The Necklace: The Dusky Club, June 1962 (The Necklace, Volume 1)

Susan fell in love with her idol James when she was a teenager.  A chance meeting with the rock and roll superstar in the Sleeping Beauty Castle in Disneyland cemented that love into her heart.  For forty-seven years James is all Susan can think about, and she pines obsessively for her lost chance at love.

Now in her 60’s, Susan has an unexpected chance to travel back in time and fulfill her fantasy with James.  She finds herself in 1960’s London with the chance to meet James in person and learn once and for all, what might have been.

The premise of the book is original and compelling.  Who wouldn’t like a chance to answer the ‘what if’ questions that haunt us? However, the device that the author uses to have Susan travel back in time is not believable. Susan is frustratingly indecisive and comes across as flaky.  The narrative is expository, and the reader is never given a chance to know the characters on anything more than a superficial level.  James is an unsavory character who is a self-absorbed ego-maniac only after one thing from Susan.  The relationship is unsatisfying at best and abusive at its worst.  

A diamond in the rough, “The Necklace’ needs some reworking to become universally appealing novel that would be a fun read.

GwenellenTarbet.