The Splendour Falls - Rosemary Clement-Moore

The Splendour Falls by Rosemary Clement-Moore was released on 4 Feb 2010 by Corgi Childrens and the book is 528 pages long.

Plot

Sylvia Davis used to be an amazing dancer. That was before she broke her leg doing a very simple move, a move that ended her career. Not only does she have a broken leg, he father is dead and her mother is about to get remarried. Nothing much is going right for her and it only gets worse when she gets drunk at the wedding. After running off to Central Park, she thinks she sees something strange going on but apparently it is only her that sees it. Maybe it was too much champagne and the pain killers or maybe she's going crazy.

As Sylvie's mum and new step dad go on their honeymoon, she is shipped off to stay with her real father's family in Alabama to a life that couldn't be further away from what she is used to. The heat immediately hits her as the plane touches the ground and instead of her cousin waiting to meet her, there is a very good looking boy called Rhys, who explains that Cousin Paula is waiting in the car for them both. Sylvie definitely likes the look of Rhys and cant believe that she's thinking about him in that way after only meeting him for a few minutes but she's going to have to get used to it because apparently he lives with Cousin Paula. The family estate is being turned into a B&B and Rhys and his dad are staying there, along with Paula's business partner and her daughter Addie.

Sylvie has never really known anything about her Dad's side of the family but when she arrives in Cahawba it seems like history is all around her. Everyone already knows who she is and seems extremely excited that she's there, which Sylvie finds really strange, especially when the most popular guy in town, Shawn, starts paying her a lot of attention. She can't deny that she's attracted to him but there is also something between her and Rhys. One of them seems too perfect and the other one is mysterious and secretive. Sylvie would love boy troubles to the biggest thing on her mind but she's also seeing and hearing things here, just like she did in Central Park. Is Sylvie about to lose her mind as well as everything else?

What I thought
Sylvie was a fantastic protagonist. Although this is more in the supernatural genre, there is a big deal about the romance in the story. Unlike a lot of other teenage girls in these kinds of books, she doesn't break down when she likes these two different guys and becomes a doormat. She doesn't do everything that they want her to and she doesn't back down when it comes to something she believes in. Sylvie is a very strong character, even when she thinks she is going crazy and she's determined to prove that what she is seeing is real. When Sylvie's dance career ends, she thinks her life has as well because she's put in so much time and effort but she realises that she has to find something else to do with her time and that's when she starts to work on the garden of the B&B.

Although Sylvie has two love interests, they don't really have that much time in the story. I would have liked to have seen her relationship with Rhys develop more because nothing really happened between them. Both of them know that the other is hiding something but is what the story concentrates on rather than how they feel about each other. I could tell that Shawn was the bad guy from the start because of his involvement with the TTC and especially when it was explained about his families connections with Sylvie's. Shawn was just a bit too perfect and that is normally too good to be true, as it was in this books.

The story moves at a nice pace most of the time although it does take a while to get to the answers that you'll want. Apart from Sylvie, you don't really get to know too much about the others characters as the main of the plot is about her family and the background but I thought this was really interesting. I loved the idea that everything that was happening to Sylvie was happening because of something that happened decades or centuries ago and was carried on throughout the years.

While I really liked this book, there was one thing that bugged me about it. Every now and again, a ? would turn up in the middle of a random word. I wouldn't have minded if it was a one off but it happened on at least 10 occasions. After the first one, this really stood out to me each time and made me want to put the book down. If I'm paying £6.99 for a book then I do not want it to be full of mistakes.

The Splendour Falls is a good book but it isn't great. There are small amounts of excitement at different times and it just wasn't enough for me. I thought that I would really like Rhys but his character wasn't developed enough to make me love him. Not a bad buy if you can pick it up as part of an offer.