Hold the Dream (Emma Harte Saga #2) by Barbara Taylor Bradford

Hold the Dream (Emma Harte Saga #2) Reviews

• 
  Franzi Sportler

  after finishing A Woman of Substance I read this sequel, and as in the first part, the author frequently goes overboard in details. Houses, rooms, people and clothes are described in the minutest particulars.
  The story is kind of predictable, has its moments, and has lots of repetition, in itself as well as of the first part. The characters are not really interesting and really predictable, too, once they are established. I mostly enjoyed reading it, anyway, like one enjoys watching a really bad TV series, just to know what happens next, even if you can predict it. I did, however, skip over lots of the details further on, as I just couldn't take it anymore. It is a book that would greatly benefit from some editing, one would get rid of about half of the bulk by just striking irrelevant dialogues, irrelevant characters, and descriptions descriptions descriptions. (Maybe there's a Reader's Digest Condensed Version around?) Read it if you like details and romantic plots with intrigue and drama. I would not call it well-written, the style does not compare to high-class literature, but it is an ok read if you're bored.
• 
  Suz

  These were my first ‘adult’ book! I was probably 14?
• 
  Margitte

  Just adding the book. Loved it many years ago when the subject and kind of characters still impressed my young soul :-)
• 
  Nada Abdelhalim

  well where can i start, i really loved the book , loved paula's charater what a strong wise woman can do how she loved her gra. well they all loved her so much and tried to please her, little emily was a wise although of her young age well she is not little anymore she is a lady now.
  hated that bastard ross and what he did, saddest part was the tragic death of david and jim but after all he she made back it to dear shane whom were perfect for each other.
  liked what emma did with her will was really smart of her yo include all those papers with it
  iam still confused about min's death and those 5 hours she spent at the lake what was she doing and the maid weird testimony at the court then nothing revealed at the end so it still a mystery !!
  wished to know what jonthon made after being fired from the company ?
  
  anyway what imp. is that the story ended happily how i can ask for more ;)
  didn't like the fact of reading every little tiny detail about the clothes , weather , views ,etc... it was very boring for me actually
  over all a woman can be as strong as man and even more. a book that worth reading .
• 
  Slip!

  DNF. will later.
• 
  Adrian

  Wow, what a crock of crap.
  
  I DNF after about page 200 (deserve a like for this hard-fought victory) and tbh, if anyone did, I would question their taste level. In this rambling book, which I picked up at a hostel in Tel Aviv (amazingly, I finished the first one, which at least had action), we have the family continuing to fall out and behave like landed gentry pigs. Salt of the Earth pleb turned empressario Emma Harte is old and still calling the shots. Her illegitimate daughter is still grousing about absolutely nothing, NADA, and let me just say I was rooting for that piece of trash throughout the book. The nadir came when we have TWO separate people looking at the same portrait with lengthy descriptions. We get it, they´re educated. Not interested. Also, the room was purple with a cascade of flowers, the sky was periwinkle blue, the sun was beating like a heart, the Yorkshire Moors... ov vey, over it.
  
  I have always disliked Emma hugely, a bland caricature of a ´working class girl done good´ - all the way through she is praised to the Heavens. This is both a discredit to the writing which TELLS us in classic chiclit fashion who is good and who is bad, but also with Emma who´s smug and unlikeable and with the characters who want to hang with this old goat. Yawn. The writing has a never-ending slew of turgid sayings, ´Love is a marriage of seeds, water the garden´ (excuse me, I have to vomit into my hat). There was also ridiculous showing, ´She was born in 1889, 11 years more than this century´ - hey BTB, we can work this out. We GET she is almost 80! The sex scene which used the word ´shaft´ (excuse me, there´s blood in my shoe, I have to leave) shows this chick can´t make a jot when it comes to a good love scene. Jackie Collins, Lord love her called a dick a dick. She made horny spinsters scream with joy. BTB couldn´t give a teenage boy an erection. Useless.
  
  I´m slagging this book off and I´m having a marvelous time. If you´re still reading, I continued just to get to the bit where the matriach and blandest heroine in literature died. It was immensely satisifying, although I had to flick through the never-ending blandless of Paula, a carbon copy of Emma. And Miranda with her kooky costumes, that was lame too. It wasn´t groovy or whatever word they used ´a scream´ ´a multicoloured peacock´. Trash is an art, and this woman with her polysyllabic words (she gets the English language, that I give her, our lassie from Yorkshire) and unlimited wordflow is not trash, it´s barely feasible reality. Time to move on to some saga featuring young tarts who have no shame, class or culture and guys who don´t cry of unrequited love but who get into fist fights at the drop of the hat and who you want to be taken down a peg.
• 
  Lin #Historical lover...❤️

  I adored A WOMAN OF SUBSTANCE (read it twice) but struggled through this book. Emma was such a complex character in WOS that I expected waaay more of this book. Whatever she accomplished in book 1was celebrated in this book ...idolised even.... but she never developed further.
  
  Her handling of her offspring was spectacular when a certain event (that will not be spoiled) took place.... but beyond that... her children and grandchildren lacked depth of personality. They were either good and like her following in her footsteps or bad and trying to cheat her or do something bad. No one charted their own course and became a doctor or pilot. It got boring as heck after a while.
  
  I do adored WOS I expected to gobble up the sequels but after reading this, I could not read another.
• 
  Gigi Langer

  Love the Emma series! Great characters, history, and settings.
• 
  Jane Watson

  Second book in the Emma Harte series. I do like these books and the stories are well told, just sometimes they seem a bit over the top with the descriptions of the characters and their many, wonderful traits. Other times her writing can be quite poignant and moving, but I do want to read them all and find out what happens which is a sign of a good series. One thing though, the editing, and it may just be as it was transferred to Kindle, is awful! Loads of mistakes, capital letters where there shouldn’t be, and sometimes wrong names of characters. Bit annoying to a pedant like me 😆
• 
  RainLady777

  Another awesome book. I'm on to the next one now which I heard was not as good as the first two, so....we shall see. This one really didn't drag at all despite the length of it. I think Sarah and Jonathan are well developed villain-characters. Some authors leave the villains a little flat and just think that their actions will carry it, but this author developed them just as much as the others.
• 
  Raquel Iacob

  The first was better. I didn’t like some parts of this one, but I just love BTB’s writing. Now to try and get my hands on the rest of this series!
• 
  Emma

  I really do love this series of books, I've read them multiple times since I was about 15 and each time something new comes through the story to me and its like its the first time I've read it, and I can't stop turning the pages. In some ways I enjoyed the second book much more than the first because the family really comes into its own in the present day, rather than looking back over 80 years as the first book does. Without the first book though, I think it is impossible to appreciate the second book and the messages that it contains. This is one I will read over and over again in the years to come - I must have read the book or more times already, but it doesn't lose its magic, and I look forward to reading the third book at some point in the future, to see how the story continues and what new treasures lie within the pages for me to find...
• 
  Rahaf Alfar

  I love Barbara Bradford and i like her style, Hold the dream conveys her style clearly, the characters are well formed and develop in the most logical and normal ways, it was a delight to read this book I loved Paula, Emma, Shane, Emily, and Winston not to forget Blackie too, however there were LOTS of unneeded conversations and descriptions specially business ones and they didn't add anything to the plot, the book is 835 pages, if you removed those unneeded pages the book will consist of 500 pages if not less, still the book was enjoyable, the writing style and characters drew me into the book, but isn't it always this way with Barbara Bradford ?
  
• 
  Coralie

  This is a 6 book series but I only read 5. I tried to read the 1st book, Woman of Substance, no way could I get into that book. I actually read the 4th book 1st & really like it. So I tried to start from the beginning & went to the 2nd book. I just loved this series. They are about a very wealthy family & friends. Good love stories & the drama in thier lives with Johnathon. I hope that the author writes one last book, if you read this series you will know what I am talking about.
• 
  Robin

  This story was like a script for a slow tv soap opera. There was 300 pages of story spread out in 750 pages. slow and boring
  
  Interesting, the story set in the late 60s/early 70s could have been set in today times with just the switch of landlines and cell phones and replace telefax with emails or text messages
• 
  Natalia

  Not as good as the first one. I enjoyed reading the lush descriptions in the first novel but I found them quite repetitive in the second.
• 
  Jenn

  After reading A Woman of Substance I was glad to have the next book in the series ready to start.
  
  This book centers more around her grandchildren rather than Emma. Emma is getting up there in age. She's almost 80 at the start of the book. While I missed reading about Emma's story I knew that it was time for the reins to be passed so that the story and her legacy could go on.
  
  I will start off by saying that while I enjoyed this book it wasn't at all like the first book. I fell in love with Emma's story and the woman made herself to be. Her favorite granddaughter, Paula, seems to be a clone of Emma and Emma recognized that.
  
  As with all large families and especially those with a lot of wealth and power there is always going to be some out of the bunch that will be set to rebel because they aren't happy. This book starts showing the true colors of some of the newer generations. The Harte family is unusual because they are intertwined with the O'Neill and Kallinski families.
  
  This book still carried over some of the same things as from the first book. Got a bit repetitious at time. Descriptions a little too overly descriptive. One thing that amuses me from both books is the talk of a widow's peak. Emma had it and so did Paula. It was just amusing to see it keep being mentioned.
  
  Overall this was an enjoyable read. The last portion of the book though was filled with so much sadness that it was heart breaking as I became really invested with the characters. I am still in awe with the shrewdness and the foresight that Emma had in a lot of matters and it seems Paula may also be the same. I can't wait to continue on with the series.
• 
  What to read next .......

  Hold the Dream was such a delightful read !
  This book was so wonderful, intriguing and such a pleasure reading inside the life of the Harte family.
  It was such a page turner, you forget the length of the book.
  
  I will be honest the first few chapters was all very confusing because there are so many characters to remember, especially remembering how they are all related and who they were.
  But the characters all become very strong in the storyline that each character got highlighted in their way.
  
  As this was the continuing story of ‘ A Woman of Substance ‘ l thought l was going to be disappointed, knowing Woman of Substance had such a strong storyline, and such a brilliant book, Barbara Taylor Bradford gave this sequel its own brilliance also, making Paula McGill Fairley a mordern version of Emma Harte, and learning about the extended family and how true feelings come out, when one shines each other.
  
  The love story of Paula and Shane was so passionate and gripping.
  
  Emma and Blackie there were no words 😶 how beautiful their friendship meant.
  
  This is definitely a Must Read, loved it, you will not be disappointed.
• 
  Iliana Petrovska

  Твърде много повтаряне на "телефонирам" и келтското наследство ...
  Отново много излишно детайлни описания, но все пак приличен сюжет, предвидим на места.
  Като цяло, доста драматични моменти. Някои от драмите си бяха абсолютно излишни, но си давам сметка, че съществуват и в живота. Както човек може сам да се скърши душевно, никой не може да му го причини насила...
  За пореден път ме изумява алчността човешка.
  Защо никога не ти стига това, което имаш, че искаш и още - власт, пари, имоти, бизнес, влияние .... ?
  Колко още? Защо? Кому е нужно? Нали ковчег джоб няма? Каквото и да си натрупал, като си отидеш чакалите рано или късно може да го пръснат, няма гаранция, че ще уважат усилията ти и трупаното с кръв и пот.. Ако не са чакалите, може наследниците да не са такива корифеи и пак да се стигне до същото...
  Най-важните неща са все безплатни, но пак искат същите кръв и пот понякога - семейство, приятели, дом, любов.... Всеки преситен от земните "блага" рано или късно се връща именно до тези заключения.
• 
  Alana Conradie

  A 700 page book that should have been halved.
  So many unnecessary details/characters … entire chapters could have been deleted. I ended up skim reading the second half as I was so bored and felt frustrated that the story wasn’t really going anywhere. I mean nothing really happened . It’s just about a family and the ups and downs they encounter… there’s no overarching story that keeps you interested.
  
  I stubbornly pushed through to the end simply because I have such a nostalgic love for her previous book a woman of substance. But really … I should have given up in favour of a more interesting read I think.
  
  2.5/3 stars - the writer gets points for how much effort she put into her descriptions haha
• 
  Manar

  This excellent book of Barabara's tayolor is so thrilling ans so whelmed with suspense... It never ceases surprising you, even after deceiving you with some predictable events.. This book, is a real thought and emotions provoking, greatly written by a great woman.. She's born to write.. luckily this year... one of the best books Ive read.. well I haven't had the chance to read the first Emmas Harte saga.. I started with hold on the dream and to be the best... so excited to read the other books of this legendary series
• 
  Gilda Author

  Over many past years I have read and stuck with one author and followed their series of books. I have read all of their books and now I am reading titles from different authors. This title ‘Hold the Dream’ is the first to read by author Barbara Taylor Bradford. I liked the way she wrote in a descriptive style. It helped me to understand the previous title’s name of ‘A Woman of Substance’ she has written.
• 
  Boukhalfa Inal Ahmed

  Suite de «L'espace d'une vie», ce roman aurait aussi bien pu ne pas être écrit vu le peu qu'il apporte. On y retrouve tous les membres des familles Harte, O'Neill et Kallinski, les rêves et les amours des uns mais aussi les jalousies et les méchancetés des autres. Contrairement au premier roman qui s'étend sur une vie, cette brique de 700 pages couvre à peine deux années où les évènements sont un peu trop «arrangés». Inintéressant tant sur le fond que pour le forme!
• 
  Buchliebhaber.2016

  Heute Vormittag habe ich den 2. Band (Des Lebens bittere süße von Barbara Taylor Bradford) beendet.✌📚😉📚✌ Leider muss ich euch sagen, dass mir der erste Band weitaus besser gefallen hat, als der zweite.🙁 Er hat mir schon nicht mehr ganz so gefallen.😥 Ich hoffe sehr, dass der dritte Band wenigstens wieder etwas herausreißen kann und besser wird...📚😉📚
• 
  Susan Watts

  I loved the lifestyles of Emma Harte’s grandchildren. The glamour and opulence were diverting. I still couldn’t really warm to Emma herself but loved her granddaughter Paula and also Emily. It was very busy though in terms of numbers of characters and businesses. I look forward to continuing with this series.