Sundowners by Lesley Lokko

Sundowners

Author:  Lesley Lokko

Publisher:  Orion Mass Market Paperback

Publication Date:  October 7th 2004

From Goodreads:

Take Four friends...Rianne:  beautiful, wealthy and thoroughly spoilt, she has the world at her feet but is about to risk everything.  Gabrielle:  intelligent, loyal and always worrying about everyone else, now it's time for her to start looking after No. 1.  Nathalie:  petite, pretty and with a shrewd eye for business, she uses her work to help her forget the one man she can't have.  Charmaine:  flirty and outrageous, she knows all about the good life.  She just needs someone to pay for it...Then a chance encounter changes everything- and for Rianne and her friends, nothing is going to be the same...

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I've had Sundowners in my TBR for years now and with my commitment to read my oldest books I decided on this chunkster.  At 656 pages Sundowners is an epic read that covers 20 years of the lives of 4 girls from their time in a all girl's boarding school to the start of their careers and adult lives.  

Sundowners reminded me a lot of Judith Michael's books or even Judith Krantz. Author Lesley Lokko grabs you from the start, now for me the start grabbed me but in all the wrong ways.  I detested Rianne from the start up until about 100 pages in.  Then I started to see changes in her that made the next 500 and something pages a crazy ride.  Her story still was my least favorite though.  I enjoyed reading about Gabrielle's life the most.  But they were all interesting.   I was rooting for all of them.

There is a little bit of everything in Sundowners..politics, love, betrayal and exotic locations.  The politics was really interesting, it was having to do with South Africa, Nelson Mandela and so much more.  It's very hard to explain it, but it's definitely exciting.  

Sundowners is a throwback to women's fiction of the past.  It's a glorious ride.