emcbee 's review for:

The Summer Before the War by Helen Simonson
3.0

I was very engaged with this book at the beginning; it was charming and funny and I was eager to see what would happen next. About a third of the way through I started being bogged down with too many uninteresting and interchangeable characters. The book seemed wordy and unfocused. By the end, I thought I was reading a different book than the one I had begun. I would read this author again because I liked the premise and the charm of the beginning.