I'm continuing with my experiment of reading some old dime novels. I chose this one purely from the title. It sounded exciting and weird. This particular novel was originally published in 1909, and I downloaded it from the Gutenberg website.
I honestly don't know what to think of this book. I normally don't give out spoilers if I can help it, but this book will be an exception. Too many weird things happened for me to gloss over the story.
Hubert is our hero, a man jilted at the altar. Except he wasn't. His fiancé was kidnapped by someone obsessed with her. She eventually escapes, but she is disappointed to find out that Hubert hasn't been looking for her and has even moved on. To a young woman named Jessie Bain.
Jessie is a teenager and falls in love with Hubert. There are a lot of obstacles they have to overcome. I don't even want to try and start describing all the weird things they go through, it would make this post excessively long. Coincidence is also strong in this story. Jessie nurses someone back to health - it's Hubert's wife. Jessie finds a job with a woman who knew her uncle - it turns out to be Hubert's grandmother. Jessie gets abducted - Hubert's former butler finds her.
In the end, this story was just so strange and fantastical that it didn't appeal to me. The unrealistic ways problems were solved bothered me, and I didn't enjoy it. I don't expect 100% realism in fiction, that would be silly, but it shouldn't be so far out there that it would never happen. One or two coincidences - sure, I can handle that. A whole book of it? I'll pass.
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