I really enjoyed Paris Wife so I was expecting something of that caliber. I don't think I liked Beryl, the main character. In fact, it seems that there was far more interesting things about Africa than about her. Bad marriage, in love with someone else, wants to be independent as a woman. Her mother left her when she was young, and her father did not raise her to be the typical lady, but rather to run wild on the plains of Kenya. She had a good friend from a nearby tribe. Then, when she was 16 or 17 her father told her she either had to move to Cape Town with him or marry the neighbor (early 1900's). She chose to marry the neighbor and it all went downhill.
I just never really liked Beryl. She was determined and successful and what she did. She didn't need vast amounts of money to make her content. But that's all I liked about her. I didn't like her self-destructive tendencies, nor did I like that she seemed awfully selfish. She made choices that were not at all what I would have made, but then again, I wasn't in her position. Oh, and the back of the book talks about her drive to be the first woman pilot, but that never happens until the last part of the book. The rest is about her being a horse trainer.
So it was an ok book, but not my favorite of Ms. McLain's.