Review: Slow moving and does not hold my interest
Rating: 3 out of 5
Date: 12 18, 2013
I am 68% through this book and am not sure I can finish it.  It moves too slow and fails to hold my interest.  It is terribly unrealistic.  Hannah acts too babyish and allows Jeb (black free man) to take control, tell her what to do.  She is a grown woman and should be head of the house.  Jeb's vocabulary and speech is not at all like it really was for a black man in that time period.  He speaks as if he has an education from oxford in England.  Where and how did he get an education like that during the pre Civil War period?  I hated the way Hannah was portrayed as making noises while she eats as if she is a child.  It is totally unlikely that any woman would wear her best dress to pick berries, ruining it, with no way of getting a new one with the northern blockade shutting off supplies to the south.  Nor would any young woman sit at a picnic with her dress pulled up to her knees displaying her legs.  Her sun baths didn't make a great deal of sense to me either.  There is a lot about this book that I just couldn't buy into.  The writing was too descriptive at times making it boring and I even did some scanning instead of reading every word as I would usually do.  In addition, at times the writing seemed amateurish to me.  The author appears to try and use a lot of uncommon words as if to demonstrate her vocabulary.  It wasn't necessary and didn't impress me.  I will try and finish the book to see what happens with Hannah and Beau but I am really disappointed in this book.  In the author's defense, there is some accurate history written but the story itself takes place primarily on one little farm.