Review: The Wicked and the Just by J. Anderson Coats

Title:  The Wicked and the Just
Author:  J. Anderson Coats
Genre:  Historical Fiction
Pages:  352
Published:  April 2012
Publisher:  Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Source:  via Publisher
Where to buy:  Amazon ~ Book Depository

Synopsis:

Cecily’s father has ruined her life. He’s moving them to occupied Wales, where the king needs good strong Englishmen to keep down the vicious Welshmen. At least Cecily will finally be the lady of the house.

Gwenhwyfar knows all about that house. Once she dreamed of being the lady there herself, until the English destroyed the lives of everyone she knows. Now she must wait hand and foot on this bratty English girl.

While Cecily struggles to find her place amongst the snobby English landowners, Gwenhwyfar struggles just to survive. And outside the city walls, tensions are rising ever higher—until finally they must reach the breaking point.

Furious with her father, poor, poor Cecily has been forced to move from her beloved Edgeley to a remote location in Wales.  Cecily is one of those characters you love and hate.  She is spoiled, rude and extremely fascinating.  Her father sees the move to Caernarvon as an opportunity to become a land owner, move up the social ladder and find Cecily a husband.  Unfortunately for Cecily, she just sees it as her father ruining her life.

We flip between Cecily and Gwinny – a young Welsh girl who works in the de Edgeley household.  The two girls have an extremely volatile relationship through out the story.  Gwinny wants nothing more then to see the spoiled English brat out of her life and Wales back to the way it was before the evil English moved in.  Cecily is haughty and puts herself above Gwinny – unfortunately for Miss Cecily she’s far from the top of the pecking order now.

This was an interesting read, we get a look inside the lives of two very different lives in an extremely unsettled time in England and Wales history.  The English have occupied Wales, a land they believe is inhabited by a barbaric race.  We see how completely different the lives of Gwinny and Cecily truly are and how the tensions rise between the two girls and through out the entire community.  By the end of the novel, the spoiled Cecily is humbled.  At this point I felt sorry for her and even started to like her!

I thought this was an excellent debut for J. Anderson Coats and the look inside this period in history.  Will I recommend this book?  Yup, it’s a fantastic historical fiction, YA debut.  Will I read more by this author?  Most definitely, I look forward to reading more.