Rosamunde Pilcher - The Shell Seekers

THE SHELL SEEKERS is a novel of connection: of one family, and of the passions and heartbreak that have held them together for three generations.
THE SHELL SEEKERS is filled with real people--mothers and daughters, husbands and lovers--inspired with real values.
THE SHELL SEEKERS centers on Penelope Keeling--a woman you'll always remember in a world you'll never forget.
THE SHELL SEEKERS is a magical novel, the kind of reading experience that comes along only once in a long while.

Comment: I read this book for a book club I participate in. I've heard of the author before but her books never appealed to me and I was never curious to read them, and if it weren't for the club I surely wouldn't try it on my own.
The story follows the lives of Penelope and her children. Penelope has had a rich life in terms of things happening to her and her family and she raised three children that now see her in their own way. Throughout the book we get to know everyone involved in Penelope's life and in the things she deals with and most of all, in her father's paintings, which are now very valuable.
Penelope's children have different lives and expectations and two of them see in the paintings a way of continuing that life or improving it. Even foreigners show up and have decisive presence in Penelope's life.
I didn't like this book that much. It was told in a very confusing way, always changing times, one moment it was the present, another the past and so on. Plus I thought the writing boring. I couldn't find the eagerness to keep reading. I had to do it out of duty. The POV changes all the time, depending on who's in the chapter's spotlight and I wouldn't mind if tha narrator was the same but it changed so...very annoying.
I didn't like most characters. The important ones, I mean. There are quite a few secondary ones, too bland to be noticed even if important for something in the plot. The important characters all have something that annoys me or makes me want to puch them. Penelope isn't one of them, in which case I'd have cursed the book the whole time. Penelope is interesting and to be honest one or two passages about her moved me. The rest was...just barely tolerable.
I didn't like most characters because of their attitudes towards Penelope. Obviously, that was the purpose, but that doesn't mean I'd have to like it.
I don't find the will to try anything else by this author. Not currently anyway. Who knows in several years...