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3.72 AVERAGE
3.72 AVERAGE
emotional
reflective
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
This was not what I expected when I picked it up but I got totally sucked in to the Butlers' stories.
Four children, one an infant, lose their mother to illness. Their father, an evangelical pastor, leaves the eldest, Althea, to care for her siblings for long stretches of time though she is only 12 herself.
Everything comes to a head decades later when Althea and her husband are jailed for fraud, leaving their twin teenage daughters in the care of Althea's siblings.
This is human drama done well. There's little sentimentality or wallowing. The reader is allowed to come to their own conclusions about each character's actions.
I found one part of it a bit off, but it wasn't pivotal and overall I enjoyed my time with this novel.
Four children, one an infant, lose their mother to illness. Their father, an evangelical pastor, leaves the eldest, Althea, to care for her siblings for long stretches of time though she is only 12 herself.
Everything comes to a head decades later when Althea and her husband are jailed for fraud, leaving their twin teenage daughters in the care of Althea's siblings.
This is human drama done well. There's little sentimentality or wallowing. The reader is allowed to come to their own conclusions about each character's actions.
I found one part of it a bit off, but it wasn't pivotal and overall I enjoyed my time with this novel.
dark
emotional
reflective
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Two stars for "It was okay." I just didn't feel interested enough to keep reading.
Picked solely for the audio narrator, I was surprised at how much I enjoyed this
I really liked this book. Getting through the first third of the book, I wasn't sure if I would or not. I wasn't in love with the characters, I wasn't sure what was happening with the plot, there just wasn't a lot that was keeping me invested. As I made it to the halfway point though, I just couldn't put it down. The situations, trauma, and especially the responses all felt so real. My heart was heavy for this family and I was excited to see the growth that was waiting for them past their journey.
This book just never coalesced for me. The way information was revealed kept the characters from feeling fully formed, and the aftermath of those reveals was very, very underwhelming. Perhaps if everything that happened in the last few pages made up the majority of the novel, it would have kept my attention. But as it was, I generally found it to be a dull story that briefly touched on interesting situations.
I could not relate to the characters and the plot made me anxious.