Billie's Kiss - Hardcover

Knox, Elizabeth

3.34

355 ratings by Goodreads

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0345450523 ISBN 13: 9780345450524

Publisher: Ballantine Books, 2002

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It begins with a kiss. And a leap across cold, dark waters.

In the spring of 1903, the sheltered Billie Paxton, her older sister, and brother-in-law are sailing to their new home on a remote Scottish island. But just as the ship draws into port, there is an explosion. Many of the passengers and crew drown in the icy waters of the harbor. Young, pink-haired Billie is among the few survivors–clumsy, illiterate, and suddenly alone.

Brooding and resolute, Billie’s fellow passenger Murdo Hesketh has been robbed of many people he loved in life–and the ship’s explosion takes one more. He is determined to see the guilty parties brought to justice. Billie falls under immediate suspicion, by refusing to explain why, moments before the explosion, she leapt from ship to shore.

As she attempts to come to terms with an uncertain future, Billie acquaints herself with the eccentric inhabitants of Kiss Castle: the enigmatic Lord Hallowhume, who owns the island; his beautiful wife and worldly children; Geordie Betler, a spinsterish gentleman’s gentlemen; and the fierce, fair-haired Murdo Hesketh, who inspires in Billie equal amounts of rage and passion.

Beautifully written–and reminiscent of the work of Emily Bront� and Jane Austen–Billie’s Kiss is a darkly romantic tale of love and loss, mystery and tragedy.

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Review:

Although the premise of this dark, inventive novel is almost absurdly romantic--a brooding hero and a pink-haired heroine, both in mourning, are thrown together in a stark, windswept landscape that evokes the Yorkshire moors--Elizabeth Knox's astonishing gift for language and imagery lift Billie's Kiss above others in its genre. It is 1903, and Murdo Hesketh (a fair-haired Heathcliff) is returning to his cousin's remote Scottish island estate, where he is engaged to implement the many "improvements" his wealthy cousin is foisting on the unwilling islanders. Just as his ship reaches harbor, Billie Paxton, a young female passenger, jumps onto land, avoiding by seconds the explosion that destroys the ship. Is she responsible for the destruction of the Gustav Edda and the deaths of her sister Edith and just-born nephew, as well as of Hesketh's loyal servant and friend, Ian Betler? Knox's third novel takes a few pages to get going, and some will find its uneven pace disorienting. But it is hard to put down a book in which the heroine accidentally throws a bucket of bile at the hero, and in which some 20 people die within the first 130 pages. Eventful and lushly descriptive, Billie's Kiss has the atmosphere of Jane Eyre with the revisionist sensibility of Wide Sargasso Sea. --Regina Marler

From the Back Cover:

“Lovely and evocative . . . Billie’s Kiss would make Charlotte Bront� weep with envy.”
—The Seattle Times

“DELICIOUS . . . The book deftly evokes turn-of-the-century Scotland, a windswept world of shushing petticoats, knowing butlers, and fractured class rule. . . . Like the heroines of Jane Austen and Charlotte Bront�, Billie can be opaque, wistful, and fabulously layered, literally and metaphorically.”
—San Francisco Chronicle

“BILLIE IS AN APPEALING CHARACTER: sensuous, impulsive, and a bit mysterious. Sex and romance are rendered strikingly and erotically.”
—The Washington Post

“Knox’s narrative style draws much from the 19th century romance, with its lush writing and darkly wild settings. Yet Knox brings her own slant to the genre, allowing some of her characters to find solid placement in their frighteningly changing world.”
—Los Angeles Times

From the Trade Paperback edition.

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