Sparkles by Louise Bagshawe

Sparkles follows the lives of the Massot family after the disappearance of Pierre Massot, the charismatic and secretive head of the family. The vastly wealthy Massot owes House Massot, Paris’s greatest jewellery firm.

7 years after his disappearance, his beautiful young widow, Sophie decided that she and her son, Tom and the family firm must move on to survive and declared him dead.  Not everyone is receptive to the idea. Certainly not 18 year old Tom who is doing poorly in Oxford and Pierre’s mother, Katherine also opposed to this declaration. Hugh Montfort, the CEO of rival firm, Mayberry couldn’t be happier when Sophie whom the world deemed to be a meek housewife decided to take charge of the affairs of House Massot for Hugh has big plans to takeover House Massot. However, like everyone else, he underestimated Sophie. From there, the saga moved on with lots of twist and turn and we read that things are not what it seems and people are not really who they said they are.

Totally 599 pages, this is my second book after Tuesday’s Child. However, Sparkles, to me is more of a family saga novel rather than the light and easy read of Tuesdays’ Child. While Sparkles is captivating and motivates you to read on to find out what happened in the end, the characters are not as interesting as I would like them to be. The storyline was rather interesting especially the twist on who exactly Pierre is was quite brilliant. However, I felt that the ending was rather ‘convenient’ for everyone when it ended when it did.

I also felt that the author is rather careless with some facts. For example, the night that Pierre disappeared, he went home to his family, his son Tom was having a bath and his wife Sophie was with his son. Then Pierre disappeared for 7 years and Tom was said to be 18 years old. This means that Sophie was still bathing Tom when he was 11 years old.  Are there 11 year's old that need bathing?  I didn't like that.  There are also a few other inconsistencies throughout the book which to me shouldn’t happen and made me wonder how can such celebrated author be so careless.

To a certain extend I enjoyed Sparkles and would look forward to read another of Louise Bagshawe’s book which I have.

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