A good Arriving by David McRobbie

"I learnt there are two sorts of kindness. One of them's nice to look at fora time, but it's rotten inside. The other one's true and honest, like the kind Helen gives."

A Good Arriving by David McRobbie. This book is set in the 1830s. Helen had a wonderful family, education and what now seems a blooming romance. However after the Duke decides he will not renew the lease of the farm's in their area, including their farm everything falls apart. Helen is separated from the people she loves and must work as someone's servant. After facing one obstacle after the other she returns to her family to find out that her father has died. The family's economical states gets even worse. A nice doctor comes along and helps them out. Helen starts working for him and his wife, taking care of their baby. They invite her to go with them to Australia to live. Helen reluctantly agrees. However on the ship things start unraveling. The doctor is not who he seems to be and anyone that is close to Helen suffers. The journey to Australia is now a journey to survive.

This will be the first book I will not recommend. This may be because I'm not into the whole death and violent novels. I would not have read this book if I knew the actual story. When I read the blurb it did have a small mention of how it was a thriller book so it is partially my fault for still reading. However the plot and most of the story seems like most youth romance books that I could not accept that this book was about to turn violent. The whole book continued in what seemed to be filled with obstacles for her to overcome but that is normal for any book. Only when I reached the last fifth of the book did it actually start to get violent. Another reason that I didn't like this novel was that the ending was not good enough for me. Although the ending was mildly happy there wasn't a clear conclusion. Throughout the whole story Helen's love was mentioned, they were separated at the start however in the end there was no resolution to that, she did not meet him again nor did she find someone else. It was a very vague ending. Some people may like this as it leaves you to think about the book for longer and the possible endings however I am not one of this people and instead I prefer those that have a clear cut ending, bringing the whole plot to an ending and leaving me satisfied.