dashwoodj 's review for:

A Hundred Summers by Beatriz Williams

4.0

---

This book captured my attention right away. It's well written and you come to care about the characters. The story unfolds nicely and I kept reading wanting to know what had happened in the past, and what would happen next. The book tells two stories with the same characters. The time periods are 1931 and 1938. The stories are told almost in parallel, with alternating chapters. The author did a good job of this and there wasn't any confusion between the two. I have only two somewhat negative comments. First is the character of Kiki. She's described as being almost 6. However, her dialogue is NOTHING like a 5 yr old. It's way too sophisticated. She sounds more like 10 or 11. Even a precocious 5 yr old wouldn't speak as Kiki is written. My other negative thought is that the last quarter or so of the book is over the top melodramatic. The main characters were written with thought and complexity. However, the resolution of their story wasn't as satisfying as I would have hoped. Again, I did enjoy the book, but it could have used a few tweaks to make it truly something special.