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3.71 AVERAGE
3.71 AVERAGE
this was such a good story loved the characters, loved how they fell in love even though they were not in love when they married, it was an awesome easy read
hopeful
informative
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Interesting story,charachters and wonderful message on love.
Didn't ever feel really connected to the characters. It was overall a good book, just not great by any means.
This is "Sarah Plain and Tall" redone with a WWII inspired side plot. It was an easy read and had interesting stories but wasn't particularly well-written. Nice but simple.
I don’t know why but I am STRUGGLING to review this book.
This story line follows my top favorite trope ever, mixed in with my favorite setting ever, along with the sort of man that melts my little heart every. Single. Time.
Why, then, did it fail so miserably to capture my attention?
The trope I love most of all is arranged/faked marriages/relationships in which the characters inevitably fall in love. It’s just SO satisfying to see two people surprised by their own hearts and the path their life is taking. To put the cherry on top she’s pregnant and he married her because he’s so lonely on that farm of his, and is more than willing to help her in this predicament.
The setting was that of a farm, my dream location tbh. How did she make it so boring?? I wanted to cry. She stole the life out of that place, she did. She comes in, unsurprisingly upset at her lot in life, which makes complete sense. If I had had dreams of traveling abroad cut short by a bad decision, then sent to go live in a remote tiny town, I would be upset. But the author did her wrong here. She gave her nothing to do. Literally nothing. She’d be sitting at the farm all day doing nothing. This just felt so unrealistic to me. How is there NOTHING to do at a homestead? I get that our protagonist preferred shopping for bread over making it, but she never knitted, never sewed, never baked, did cook dinner, did gather eggs, did clean the house and that was it. Maybe it was because she was from Denver, so she’d never learned these skills? Maybe it was because WW II was the cusp of modernization and the farm was caught in that tension?
I genuinely couldn’t tell if the author was accurately portraying the state of a 1940s bean farm, or if she had simply never once in her life been around an operation of that size. Either way it bothered me to no end.
The perspective of this novel was interesting and refreshing, if nothing else was. I’ve read many
WW II novels which take place in Europe, and it was really interesting to hear it from the plains of the US, and the stories of the internment camps and the Japanese Americans at the time. Again, our narrator just got in the way, and was super annoying in this, as she considered herself to be the only American who felt it wrong to relocate Americans of Japanese decent. She even assumed her husband saw them as lesser than himself, because he’s some small minded bean farmer. Did she ever ask him about it? Nope. Did she assume he hated her American Japanese friends because he’s shy with new people and wouldn’t talk? Yep.
The best part of this book was the slow burn love. It was really sweet to see her fall in love without knowing she was. It was so satisfying to see her husband work hard to prove to her that he’d stick around, and love her coming baby as his own.
In some sense, I think this book should have been longer. A few conversations between her and Ray were missing, and I think she should have had a *little* more appreciation for her location.
It wrapped up into a neat bow, but still left me a little unsettled. I almost want to rewrite this book to be what it could have been. Oh, what it could have been…
This story line follows my top favorite trope ever, mixed in with my favorite setting ever, along with the sort of man that melts my little heart every. Single. Time.
Why, then, did it fail so miserably to capture my attention?
The trope I love most of all is arranged/faked marriages/relationships in which the characters inevitably fall in love. It’s just SO satisfying to see two people surprised by their own hearts and the path their life is taking. To put the cherry on top she’s pregnant and he married her because he’s so lonely on that farm of his, and is more than willing to help her in this predicament.
The setting was that of a farm, my dream location tbh. How did she make it so boring?? I wanted to cry. She stole the life out of that place, she did. She comes in, unsurprisingly upset at her lot in life, which makes complete sense. If I had had dreams of traveling abroad cut short by a bad decision, then sent to go live in a remote tiny town, I would be upset. But the author did her wrong here. She gave her nothing to do. Literally nothing. She’d be sitting at the farm all day doing nothing. This just felt so unrealistic to me. How is there NOTHING to do at a homestead? I get that our protagonist preferred shopping for bread over making it, but she never knitted, never sewed, never baked, did cook dinner, did gather eggs, did clean the house and that was it. Maybe it was because she was from Denver, so she’d never learned these skills? Maybe it was because WW II was the cusp of modernization and the farm was caught in that tension?
I genuinely couldn’t tell if the author was accurately portraying the state of a 1940s bean farm, or if she had simply never once in her life been around an operation of that size. Either way it bothered me to no end.
The perspective of this novel was interesting and refreshing, if nothing else was. I’ve read many
WW II novels which take place in Europe, and it was really interesting to hear it from the plains of the US, and the stories of the internment camps and the Japanese Americans at the time. Again, our narrator just got in the way, and was super annoying in this, as she considered herself to be the only American who felt it wrong to relocate Americans of Japanese decent. She even assumed her husband saw them as lesser than himself, because he’s some small minded bean farmer. Did she ever ask him about it? Nope. Did she assume he hated her American Japanese friends because he’s shy with new people and wouldn’t talk? Yep.
The best part of this book was the slow burn love. It was really sweet to see her fall in love without knowing she was. It was so satisfying to see her husband work hard to prove to her that he’d stick around, and love her coming baby as his own.
In some sense, I think this book should have been longer. A few conversations between her and Ray were missing, and I think she should have had a *little* more appreciation for her location.
It wrapped up into a neat bow, but still left me a little unsettled. I almost want to rewrite this book to be what it could have been. Oh, what it could have been…
I wish I could give this 3 1/2 stars. I liked it but it was pretty slow at times. I suppose to show you what life was like on the farm. I felt bad for Ray a lot and wondered why he loved Livy. I liked how it ended but it took forever to get there.
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
beautiful amazing book that i enjoyed every moment of with kind, well-rounded characters BUT nothing was properly resolved? like, it ended with one of those cheap author cop-outs where everything is quickly wrapped up in the last few paragraphs but you’re left with more questions than not??
livvy should have met up with edward again or he should’ve been killed or SOMETHING. she was so obviously still in love with him and i was almost waiting for her to leave ray and find edward again?that was my biggest issue i think. and i was expecting her and ray to have a slow burn romance but just … nothing happened? it went from ray immediately falling in love with livvy and livvy constantly being like “i want to touch him but i can’t. i want to touch him but i don’t love him. i’m not the right woman for him. this isn’t the life for me” to “i love him and i want to stay here”
ray’s loneliness needed to be explained more, and his and livvy’s relationship needed to have more milestones in it. and what about livvy’s hopes and dreams? how come she was suddenly so okay with her new life after agonizing over it for so long! there needed to be more happenings, more aha moments and emotional growth, and i think the climax should’ve been surrounding the baby’s birth, and maybe that should’ve coincided with the german pow’s arrests? i’m not sure but i do know that the whole plot of rose and lorelei getting into trouble was advertised in the summary and yet it didn’t happen until the literal last minute 🤷♀️
the entire book was a portrait of these complex characters and their complex feelings, just repeated and exampled the whole time, and then BAM — all the character development you could want right there in the last chapter. the payoff was awful and i’m left feeling so unfulfilled! i need some closure!!!!!!
some other things i wish were explored further and resolved: ray’s struggle with showing his emotions and not wanting to cry around livvy, rose and lorelei’s arrest (how awful did their story end?), ray’s reluctance to learn the history of his family and his property, ray’s reluctance to discover any life outside of his farm, livvy’s dream of becoming a history professor or an archeologist, ruth’s admiration of livvy, livvy and ray grieving together and bonding through their losses, livvy and her pregnancy (which was the whole point of the book and yet i feel as if the pregnancy was barely discussed), livvy going from a city life to a country life … need i go on?
so, yeah. this could’ve been so much better if only it had a little structure. it was so close to being perfect! so close!! maybe the movie adaptation will fill in the blanks i’m left with </3
ray’s loneliness needed to be explained more, and his and livvy’s relationship needed to have more milestones in it. and what about livvy’s hopes and dreams? how come she was suddenly so okay with her new life after agonizing over it for so long! there needed to be more happenings, more aha moments and emotional growth, and i think the climax should’ve been surrounding the baby’s birth, and maybe that should’ve coincided with the german pow’s arrests? i’m not sure but i do know that the whole plot of rose and lorelei getting into trouble was advertised in the summary and yet it didn’t happen until the literal last minute 🤷♀️
the entire book was a portrait of these complex characters and their complex feelings, just repeated and exampled the whole time, and then BAM — all the character development you could want right there in the last chapter. the payoff was awful and i’m left feeling so unfulfilled! i need some closure!!!!!!
some other things i wish were explored further and resolved: ray’s struggle with showing his emotions and not wanting to cry around livvy, rose and lorelei’s arrest (how awful did their story end?), ray’s reluctance to learn the history of his family and his property, ray’s reluctance to discover any life outside of his farm, livvy’s dream of becoming a history professor or an archeologist, ruth’s admiration of livvy, livvy and ray grieving together and bonding through their losses, livvy and her pregnancy (which was the whole point of the book and yet i feel as if the pregnancy was barely discussed), livvy going from a city life to a country life … need i go on?
so, yeah. this could’ve been so much better if only it had a little structure. it was so close to being perfect! so close!! maybe the movie adaptation will fill in the blanks i’m left with </3
challenging
emotional
hopeful
informative
sad
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes