Review: Jezebel’s Daughter by Wilkie Collins

As you may know, Wilkie Collins is the writer of my favourite book, the Moonstone. When I was in my local Waterstones in Oxford,  I got extremely excited, so many Wilkie Collin’s books available to me! I instantly bought this one, and here you are, reading my review about it.

I had the opportunity to choose between multiple Collin’s books [which never happens in the Netherlands!!!] and decided to buy Jezebel’s Daughter based on it’s synopsis: 

I mean, COME ON, doesn’t that sound interesting?!
It’s set in Frankfurt, Germany, and it’s a mystery book, what more is there to love?
It’s just a shame it didn’t really deliver.

Now, don’t get me wrong, it’s a nice book to read, it’s got a slight mystery, people die, people live, there are people who can ruin everything and there are people in love. Typical right? Yes, but after you read the Moonstone, Jezebel’s Daughter becomes … well… bad.
It tries to be like the Moonstone really bad, but it doesn’t really deliver. It kind of feels like Wilkie Collin’s wanted to relive the succes that was the Moonstone. It felt forced, people started to like other people without any second thought, and there’s even insta-love in this? But the most frustrating part of this book is that characters are just there. These characters don’t really have a history, it doesn’t get explained why they are who they are, and just I want to KNOW who Jack Straw is damnit!! By the end of the book you just got told: “Jack didn’t want to talk about his history so he never did.”
That’s just plain lazy mister Collins! You don’t write an interesting characters and not explain who they are!

Now, do I recommend you reading this book? Yeah sure! Just not after the Moonstone, then just don’t because it loses a lot of it’s glory after that one.Which is unfortunate!

Score:

You can buy this book here.