I wanted to like this one better than I did. It had lots of elements that I like. But it just didn't do it for me. Two of the biggest elements that failed were the heroine and the setting. This was written back in the height of the women's movement and while I'm a big fan of the actual movement, I really don't like reading about it. The heroine was strong in a 'trying too hard' kind of way. Mostly it just came across as bitchy. The setting was Portugal in 1981 which is interesting to me because I was a foreign exchange student to Portugal in 1980-1981. The Portugal this author writes about felt pretty unfamiliar to me. Maybe it's because she was stressing how industry in Portugal was going to all be communized or given over to the people and ownership of large companies such as the hero's was going to cease to exist. In fact the whole book was basically about that. I never felt that drive to leave private ownership behind when I was there and in fact it never happened. So it just felt ickily unrealistic to me the whole time I was reading it. I did find the mores depicted real though. There was a definite double standard about sexual freedom while I was there even among ordinary modern young people. I imagine it would be even worse among the rich and powerful old money families. Whether that is still true or not I couldn't say but it definitely was when the story was written.

The hero was okay although I am not a fan of heroes who give away their wealth and contemplate moving to Scotland for their other inheritance. What's the point in reading about an exotic foreign hero and the heroine's move to another country if he's not even all that convinced he's going to stay there. It kind of cuts the feet out from under his whole persona.

I usually get rid of all 1 and 2 star books. Should I keep this one because it's about Portugal? ( )