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lyramadeline's review
3.5
3.5 stars. This book was enjoyable, but it wasn’t super engaging to me. I felt like the plot kind of dragged on. The best part of this book was the different perspectives on the Civil War, but the rest of it was just okay.
karentalksbooks's review
5.0
A great coming of age story of a young woman caught up in the middle of the Civil War.
gretelchen's review
2.0
I take back what I reviewed in 2018 when I was younger and more naive and dumb. I am older and wiser now. Slave owners did terrible things and probably shouldn’t be made to be sympathetic protagonists when they grew off the exploitation and abuse of Black People. It is well written and has pretty prose, but you can put lipstick on a pig and it will still oink.
caslater83's review
4.0
I love history and I love authors who do their research well and bring the characters to life.
I will admit that I struggled in the beginning. I was waiting for the bait, the hook, the whole thing to grab me by the toenails and...nothing. At some point (and I can't remember where), I finally started to feel like the book was coming to life. FINALLY! Annie is a great character. She strikes me as a typical teen girl who wants to enjoy life and the war disrupts things on multiple levels for her. It robs her of the idyllic life she wants: the numerous balls, gorgeous dresses, and a never-ending line of beaus at her doorstep. Instead, she deals with the constant barrage of military soldiers invading her home and surrounding areas. She finds hope and comfort in poetry. She even finds love.
All in all, it's a good book. A little long for a YA historical fiction novel, but still a worthwhile read.
I will admit that I struggled in the beginning. I was waiting for the bait, the hook, the whole thing to grab me by the toenails and...nothing. At some point (and I can't remember where), I finally started to feel like the book was coming to life. FINALLY! Annie is a great character. She strikes me as a typical teen girl who wants to enjoy life and the war disrupts things on multiple levels for her. It robs her of the idyllic life she wants: the numerous balls, gorgeous dresses, and a never-ending line of beaus at her doorstep. Instead, she deals with the constant barrage of military soldiers invading her home and surrounding areas. She finds hope and comfort in poetry. She even finds love.
All in all, it's a good book. A little long for a YA historical fiction novel, but still a worthwhile read.
daniellew87's review
5.0
This is easily one of my favorite books. It's such an easy read, and it hits on a lot of important topics. It's a love story that I can read without having to worry about anything really scandalous happening, and it has a really good, happy ending.
sagorkowski's review
given to me by a middle school teacher
i do so love civil war books!
i do so love civil war books!
lindseyrknapp's review
5.0
I really enjoyed this book: it feels like exactly the historical fiction I've always wished someone would write. I appreciated how the author did not portray either the North or the South as perfect, but showed that both had good and bad people. It is very long (457 pages), but I really enjoy long books. A great historical fiction!
panda_incognito's review
4.0
This is one of the finest, most well-written, least-objectionable YA books I have ever read. My enjoyment level was only three stars, since the book was rather depressing, but it was good literature and told the story with careful attention to historical detail. This really brought the Civil War period to life for me, and even though I have read nonfiction books about the war, this story made the characters and circumstances far more memorable than mere facts. This book avoids most of the Civil War stereotypes that most youth fiction would fall into, and instead of being a hyped-up adventure story, this tells the heartbreakingly realistic story of a teenage girl coming into womanhood while the war's chaos was disrupting her life, threatening her family, creating tension with relatives, isolating her, and requiring great courage for her just to plug ahead in daily life.
One of the things I admired most about the book was its nuanced approach to the causes and rationale of the war. Instead of presenting the Confederacy as only Evil White Slave-Owners, it showed the reality that many of these people were fighting not because of slavery, but for state's rights: they had a greater state identity than national tie, felt that it was unconstitutional for them to be required to stay in the union, and wanted to be free from what they saw as federal tyranny. The North fought to preserve the union, not because they were opposed to slavery; many Union generals and soldiers were racist and/or owned slaves. I admired this author's willingness to delve into hard topics and present a historically accurate vision of what life was like for people affected by this messy, heartbreaking, morally mixed conflagration.
This book was very well-written and intelligent, giving pathos to an often unfairly stigmatized part of history: through this good story, we are reminded how unjust it is to remember the South exclusively as evil and slave-holding. The moral gray areas, nuances, and complex motivations of the Civil War are portrayed here with finesse, and I am very glad I had the opportunity to read this book. It has made me a more compassionate and informed student of history, and I learned more from this book than I have from traditional methods of learning history. Even though this is often a hard novel to read, I highly recommend it.
One of the things I admired most about the book was its nuanced approach to the causes and rationale of the war. Instead of presenting the Confederacy as only Evil White Slave-Owners, it showed the reality that many of these people were fighting not because of slavery, but for state's rights: they had a greater state identity than national tie, felt that it was unconstitutional for them to be required to stay in the union, and wanted to be free from what they saw as federal tyranny. The North fought to preserve the union, not because they were opposed to slavery; many Union generals and soldiers were racist and/or owned slaves. I admired this author's willingness to delve into hard topics and present a historically accurate vision of what life was like for people affected by this messy, heartbreaking, morally mixed conflagration.
This book was very well-written and intelligent, giving pathos to an often unfairly stigmatized part of history: through this good story, we are reminded how unjust it is to remember the South exclusively as evil and slave-holding. The moral gray areas, nuances, and complex motivations of the Civil War are portrayed here with finesse, and I am very glad I had the opportunity to read this book. It has made me a more compassionate and informed student of history, and I learned more from this book than I have from traditional methods of learning history. Even though this is often a hard novel to read, I highly recommend it.
emlovestrees's review
5.0
This book was very well written. The writing was sharp and clean. I like that it was written from the perspective of a girl my own age on the Confederate side of the war. I would recommend this to anyone who likes historical fiction.