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Summary: Scarlett : The Sequel to Margaret Mitchell's Gone With the W
Review: One would think that a sequel to Gone With the Wind would be great, but that individual would be wrong. Gone With the Wind is my favorite book, so I was so excited when my mom notified me there was a sequel. I found the sequel to be a great disappointment. Although it carries on right where Gone With the Wind ends, Scarlett seems to be a COMPLETELY different character. Of course, after her experiences she would be a changed person, but I felt that Alexandra Ripley took her change to an extreme.
As well as being disappointed by the character portrayal, I also felt that the ending to the book was inappropriate after how Margaret Mitchell finished. Well, I guess I shouldn't give it away, but overall I felt that this sequel ruined the emotion created in the original version.
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Summary: Boring!
Review: I couldn't even get into it. I read Gone With The Wind in 2 days because I couldn't put it down. I read other Alexandra Ripley books and they were much better. Perhaps she tried too hard...
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Summary: It wasn't bad, just different.
Review: Like many other readers, I was left hanging when I finished Gone with the Wind? When I found out there was a sequel I was ecstatic. Scarlett is more focused on Rhett and Scarlett's relationship. Gone with the Wind was stronger on the outcome of the South after the Civil War. If you like something romantic, then you should read Scarlett. Its a good continuation, but it's different. Also, it occured to me before I checked Scarlett out that would an author different then the orignal Margaret Mitchell dare write something annihilating to the characters from Gone with the Wind? Figure it out for yourself. It wasn't hard to guess what was going to happen in Scarlett (such as the baby...) But if you're dying to know the end of the story, read it, because I don't think you will be disappointed.
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Summary: Check carefully the reviews before purchasing this sequel
Review: This book has been probably the biggest literary disappointment I've ever had. How come they let it even be published? I sincerely have to say that the inheritors of the copyrights to Gone With The Wind have sacrificed something almost sacred in the eyes of millions of fans in the altar of greed!! I really don't blame it on Alexandra Ripley, she was asked for her version of it and they had a limit time. She did a correctly written book, but that's the best I can say about it. A sequel by definition must be true to the most basic lines in plot and characterization. "Scarlet" is strange in the eyes of any reader of GWTW. Scarlet O'Hara suddenly loses her spirit and recklessness, and is just kind of self conscious, boring and coward, escaping to other continent of all things. She leaves her children, family, Ashley, Rhett and Tara; everything she has striven for! Very far-fetched. The book is also filled with a lot of new characters that have nothing to do with the GWTW universe. I think this particular story could have worked much better if Ripley had made Scarlet hit her head and have amnesia. In the light of the many a contrived event described in the book, this would have explained a lot of stuff. I don't want to even start with Rhett. It breaks my heart to see what she does with the most breathtaking and exciting male character a writer could have ever imagined. Read my lips: A WASTE. I want to believe this book never existed. I sincerely hope for somebody else writing a good sequel pretty please. It does not need to be more than 50 pages. It really doesn't have to be 900 pages to prove it is right!
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Summary: Scarlett, or, "How to get a personality makeover"
Review: I bought this book hoping to read the continuation of not only Scarlett's life, but also all the other characters. Ashley-- how would he get along without his wife? How would Beau and Wade and Ella turn out? What about all the Clayton County folks and would she reconcile with the Atlanta Old Guard?
In this I was sadly disappointed. The "original" characters that helped shape GWTW make cameo appearances. Pitty is spoken of, but never appears, and India, the Tarletons, and the Merriwethers, to name a few, are given brief appearances at best. Tony Fontaine comes back from Texas, is devoted to for a couple of pages, and then departs, leaving me with a here-they-are-now-they're-gone feeling. Only the Charleston Aunts have a major role. By the first few pages, Ripley has severed any chance of Scarlett's reconciliation with the Old Guard, and by the first half of the book is over, has done away completely with the original GWTW supporting characters and come up with her own for the rest of the book. It was really hard for me to care about Scarlett's Irish family characters and what happened to them, they seemed too underdeveloped, and I felt a little lost when Rhett would materialize out of nowhere and then vanish. It's not a real meal like GWTW was, it's only a snack, and I think that since GWTW took 7 yrs to write, if a little more time had been spent on Scarlett I thought it could be a lot better. And did they really have the saying "when pigs fly" in the 1870's??
Not only did I want to find out what would happen to Scarlett and Rhett, but I also wanted to see if all the supporting characters that made GWTW the great book it was would recover and have a brighter future, as well. In that the book is sadly lacking. I wish I'd checked this out at the library, because for me this was a one-time read.
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Summary: absolutely breathtaking
Review: I myself am a hopeless romantic. From the 1st page untill the last, I couldn't stop reading. GWTW is a classic that left me wanting more. But like most sequeals, I was afraid that Alexandra Ripley would not do it justice. I was dead wrong. She brought back life to the characters. She gave Scarlett the ultimate challenge that she needed... to find herself and to be happy with herself, to not be ashamed of who she was. Ultimately to become a woman.
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Summary: A sequel? Or just another story?
Review: Based on its own merit, Scarlett is an engaging tale. Its characters are well developed, the settings are described in enough detail that one can picture it clearly and the story moves quickly with plenty of action and romance. But while Ripley's style of writing is somewhat reminiscent of Mitchell's in GWTW, she takes the story that Mitchell created in an entirely different direction. As a sequel it is improbable, with the characters behaving in ways I'm sure Mitchell would never have imagined. I loved GWTW and read Scarlett in anticipation of an equally great novel. While Scarlett is a good read and one I would recommend to anyone searching for that fairy-tale ending, it doesn't remain true to GWTW and is almost better considered an unrelated story that simply has characters that share the same name as Mitchell's GWTW.
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Summary: Don't read it
Review: I too succumbed to this novel, which promised a continuation of my absolute favorite book of all time, the book to which nothing ever compared. Well, I was let down. The time spent in Ireland is incredibly boring. It goes on and on and on and it's awful. As for the book itself, it's not bad. But it's got nothing on the original; absolutely NOTHING. It's easy to decide to read it, but if I could turn back time I never would have read it. Personally I think no sequel is necessary to the spectacular Gone With the Wind. It is a beautiful story that is complete the way it is. I'd rather dream sequels to the book myself than read Ms. Ripley's attempt to follow it. It's nothing against her. After all, it would've been hard for anyone to pick up, what with Melanie dead and Scarlett no longer in love with Ashley. I can almost see how it was necessary to change Scarlett beyond recognition. The first part of it, when Scarlett went to Charleston, was actually pretty interesting. But this is not a book that should have been written. As Rhett said in the last pages of GWTW, "Scarlett, I was never one to patiently pick up broken fragments and glue them together and tell myself that the mended whole was as good as new. What is broken is broken--and I'd rather remember it as it was at its best than mend it and see the broken pieces as long as I lived." Gone With the Wind ended, whether the ending was the way we wanted things to turn out or not, and this continuation is nothing but an attempt to glue pieces back together.
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Summary: After GWTW, What did you expect?
Review: I think everyone started reading this book expecting another GWTW and Alexandra Ripley is NOT Margaret Mitchell. But she is still an excellent writer with a slightly different style. GWTW, in my opinion, is a novel that practically begs for a sequel, but on the other hand it seems to be next to impossible to write a good one. Scarlett O'Hara and Rhett Butler are such complex characters with such conflicting emotions that I believe that the only person who ever really understood them was Margaret Mitchell. I know that not every story has a happy ending and in real life very few do, but that is why people read books. At least that is why I do. I enjoyed GWTW, but every time I read it my heart breaks for the characters. It is a wonderful peice of literature, but the ending leaves me slightly depressed for days and I ask myself why I read it over and over.After reading Scarlett I finally felt like I could rest easily because Scarlett had found happiness. In the 2nd book Scarlett O'Hara Hamilton Kennedy Butler seems to finally be sorry for the things she had done and she seemed kinder and less cold. While I don't think that Margaret Mitchell intended on having her portrayed that way, I certainly liked it.
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Summary: Ties up the loose ends, but that's about it. (SPOILERS)
Review: Sadly, I gave in to the urge to buy this book, wondering how Ms. Ripley would continue the story. At the end of GWTW, Scarlett is a stubborn, proud, resilient, greedy child, and we love her for it. Ms. Ripley seems to dilute the best of Scarlett's character while playing up the worst. The new Scarlett bites her tongue when she should speak up, and jumps to conclusions when she should reserve judgment, yet Ripley constantly harps on Scarlett's increasing "maturity."<br />The story is dull despite its sensationalistic descriptions of the violence perpetrated against Irish peasants. The characters become one-dimensional caricatures under Ripley's control. In addition, several anachronisms (like Scarlett's "white gold" necklace, when white gold wasn't created until the 1910's) detract from the story's authenticity.<br />Scarlett's obsession with Rhett in this book is played up to an absurd degree. It seems her motivation for every action, however insignificant, is Rhett -- manipulating him, making him jealous, or winning him back. This leads to an inevitable conclusion: Ripley's Scarlett must cut all ties with her newfound family and history, and run off with Rhett, who charges in to rescue her from superstitious, witch-hunting peasants (just one of many stupid stereotypes) at the very last second. <br />Don't bother reading this nonsense, unless you are absolutely desperate for Scarlett and Rhett to reunite whatever the cost.
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