Book Review: The Morning Gift

The Morning Gift, Eva Ibbotson

I loved this book. I just finished it yesterday .... and the ending was so good I stayed up until 2 in the morning reading it. Of course, it was the typical Ibbotson .... where it takes a while to set up the story, and then it gets really good, but you know there are too many pages left to stay good, so then it gets horrible and completely messed up, but gets fixed in the end.

Ruth is the daughter of a Jewish professor in Austria. She is an only child and beloved by her parents, and all who know her. She has beautiful hair, is smart, and reads hundreds of books, which makes her also extremely curious about all things. Her family is well to do and considered upper class where they live. But when Hitler enters Austria, they have to leave quickly with none of their things. So her parents and aunt and uncle leave to England. She is set to go with them but something goes wrong and she gets stuck in Austria with no money and no place to stay. That is where Quin Sommerville comes in. He is her father's young English protege. He realizes that Ruth is stuck and decides he needs to help her. But after trying everything to get her out, the only thing to do, in the end, is to marry her, so she can use his status to get a passport. Even though she is due to marry her cousin, piano virtuoso Heini, she knows that she needs to get out of Austria and agrees to marry Quin. Just for convenience. Once in England, they will get an annulment.

Well, of course, nothing goes as planned. It takes many twists and turns until it decides to end ... but the ending is really good. I read the last chapter twice because it was so good. So .... I would definitely recommend this book to people. Sadly, it's the last Ibbotson book for now, I will have to move onto other interesting authors.

I started Time Riders yesterday .... almost done .... it's turning out to be really good. I borrowed this one from Mom. Anyhoo .....