Amber is without a doubt one of the most vile and despicable characters I have ever read. Kudos to Kathleen Winsor for creating such an unrepentant monster in a piece of popular model fiction for her time. No surprise given the antics of the h that Popes banned this baby.

n  n lays the groundwork for historical fiction and bodice rippers. Yes, it's epic, not in terms of a generational HF as the story take Amberonly through approximately nine years in Charles II Restoration England. No spoiler here in that Amber is the ultimate sleep your way to the top to become one in Charles II rotation of mistresses.

PLOT:
Amber is the product of an affair between two young aristocrats. Her mother dies in birth, and I suppose the father never heard of her or claimed her so she's brought up by her mother's midwife. She's a handful. At 16 she meets the so-called love of her life, Bruce, who takes her to London. No, he doesn't debauch the young virgin, she throws herself into his life willingly. He tells her he will never marry her, and he means it. After he leaves, she finds she is pregnant and the saga really begins.

In a nutshell, Amber does anything and everything to get ahead without conscience, without remorse. She relishes every head she steps on and every back she breaks. Skipping over minor skirmishes of spite and envy for any competition like Barbara Villiers, real life mistress to Charles II, let's concentrate on her bigger infractions.

1. Numerous abortions which was shocking given when this was written. Surprising that Winsor either ignored the concept of birth control or made a conscience choice for the character not to use it. Stomach turning begins.

2. Marries an old, effete nobleman for his title so she can impress Bruce and the rest of London. Turns her impotent husband was once her mother's suitor. He feels he recognizes Amber and has her wear her dead mother's betrothal gown. Adds a sneaky touch of incestuous necrophilia. Yuck.

3. Has an affair with her husband's son because she's bored and wants revenge on her husband for being so boring and tight with the money. Turns pear-shaped when the poison meant for her ends up killing the young man.

4. Has an affair with Bruce's best friend because it makes her feel close to Bruce.

5) Bruce has a duel with Amber's protective lover. As the lover lays dying, Amber runs to Bruce. He's the one who tells her that her lover is dying and she should at least hold his hand. Sad when the man that kills you feels more for you than your mistress.

6. Bruce has scarpered off to the Colonies. Smart man. Every time they see each other she's nauseatingly frantic to be with him as she simultaneously has an affair with the king and is married to random men.

7) Finally kills her old husband. Brutally.

8) In one of Bruce's visits to Amber, she nurses him through the plague. Nice, yes? It seems there will be a turnaround. Hell to the no! When the nurse who's been helping her nurse him gets sick, she kicks her out of the room, Amber is furious she's sick now, tells her no way will I help you, listens to her die, then drags her body out to the corpse collectors. Gruesome, gruesome scene from the description of the plague to our dainty little heroine's actions.

9) When Bruce arrives from the wilds of Virginia with his little Mary Sue wife that is Madonna to Amber's whore, Amber runs after him like a dog in heat.

10) Bruce being almost, almost, as despicable as Amber continues his affair with her despite being in love with Corinna, his wife. Stomach churning is intense. Eventually she flaunts the affair in little Mary Sue aka Corinna's face when she's pregnant, and Bruce IS DONE.

Sex is fade to black by the way.



I knew FA was whitewashed when it went from book to movie, I just didn't know quite how much.

The book is well done, and will be a good read for fans of Historical Fiction as well as bodice ripper fans. Not for me.

The one bright spot for me was BIG SPOILER due to all Amber's machinations and smugness, she has few friends in London hierarchy. Two of the nobles, set her up.

Bruce and his wife have left for France. The nobles tell Amber that Corinna died in the boat on the way to France so Bruce is going directly to Virginia. Forever Amber, who couldn't take a hint if it were a stone hammer, is giddy that it's her opportunity to catch Bruce for good so she gets ready to leave for the colonies. Too bad they lied as Corinna is not dead. I actually had to laugh at that point as the last scene has her waving at the windows she's leaving behind. Sadly, it probably means the BS will start all over again for poor Corinna.

She makes Scarlet O'Hara look like Mother Teresa.

Audiobook. 4 stars book and narrator.

Wow, an epic reminiscent of Vanity Fair and Gone With the Wind, set in the world of 17th century England. About halfway through the 42-hour book, I paused to rewatch the beautifully done movie Restoration (starring Robert Downey Jr. and Meg Ryan with Sam Neill as King Charles). Though the book and movie have very different plots, the setting and themes are similar. The opulence of the court at that time is so well portrayed in the movie and was a wonderful aid to my imagination when reading the book.

So here's why I decided to tackle this almost 1,000 page tome. I read a book recently called When Books Went to War, about a government program that provided books to soldiers fighting in WWII (absolutely fascinating book, by the way). The variety of books provided to the soldiers was mind-boggling and very admirable. But guess what? This book was one of the most popular in the program! So what, you say? Well, here's what it's about: "Abandoned pregnant and penniless on the teeming streets of London, 16-year-old Amber St. Clare manages, by using her wits, beauty, and courage, to climb to the highest position a woman could achieve in Restoration England-that of favorite mistress of the Merry Monarch, Charles II." I find it fascinating that this book was so popular with soldiers! I'm assuming it was the sex, although by today's standards it was pretty tame. I can just picture them fighting over this book (they did!) or ripping the book into chapters so they could be passed around to more people (they did!). Unfortunately, I didn't like this book. Amber was whiny, arrogant, immature, annoying, selfish...I could go on and on with the adjectives...none of them positive. When I got to about Chapter 24 and realized I had about 70 more chapters to go, I threw up my hands. I simply could not spend another moment with Amber. But I'm glad she gave so much joy to the soldiers!

It was a very intresting books concerning the English restoration era,which,as I have previously pointed out in my updates,it isn't mentioned very often resulting to not many people knowing about it.The prose is excellent and very fast pacing.It is the kind of book that "commands" you to turn the page whiteout it containing anything too original.
My only issue were the characters.I hated the main character Amber.Her character accumulates all the flaws one can imagine.She is selfish,obsessive,malicious,brat etc.She is an antiheroine now that I think of it.
My second issue concerns some potholes.For example:the issue of Amber's parentage remains unsolved,the ending was out of nowhere and generally many things don't add up.
Overall,a good book I dare say with some flaws

This book sometimes made me so angry, I could not see straight. The heroine , Amber, never gives up on loving a man who continues to deny her. This is a true page turner. The description of the bubonic plague will have you cringing. One of my all time favorite books.

*****SPOILER ALERT******
This book left me feeling troubled! The author's writing I felt was great, she painted a vivid image of the time, when reading it I got transported to that period and felt like I knew the character and felt their joys and sorrows. Unfortunately, I wished I would have never "met" them, a terrible flaw in a book as I need to like at least the main characters. Even if I can appreciate and learn from the complexities of evil characters. I also hated the incomplete ending (probably the reason why I gave the book 1 star) specially as it was obviously never meant to be followed by a sequel (author died about 60 years after F.Amber was published, sufficient time to write the sequel of her most famous book) though 900+ pages is more then enough to have had sufficient space to fit a better ending. That is not way to reward a reader that has suffered reading through all those pages and is just waiting for the finish line and finally have a good good feeling about it all, that all the craziness was worth it for the characters and the reader alike. But I guess after you create such awful (IMO) characters like Amber and Bruce, who some people enjoy reading about and others don't, how do you end it satisfactorily to most people?? There will be those who want something good for them and those who wouldn't... I also understand that life is never wrapped perfectly with a bow at the end of it, but this is a book/entertainment not real life, so I expect a better way to wrap the story at the end and not be left with a huge cliffhanger.

As to what I think the ending should have been... I'm on the camp of those who don't believe amber and bruce deserve a HEA together or alone. Sadly for me as a reader as it's not what I look forward in a novel, my dream ending is them living together and making each other miserable forever. After what Amber did to Captain Morgan when he was dying, she died to me as a character!!! She could have been so happy with him (as stated in the book), he was her second chance!! He had everything she liked in Bruce with one notable exception and had none of Bruce's flaws. But he lacked a TITLE and thus had no entry to the "dream" world of the court, and thus she held back. This is ironic because I feel that is the same prejudice that held Bruce from ever taking amber seriously and marry her. To him she was not a lady of quality and thus not worthy of being his wife. She was beneath him and the more she did to raise herself the more she devalued herself in his eyes, she could never win! Irony of all irony as we know her background!

In regards to Amber being a whore, I don't blame her for it, I think she did what she could to survive (though ambition got the better of her in the end). She was a pretty girl who learned from early on that her beauty got her places, and it was all she had, that's why she was always scare to find someone more beautiful then her or losing her beauty. But, I think she might not have turned out how she did, if it had not been for the situation with Luke, and by consequence Bruce's action. When Bruce was leaving London he tried to save his conscience by giving her a lot of money for someone of her class and some half hearted advice, but what he should have done (since the honorable thing to do was not an "option" as it was for all noblemen when dealing with peasants at the time) was at least to teach her survival skills and how to count money, she was left as a seating duck!!! It was obvious when he came back that he didn't expect her to have survive.

When Almusry (sorry forget it's spelling) critiques her for how she gets to the top (though he himself had no problem using her in that way and was the first to tell her to learn how the world work for girls like her) I actually side with Amber. It is too easy of those at the top who haven't had to earn it (but for an accident of birth) to judge those who in their eyes "sell their soul to the devil" to get there. But in that time period that was the only way for her to move ahead, and especially at the beginning she had no option if she was to survive, though initially she showed resistance to become a prostitute. Besides, even those lady at the top including the princesses, etc where also whoring themselves for titles and positions. So why it was ok for them and not Amber? I think the real reason other nobles hated her is for having broken the class barriers and outsmarting the system, which not everyone pretty or not could do. Plus, Amber strength and weakness was that she was a great mimic, she copied and behaved like those around her be it the nobles or those from whitefriars. So in essence those who criticize her in the book, where criticizing themselves.

Having said that, like I said at the start, I disliked Amber as a character because she never accepted fault for her actions (always blaming others), she never learned her lessons and was always selfish, superficial, mean and treated those she "left" behind badly. She was not a good friend, only exception were nan and that lady at Newgate whom she helped without even knowing her. Maybe it was because she saw herself in them, who knows.

Bruce, like Amber (they are two peas in a pot) is selfish, doesn't take responsibility of his actions and worse tries to appear honorable, "~oh but I was always straight with you and told you so from the beginning" or to his wife "I can't scape the era I was born into and their mores"; simply said a coward and a user of woman. To me the worse he did for amber was, not that he left her alone the first time, but that he kept coming back over and over and thus never let her forget him and truly start over. If he had not come back to remind her of the possibilities out there that first time, maybe she would have had her second chance: her happy ending with someone who loved her and would have helped her become a better person.

In short this is a very sad book, full of what could of and should of; just a bunch of wasted lives, very depressing!!

Some alternative title ideas for this book:
- Forever Bruce
- Forever Not Like Other Girls
- Forever He's Just Not That Into You
- Forever Gaslight, Gatekeep, Girlboss

That all said, this is an interesting book for 1) the historical detail and 2) Amber, the amoral and forever scheming heroine. I have one key criteria for strong female characters: she helps and is helped by other women. A woman with no meaningful relationships to other women is not a strong female character. Amber goes through a large portion of the book bashing other women and insisting she's prettier than them. The notable exception is Nan, her faithful maidservant. I feel like this companionship saves Amber from being a completely conscienceless villain.

OMG THIS WAS AMAZING! What am I supposed to read after this? It was sooooo good. My grandma would have loved this, and I only wish I had found/read this sooner :(

Historical Novel is The “OG” of the modern Historical Romance Genre!

Forever Amber by Kathleen Winsor is a life and times historical (notice the intentional omission of the word “romance”) novel. At the beginning, the h is a bold, forward 15 yo hoe cake, even for today’s “anything goes” sexual culture and there’s a lot of mattress mambo and tester-bed headboard rattling going on (the heroine is like a collection plate at a baptist revival) but there is no on page on page sex because the book was written in the 1940s.

The “Amber,” the protagonist is exasperating, though has a fierce and formidable native wit to use her beauty as a tool for survival and it pays off in a big, big way! Let beautiful women who are virtuous and upstanding starve, live in poverty and find shelter under uncertainty and the leaking roof of morals from the elements!

However, if you’d like to read a book that I believe is the origin of the modern HR (but really isn’t a romance at all) that started in the 70s when the great Kathleen E. Woodiwiss opened the bedroom door in her first book The Flame and the Flower, go for it. Forever Amber a long a$$ book, but I think it’s in Hoopla if your library uses that platform/provider.

Kathleen Winsor had really good detail about life during the time period (Restoration England) and had the most deliciously callous, wholly lacking in sympathy, sensibility and completely governed by self-interest alone (I respect that) romance male love interest (as a protagonist) that I have ever seen. Like the bodice ripper, he dips in and out—> long separations. He technically, is not a bad intentioned dude. He just stands back and let’s ppl make their own choices and isn’t into saving individuals from themselves. If you wish to jump off a bridge, he’ll calmly watch you do it, as long as YOUR actions don’t interfere with HIS comfort, HIS pleasure, HIS life or HIS goals. This book could never be a favorite read for me, but Mr. Callous is going on my “favorite” hero shelf! I’m not in love with this dude because He’s not lovable, but he merits commendation because (in my twisted mind) he takes “indifference” it to a whole different level that I have never seen. He’s even got the bodice ripper/HR “OG” of callous man in Hr beaten to flinders!—I’m takin’ Steve Morgan of Sweet Savage Love by Rosemary Rogers. Stevie looks like mister tender and love-lorn compared to Mr. Callous in this book!

Ppl compare The character “Amber” to Scarlett O’Hara (GWtW is historical fiction and NOT a romance, and neither is this book a romance). The only similarity between the two of them is stubborn dogged (inexplicable) devotion, and perhaps missed opportunities with a man (in Scarlett’s life) and several men in the the case of Amber, who loved them, unlike Ashley Wilkes and Bruce Carleton, due to not Amber and Scarlett’s hard-headed obtuseness to their own detriment, and to men who do/did love both heroines.

Fun and lusty romp through Restoration London following adventuress Amber St Clare as she claws her way from humble beginnings to success at the Royal Court as Charles II's mistress. A good blend of history and fiction with lots of intrigue, my only complaint being that some of the plot twists and turns were just a little too convenient and some were probably a little too implausible. Overall though, a thoroughly enjoyable read.

Buddy read with Anna :-).

Read this a long long time ago and just realized I hadn’t added it to goodreads yet!

Amber was a very long, very satisfying read. Giant books fascinate me, but at the same time when I start one I can not help but feel worried that it will bore me after a while. Winsor's book, however, keeps the reader captivated from start to finish, and, once you have finished it, you really would not mind reading a sequel.

I know this book is often compared to Gone With the Wind, but personally I think that is not a fair comparison at all. The plots are very different, so is the love story, and so is the main character: there is only one Scarlett O'Hara, and Amber, even though she has many similarities with the American heroine, just isn't at Scarlett's level.

Well, what about Amber then? Amber is hateful: there is no better term to describe her. She is shallow, vain, without any moral, and the only noble thing about her is her undying devotion to a man who does not care about her at all. To be honest, maybe this was the thing I found most annoying about her: I could forgive her being a ruthless opportunistic, but I could not believe she was so naive when it came to Carlton and could not see that he was not worth her time. However, there were also some times when I could not help but admire her devotion to him: first of all during the plague when she assisted him, which is also the part of the book where Amber is her strongest, best self.

So, I imagine you are wondering how I managed to read a 800+ pages book with a heroine I despised. Well, there is a thing about Amber which is really remarkable, and that thing alone makes you follow her adventures with trepidation, and despite everything makes you cheer for her in every situation: her incredible will to live, which helps her survive through literally everything. This, and the fact that she never looks back: she goes through a lot of dramatic situations, but never once she regrets the decision to leave her previous life to find a better one.

Another reason I liked the book immensely was that it is a brilliant historical book. It is set after the English Restoration and, through Amber's adventures which go from the Newgate Prison to the Royal Court, it shows every side of London, the wretched, desperate one of the poor people, and the sparkling, cruel one of the rich. Another bonus: it features important historical events too, like the Great Fire of London. If you enjoy historical fiction you will surely admire Winsor's real and engaging portrait of Charles II's London.

I strongly recommend reading this book and not being scared by its many pages: there are no boring parts at all, and everyone of Amber's adventures is memorable and worth reading. And, after all, the books does cover ten years!