“If you live in a sleepy little village, I have found that you have to adept at creating your own drama.”- A Sky Painted Gold, Chapter Two, Page 30.
Louise, ‘Lou’, has always been fascinated by an old Georgian mansion that was set on an island, right outside of her small Cornish village. So fascinated, that she has even snuck there when the tide was low. The house belongs to the Cardew family, they haven’t visited the estate in many years after the father of the family had passed away.
The Cardew siblings, Robert and Caitlin, are often talked about in the London press, and plastered in the magazines. The magazines, that Lou and her sister, Alice, enjoy reading. The Cardews want to get out of the limelight and the stressful city life for the summer. This takes the two siblings and their whole array of friends to the old Cardew estate in Cornwall. Lou comes across one of their parties one night when she is sneaking around the house. She becomes swept away in all the glitz and glam of their party lifestyle in the roaring summer of 1929.
“Then, finally, when I can’t watch any more, I fall asleep underneath a sky painted gold.” -A Sky Painted Gold, Chapter Nine, Page 142.
Laura Wood’s first young adult book is a three-star read for me. This book is a good summer read, and I encourage you to read it this time of the year. We all know that I love an English setting, so this one did it for me in that regard! I don’t think that I have read a book, other than The Great Gatsby, that is set in the 1920s, I think it is an interesting time period and I don’t know much about what was happening in England at this time. The parties in this book were very atmospheric, I wish that I could witness something so grand!
My main complaint about A Sky Painted Gold, is that I felt like nothing really happened until the last three chapters. Yes, the party scenes where fabulous and I do enjoy a good slow burn romance, but I feel like there was no real plot here. I do think Louise was a bit annoying and naïve, but we must remember she is only seventeen and this is her first time getting to see what life is really like outside of her village. Some things about the main character were a bit repetitive, such as Lou constantly worrying about never finding love or comparing herself to Alice. Two plot points I found rather predictable, but they were still entertaining!
“People are just people, Lou. Wherever you go.”- A Sky Painted Gold, Chapter Six, Page 80.
Overall, I do think this was an enjoyable read but don’t go into this thinking you’re going to get a great plot. Towards the end of, A Sky Painted Gold, I felt like it was almost like a 1920s version of the movie Almost Famous, my favorite movie, I won’t get too much into that because I feel like it could be a bit of a spoiler.
Izzy Reads 