Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

Folks, I can't sugar coat it--this book was a mess. I was actually quite excited to read this book because, based on the summary, this was totally up my alley. Instead, it just failed on several levels. I'm not going to rant on about this book (as I have already done when telling people about it). But I do want to point out the 3 biggest problems that I had with it. The first issue that I came across here is that there are some serious plot issues. As in, there really isn't a plot. The first 100 or so pages of this book shouldn't even exist. I could see a very short prologue of when Sophia first met Henri when they were children, as that actually has some bearing on the rest of the novel, but I really didn't need (or care for) Sophia's complete life history up to the point where she stands on a ship heading to the Colonies (where this book should have began). Any other pertinent information could have been revealed to the reader as the story progressed. I never found a real plot here--there were whiffs of a plot, but then that story line would be dropped. There were story lines that just sort of appeared out of nowhere and then never connected to anything bigger. Probably most infuriating of all, Bryan ends the book with an entirely new story line, with new characters, that she never connects to anything or ties up. I guess she might have been trying to create a cliffhanger for the second book in the trilogy, but it only created frustration. The second issue is that there needed to be far more editing. The writing was both overly florid and sloppy. The point of view, which was never truly omniscient, would jump between characters at odd places--like the middle of paragraphs--so much that it was hard to follow. Far too many times, characters would not be in a scene, and then just appear for no reason. There are frequently unidentified pronouns, so the reader can't even be sure which character is speaking! All these issues could have been prevented with tighter editing. The final issue is one of my biggest pet peeves with Historical Fiction. There are things in this book that are, shall we say, historically inaccurate. I'm thinking specifically of Sophia's attitudes towards African Americans. We are told early on that she was taken to abolitionist meetings in England and was opposed to slavery, which is believable. However, she becomes a friend to the former slaves in her group in a way that just would not have happened in the 18th century. While Abolitionists didn't believe in slavery, that doesn't mean that they saw African Americans as equals. In fact, English Abolitionists would still have considered them to be an "inferior race." Yes, it is ugly--but it is true. When you take into account that this novel is based on Bryan's ancestors, this comes across almost as whitewashing ("well, my family was different..." sort of thing),which I find offensive. Slavery and the treatment of African Americans was a very dark, terrible thing--but to make light of it is disrespectful. I'm very disappointed that this book failed for me, as I really do believe that it could have been wonderful.