This book was beautifully written and unfurled not at all how I thought it was going to. Very interesting, flawed characters who’s journeys of growth were surprising at times, in a very welcome way. It’s been a long time since I read a straight fiction book, and a piece of literature at that, and this was a good one to do that with. I understand why it was a Booker Prize finalist.

I’m going to have a difficult time putting into words all the ways in which I hated this book. Would have never finished were it not a book club pick. Truly astounding that a Black person wrote this.

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Abeautiful story set in a fictional town in Georgia the first year of Reconstruction. This is the story of love, loss, reconciliation and resiliency. I was invested in each character and their journeys will stay with me.

For every interesting thing about it I encountered a cliché. It’s predictable and feels like it takes a view of heavy plotting and making the characters fit the larger movements desired by the author, and My taste doesn’t range that way. A pet peeve is when a queer relationship is plot related as well. So, this notched up a bunch of subjective things I just plain don’t like in my fiction. I got it on audio and the narration was alright, but it became a bit difficult to tell the characters apart, adding to the reading of it being far too plotty for my taste. Might have got on with it better in physical format, but I can tell I won’t remember much of this. The only impression it left, until I bailed at 40%, was all negative, as you can tell. No reason, then, to try in a physical format when there are so many books out there to try. I did give it two stars instead of 1, which I usually do for DNFs because it did feel like I wasn’t able to accept the novel on its own terms, and I don’t think it’s “bad”, just not right for a reader like me.

The writing was absolutely beautiful, and the story is very important and gut wrenching. I wish there was more connection between the characters which is why I gave it 4 stars.

This reminded me of Lonesome Dove, but needing more editing. I feel like the overall plot was great, the characters were a little unrefined but they were interesting, and I liked the settings. I just think the ending dragged on and could have been cleaner cut.