Title: The Dawsons
Author: Lydia and Santina Casablanca
Publisher: XlibrisAU
ISBN: 978-1-5434-0015-1
Pages: 432
Genre: Fantasy
Reviewed by: CC Thomas
Pacific Book Review
When reading the title and book blurb for The Dawsons, personal predictions were made that it was going to be just another family saga. While those can be enjoyable reads, many come off feeling a bit self-aggrandizing and rather tame in plot events. Most books read as not-so-fictional accounts of slightly dysfunctional tales of more than slightly boring families. Not so in The Dawsons by Lydia and Santina Casablanca.
This book starts with a bang from page one. The Casablanca’s take family saga to a whole new realm with this fantasy and it’s a fascinating glimpse into another reality where humans never change, even though they might live in worlds apart. The book starts with a Little Mermaid-esque doomed love saga and the tragedy abounds from there.
The stories concern overlapping destinies—families destined to be pulled apart and lovers destined to be pulled together. The dynamic and magnetic forces keep the reader glued to the pages as the stories leap through other symbolic fairy tales, all interwoven into an enchanting read. Beauties (and some beasts) vie for attention with Hansel- and Gretel-like orphans desperately searching for a place, and person, to call home.
The story is set in the 1950s and 60s in Sicily, but it’s a Sicily with magic galore. The plot is neatly divided. First, the reader will meet Derek and Francesco, young men searching for their family after being divided from them as young boys. Then, there is Rose and Rosa, twins born from a tragic love affair. How do these two interact? The reader has great fun flipping the pages to discover how all these lives, and plotlines, intersect and interweave. Love is in the air and you’ll have butterflies as these four are constantly drawn together, and are then kept apart. As with any fairytale, there are also evil and villains and this tale is no exception. Floating in the background are just enough “bad guys” to keep you nervous as all the characters strive to find their rightful place in the world.
Audrey Hepburn probably put it best when she stated, “If I’m honest I have to tell you I still read fairy tales and I like them best of all.” This book has all the best of those fairy tales you remember from childhood, with a healthy dose of adult fun. Lydia and Santina Casablanca took the best from several different genres and blended those elements together for a great read in The Dawsons. If you want to know if it ended “happily ever after”, then be sure to pick up a copy. You won’t be disappointed!
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