were going to end up as a couple. This left there only being one story different from the others and that was CeCe. She had a thing with a guy, but then it all went in a totally different direction after they parted with her summer romance abruptly over. She instead found something far more lasting with Chrissy.
The Eszu's? Greek legends play their part. As can be seen, the surname is an anagram of Zeus and the characteristics and part of Zeus in this story is split between father and son. Kreeg and Zed. I'm not going to ramble on about it, I suggest that if you want to know more you do a bit of research. The Lucinda Riley website explains the crucial points. I will note that I think, out of the two, Kreeg was somewhat less despicable. At least, he stated himself that he did not harm innocent and helpless babies and that he had genuinely cared for someone else at one point. There was some form of pity for the man who had spent so long devoted to bitterness and unjustly ruining another life. It was something of a relief that he found peace from that bitterness. Zed did not seem to have any redeeming qualities, being interested in only money, power and success.
It's pointed out that the sisters, whilst actually being privileged girls who grew up in luxury, their father taught them to value other things and not be reliant on inherited wealth, working for their own means. Zed actually noted, when he met Tiggy, that even if they choose to rough it and live on very little, they can never really understand what it is like to have nothing, owing to the fact they know there's a fortune available if they need it. But the difference with Zed is that he spends his fathers money far too easily.
There was never any redeeming moment for Zed. Anything he gets. He deserves.
The ultimate ending was incredibly cheesy.
But Pa Salts story? I loved it.
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