My Rating: 2.5 stars
This is the second book I've read by Amanda Prowse and just like the one I read last year (The Idea of You), I struggled with getting through this and once again, very nearly DNF'ed it. I'm not sure what it is, but I find it hard to connect with this author's books, even though the subject matter she writes about are things that women in my age group are usually able to identify with. In this, her newest book, the main character is Rachel Croft, whose happily married, blissful life with husband James comes crashing down when they lose their 7-year-old son Oscar in a boating accident – this happens within the first few pages of the book and from there, the entire rest of the story (300+ pages) is about how Rachel attempts to deal with her grief and eventually embarks on a path to healing after reading letters of encouragement from her housekeeper Cee Cee. That is basically the entire plot (no, I am not exaggerating – I'm struggling with finding things to write about the plot because literally nothing much else happens)…
Given the subject matter, I was expecting an emotional, heart-wrenching story, one that would move me emotionally and even make me shed a tear or two…but that didn't happen. In fact, I found it difficult to get into the story at all and after the first chapter, my attention already started to wane – about a quarter into it, I felt the urge to skim and by the halfway mark, I was in full-on "speed-skim" mode….by the time I got to the end, I was relieved that I FINALLY finished the book. The biggest issue for me (which was actually the same issue I had with this author's previous book) is that the story dragged way too much – over the course of the first 150 pages or so, page after page was of Rachel either 1) repeatedly denying that her son had died and trying to justify her theories about her son's whereabouts in every way possible, or 2) constantly arguing with and resenting her husband. The second half of the book was basically of Rachel's healing process and eventually coming to terms with her son's death. Now don't get me wrong – I have no problems with the subject matter being heavy and yes, I do understand that the slowness of the plot was perhaps intentional in order to mirror the real life process of grieving and healing that occurs when we lose a loved one, but for me, the execution was too drawn out, to the point that I felt it diminished the significance of the story. While the writing was good overall, there were parts that were tremendously wordy -- also, the dialogue was repetitive in that every conversation felt drawn out for the purposes of justifying and explaining Rachel's every thought, feeling, action, etc. Perhaps the purpose of writing the character this way was to make us as the readers feel sorry for Rachel and sympathize with her struggle – I hate to say it but for me, it had the opposite effect in that I grew increasingly irritated with her character as the story wore on. I honestly feel like the story would have been better told if it had been several hundred pages shorter, with tighter writing and less repetition.
Reading this book confirmed for me that, plain and simple, this author's works just aren't my cup of tea. I will give her future works a pass going forward but since mine is the lone negative review amongst the dozens of positive ones, I would once again recommend checking out the other reviews for a more balanced perspective. This one clearly didn't work for me, but perhaps it will for others.
Received ARC from Lake Union Publishing via NetGalley.
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