Betrayal


Fiction - Historical - Event/Era
496 Pages
Reviewed on 12/29/2012
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Author Biography

Michele Kallio is a former teacher/librarian and retired medical office manager. She is presently working on Beyond Betrayal, a sequel to Betrayal. She lives with her husband, David and their 12 year old golden retriever, Sara on the shores of New Brunswick, Canada's famous Bay of Fundy.

    Book Review

Reviewed by Kathryn Bennett for Readers' Favorite

I always love a good historical novel that can seamlessly take us back and forth between two time periods. Michelle Kallio's "Betrayal" does exactly that. This is the story of two women: a happily dating modern day woman living in Canada named Lydia and Anne Boleyn's lady's maid Elisabeth. One would think that two such women would have nothing in common but Lydia begins to have a series of nightmares and dreams that involve a life that is not her own, a life that is in the 16th century. As if these dreams and nightmares were not enough, a Christmas present arrives mysteriously in Canada at Lydia's door that sends her to Devon, England, her mother's ancestral home.

This is not the standard historical fiction because parts of it take place in a modern setting, but any historical fiction fan will love it. Michelle Kallio has woven together a tapestry of incidents that fit so well together. Lydia the modern character is someone you can feel a connection with. She is not a woman given to flights of fancy. Really I found her rather down to earth. So the realistic dreams she has followed by the package that acts as a catalyst to send her to England seems to genuinely unsettle her. The portions that are set in Elisabeth's time are so vivid that you can tell a lot of research went into them. Of course there are some liberties taken with a few historical pieces. However, that is something you expect in a fiction that is after all not fact. I liked the parts in Tudor England because Michelle Kallio has written them beautifully. I also enjoyed the simple but effective twists that she has put into the story. I would recommend this book to any historical fiction lover or someone who is just getting interested in the genre.

Karen Aminadra

Betrayal is a nice long book and rightfully so. Michele has given plenty for a reader to get their teeth into. Betrayal is so carefully written and skilfully crafted that it will go down in my memory as one of the best books I have ever read.

Michele has a great way of making you feel as though you are feeling intuitively about her characters. Usually a writer drops clues or breadcrumbs to follow, and we build up a picture of the character, however, Michele connected with me intuitively and I thoroughly enjoyed that experience. For me that was a first and it was fascinating. Her characterisations are truly wonderful, there are plenty of them to love, and there are those you also want to slap!

This is probably the first book from a Canadian that I have read. I have learnt so much just from this one book. Although I still cannot get my head round the Maine accent. It makes me laugh, I need to go there and hear it first hand I think.
Michele clearly has done her research too. She is fully acquainted with the history within her novel, and it seems the personality traits of the people she has included in there too. Another thing I personally loved is that Michele also knows England. It would be too easy to gloss over that and generalise, but as a Brit I appreciate her attention to detail, it makes the places she writes about come to life.

From the beginning, the heroine is dealing with a rather delicate and nasty problem, and it was not long before I was engaged enough and interested enough to want to find out more.
The boyfriend had me against him at the beginning, he was a little too sneaky! Even though I could not put my finger on it or explain it at all, I was left with a feeling of dislike and distrust of him. I wanted to read on and see if my `intuition' about him was right.

I love the changes through time, they are handled very well, and I connected instantly with both worlds as Michele transported me from one century to another, and there was no shell-shock from being transported through time either. Very well handled indeed.
The feeling of foreboding and danger for Elisabeth grew steadily with each page in the past so that the book turned out to be a real page-turner.
My curiosity about Lydia's dreams grew as they also grew in intensity in the book. My suspicions and brow furrowed more deeply over Dan's reactions. I was as curious about him as Alan Stokes was!

I actually found myself thinking about poor Lydia from time to time during the day while I was working and could not wait for my day to end so that I could curl up and read it!
The ending is lovely, it is a great and satisfying conclusion, and brings together of all the threads that Michele has woven into her story.
There is however, one question still left unanswered, but as I have discovered Michele is writing a sequel so I am sure all will be revealed then.