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dejareads9 's review for:
The Great Alone
by Kristin Hannah
adventurous
challenging
dark
emotional
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
**spoilers ahead**
I genuinely did like this book. The first book I read by Kristin Hannah was The Nightingale, and that book was everything to me. Hard to follow up for sure. Don’t get me wrong The Great Alone is not terrible, it’s still amazing in its own right, but there was some things that I didn’t particularly like.
The way Hannah laid the foundation out for the Albright family was great, I have a love/hate relationship with 2/3rds of the family and a full hate/hate relationship with Ernt. I can acknowledge he was going through issues dealing with several mental health problems, but I’m not letting that negate how horrible he was to both Cora and Leni.
With Cora I feel deeply for her because she was definitely too naive at 16, to see what her parents saw in Ernt Allbright who was 25 when they got pregnant together. She was young and full of love for a man who probably loved her too. They had Leni and it was all good, until it wasn’t. I would’ve liked to see her out Leni first more. I think there was some points that she could’ve absolutely, but chose Ernt time and time again and wanted Leni to understand because she didn’t want to deal with him alone. I can have empathy for her as an abusive victim—because she is a victim, but as a mother I feel she should’ve been better and she even acknowledges it later in the book before death.
Also with Cora one of the parts I hated most was when she and Leni hid the body she waited until after it all to be like ‘I thought you understood, we have to disappear’ when she 100% knew Leni didn’t understand that. That gave me the same feeling that Leni telling Ward the events of that night thinking she wouldn’t get arrested gave me because they both fed in her naivety in a way to me.
Now for Leni, I love her and felt so protective over her. Loved watching her grow throughout the book, but there were parts, especially some in the end when she was just too naive. Her going back to Alaska because she wanted to ‘give mama her dying wish’ which was to tell the police Cora did it alone and Leni knew nothing about it, her grandfather who was a lawyer giving her the SAME advice despite not wanting her to even go—all for her to get to Alaska and spill every bean she had because she, I don’t know, thought she could trust the police even though her mother told her from the beginning they couldn’t! I don’t know why she thought that would have a different outcome, even Tom Walker was wondering why she told them. But she was lucky, truly, that she knows people who know people or that would’ve been a different situation for her. In that moment I was angry with her because she wasn’t thinking about her son for real, she could’ve been locked up and never seen him again because she didn’t want to listen to advice from others who knew more about how that would go.
The ending was a bit rushed to me. But, overall, I did like the book. The love story that brewed between Matthew and Leni was great. I’m glad it worked out for the both of them in the end. Even with the Seven years apart while she was in hiding, I’m glad she never let herself forget and poured Matthew and her Alaska into MJ. Also glad MJ is a social butterfly and accepted his new family immediately, loved that for him.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Domestic abuse