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julshakespeare 's review for:
I, Eliza Hamilton
by Susan Holloway Scott
“But remember, dear sister, that the easiest men for us to love are often the same ones who hurt us the most.”
2.8/5 stars
Plot: 3/5 - I, Eliza Hamilton is a fictionalized account of... you guess it, the life of Elizabeth Schuyler Hamilton. Well, that's not really fair to say. You see, it does span a little over two decades of her life, but she begins her tale with how she met Hamilton and ends it at his death. Yeah please soak that in for a moment. This book- about Eliza- tells only the portion of her life with Alexander Hamilton in it.
Now initially this didn't bother me much. I love Eliza and was excited to hear all about the adorable foundation to her romance, what her marriage was like, and of course all of the later drama and grief. I can forgive bypassing her childhood, as I'm sure it was quite average for a young lady of her status and time, not as remarkable of the childhood of her husband-to-be. But so much is bypassed within this novel (an astonishing thing to say, considering that it's 400 pages) and while I'll touch on this more in the pacing section of my review I just want to make it clear that I wanted more. Having reached the end of the book, I feel less like I've read a book about Eliza Hamilton and more like I've read a book about Alexander Hamilton told through Eliza's eyes.
Characters: 3/5 - On the bright side- the characters seem fairly believable and somewhat well-rounded. They are interesting and have flaws. But then again... these characters are all based on real people, so of course they do.
Eliza is our protagonist and yet I oddly feel like I got to know her the LEAST. For example, Eliza's hobbies? I wouldn't have a clue what to tell you. Reading things her husband writes? Being pregnant? I thought I would learn something about Eliza's charitable nature given the whole orphanage thing but nope, there's only these really brief allusions to her helping the less fortunate and they're usually because Alexander is also helping these people or because she was "raised a good Christian woman". I know exactly how you were raised. I want to know who you ARE.
Everyone else felt more complex but somehow much less lively than their musical counterparts (*blows a kiss to Lin Manuel Miranda, wherever he is right now*). I learned some new things about Angelica, and Jefferson, and Burr, which was nice but kind of whatever seeing as how they all had surprisingly little to do with the story. I thought we would see a lot more of Angelica in particular, seeing as she is the sister of our main character.
Pacing: 2/5 - I've already alluded to my issues here, but let me again emphasize how much potential there is for INCREDIBLE EMOTION in the latter portion of Eliza's life. We have the discovery of her husband's affair, the death of her eldest child, the death of her husband, and all of the AMAZING work she did to ensure his legacy (plus, again, THE ORPHANAGE). However, this novel is framed by a preface and an epilogue of an Eliza Hamilton who is freshly widowed. All of the exceptional things she did in her later years were reduced to a five page afterword- shared with the other founding fathers, no less, so it's more like three pages. There was one early tragedy in the story (a miscarriage) but other than that the first real DEEP issue is the Reynolds Pamphlet scandal, which is basically 80% of the way through the book. All of the meat was crammed into the end, and the earlier "conflicts" were all moot because we KNOW that Hamilton did not die in battle, or from yellow fever, or challenging Monroe to a duel. These plot points might be historically accurate, but it's hard as the reader to share any concern of Eliza's because we know Hamilton made it through each of these. More time should have been spent in those agonizing moments where Eliza's strength of character would shine through.
Writing: 3/5 - This writing is perfectly acceptable. It helps that the characters speak in a more formal manner befitting the time period, because it kind of disguises the writing as more interesting? When trying to find a quote for the beginning of my review, I realized I hadn't saved any on Goodreads OR on Bookly, which generally means the writing was unremarkable. What the writing was really lacking for me though was the inner turmoil. For a first person narrative, I feel like I know so little of Eliza's feelings and opinions (except for how much she LOVED Alexander). It was a huge case of telling instead of showing. There would be sentences like "Since the awful business last summer with his confession of the long-ago infidelity, he'd been even more attentive to me, and slowly, day by day, our marriage had been restored." That's all well and good but do you know what's 1000x more interesting? EVIDENCE. What did Alexander do that was so attentive? What were these minute actions that brought him back into Eliza's good grace? Not to constantly be comparing to the musical, but Lin answers questions such as these in about one verse of a song so.... I'm not sure why we weren't able to accomplish this in prose.
Enjoyment: 3/5 - I know this seems surprising. 3 stars? This review has been so overwhelmingly negative! But the thing is, until the last fifth of this book I was quite content, pretty certain it was going to be about a 3.5 star read. My frustrations came so late and so strong that they're still at the forefront of my mind, even though I know this isn't a bad book. If you're very interested in the Hamiltons and colonial America, I wouldn't steer you away from it (I learned a lot about the war that I didn't know), but if you're looking for a compelling narrative about the incredible wife of one of our founding fathers, I'd say take it or leave it. I'm curious to dive into similar works ([b:Alex and Eliza|32860355|Alex and Eliza (Alex & Eliza, #1)|Melissa de la Cruz|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1478173816s/32860355.jpg|53464530], [b:My Dear Hamilton: A Novel of Eliza Schuyler Hamilton|35068592|My Dear Hamilton A Novel of Eliza Schuyler Hamilton|Stephanie Dray|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1502287333s/35068592.jpg|56364049]) to see how they compare....