A review by fulltimefiction
The Giver of Stars by Jojo Moyes

3.0

I wouldn’t have read this book if it wasn’t for the audiobook. Book club kind of novels aren’t my favorite thing to read but I'm surprisingly enjoying listening to these stories. I have seen this book around often recently and decided to give it a try. I haven’t tried anything by Moyes since Me Before You which left me with conflicted feelings.

The Giver of Stars is about five women taking part in Eleanor Roosevelt’s Traveling Library, in Kentucky in the 1930s. The book focuses mainly on Alice and Margaery but we also learn about the rest of the librarians through them. Moyes mostly tackles the discrimination, GBV, and illiteracy in the area at that time. Although this wasn’t that heavy on the romance, it certainly played a part in this story.

I enjoyed listening to the audiobook and I was entirely captivated… most of the book, at least. Starting with the characters, while I didn’t particularly love them, I still enjoyed reading about them. I even liked Alice more than Margaery and was interested more in her story (unpopular opinion, yes). I found Margaery’s characterization cliché instead of refreshing. Sure, I appreciated how she was opposing the norms and doing whatever she wants not caring about the men’s opinions. But that's done many times before. So what makes her stand out? Well, nothing in particular. Independent woman not wanting to marry because marrying means having to answer to someone

only to end up marrying later

. I also found Van Cleave your typical famous villain. The full of flaws hateful, mean, violent, traditionalist, controlling, bad old man.

My favorite part was introducing people to reading and nurturing their love for books by giving them suitable novels, magazines, cookbooks, etc. The relation between poverty, illiteracy, and the common belief of the uselessness of education was also pretty well-handled. The librarians always tried to encourage reading in their town without giving up nor embarrassing those who ask (after they refused them first). It was a very nice initiative and didn’t know about it before reading this book.

Overall, it would’ve been a 4 stars read it wasn’t for the last part. I found it very overdramatic and taking the same path as Where the Crawdads Sing… which wasn't a favorite of mine either (that part). Although it’s not a long book, I was surprised when I saw it’s less than 400 pages because it definitely felt longer with all the unnecessary additions. I was also rather indifferent about the romance. I didn’t feel the chemistry.

I will be reading [b:The Book Woman of Troublesome Creek|40914165|The Book Woman of Troublesome Creek|Kim Michele Richardson|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1543864778l/40914165._SY75_.jpg|63789129] probably next month because I was interested in the premise and I also want to see if the books are similar. But from what I’ve heard there’s no plagiarism and it was a coincidence. The two books take a different direction after the similar premise. We’ll see. Also, it doesn’t make sense since both books were released within months of each other.