Take a photo of a barcode or cover
rae_rif 's review for:
The Giver of Stars
by Jojo Moyes
4 stars is a bit strong, but 3 felt like too little. i did enjoy this book, and read it pretty quickly considering its length. but it wasn't amazing necessarily. i liked the basic premise of somewhat outcat women running a packhorse library in v rural kentucky in the early 1920s. and i mostly enjoyed marjorie and alice as main characters.
once marj was charged with murdering mcullough (after hitting him on the head with a copy of little women 100% in self defense, he fell and hit his head and froze to death and lay lying under snow for 4 months) and went to jail, the book took a turn and had a diff feeling which i didn't like quite as much as the first part. i think they got verna mcullough to lie about her dad returning his copy of little women, since the book said sophia basically fibbed the ledger to indicate that was true. but why not show that part? how did they convince her to lie? the book implied her dad had impregnated her before disappearing and dying, so i get that she hated him, but still...felt odd for a book that explicitly said so much
i guess bennett was gay, as indicated by the fact that wife #2 peggy asked to get the copy of married lovemaking book. but it seemed like he had been flirting and maybe fooling around with peggy while he was still married to alice? i picked up on his poss gay vibes early on, but i still remain confused why he couldn't have tried harder to cover it up. and maybe there was a scene where alice unexpectedly ended up a at a bar and saw peggy all over him? again, was she cluelessly flirting, or did they have a thing? i guess i think he was gay, but not really addressed.
i didn't love that by the end, both main characters had gotten married and marj had a kid. about 6 months into her pregnancy she went through the magical transformation where she gets calm and the motherly instinct comes on strong and it totally changes a woman's character. and i just didnt love it. and while i didn't hate alice and fred's growing relationship, i again didn't love the sentiment that alice got her happy ending which would of course be marrying her love. also not totally buying that she could easily get her marriage from bennet annulled b/c they had never consumated it. wouldn't bennet have protested? or van cleave? its sketch. and given the gender politics of the time, would people even believe alice when she said that? esp after she had sex with fred so would fail any bs egregious virgin test?
van cleave was a bit too much a villain. it wasn't complicated at all, he was simply a POS. a better author would have made it more interesting by giving him some good to be more compelling. and i would have liked more than faint insinuation about the union busting and terrible environmental damage his coal mine was inflicting.
not sad i read this, but also not sure i would recommend it to anyone
once marj was charged with murdering mcullough (after hitting him on the head with a copy of little women 100% in self defense, he fell and hit his head and froze to death and lay lying under snow for 4 months) and went to jail, the book took a turn and had a diff feeling which i didn't like quite as much as the first part. i think they got verna mcullough to lie about her dad returning his copy of little women, since the book said sophia basically fibbed the ledger to indicate that was true. but why not show that part? how did they convince her to lie? the book implied her dad had impregnated her before disappearing and dying, so i get that she hated him, but still...felt odd for a book that explicitly said so much
i guess bennett was gay, as indicated by the fact that wife #2 peggy asked to get the copy of married lovemaking book. but it seemed like he had been flirting and maybe fooling around with peggy while he was still married to alice? i picked up on his poss gay vibes early on, but i still remain confused why he couldn't have tried harder to cover it up. and maybe there was a scene where alice unexpectedly ended up a at a bar and saw peggy all over him? again, was she cluelessly flirting, or did they have a thing? i guess i think he was gay, but not really addressed.
i didn't love that by the end, both main characters had gotten married and marj had a kid. about 6 months into her pregnancy she went through the magical transformation where she gets calm and the motherly instinct comes on strong and it totally changes a woman's character. and i just didnt love it. and while i didn't hate alice and fred's growing relationship, i again didn't love the sentiment that alice got her happy ending which would of course be marrying her love. also not totally buying that she could easily get her marriage from bennet annulled b/c they had never consumated it. wouldn't bennet have protested? or van cleave? its sketch. and given the gender politics of the time, would people even believe alice when she said that? esp after she had sex with fred so would fail any bs egregious virgin test?
van cleave was a bit too much a villain. it wasn't complicated at all, he was simply a POS. a better author would have made it more interesting by giving him some good to be more compelling. and i would have liked more than faint insinuation about the union busting and terrible environmental damage his coal mine was inflicting.
not sad i read this, but also not sure i would recommend it to anyone