Tal's Book

Unlike others, I really enjoyed the length of this story, for me it wasn't long enough. The characters and relationship were able to be fully developed over the course of their lives from first meeting to well...lets just say the ending was bittersweet. I love when stories that are fundamentally about relationships are able to span the entire thing rather than ending abruptly after the romantic leads get together and leave me wondering what happened 10, 20 or 30 years down the road.

There were technical writing problems to be sure, and the timeline is not quite consistent. This gets confusing at times with regard character ages and events but all of that is easy enough to overlook because the love story between the two MC's is so touching and realistically portrayed. As the timeline of the novel spanned about 50 years there were many supporting characters that I became attached to and I was disappointed that the book did not tie up all their storylines as neatly. I was left wondering how long John's uncle Martin lived and what became of him and Braithwaite. Same thing for Lizzie, Charlotte & Caine. I really feel this story could have been even better had it been treated as a series rather than one work.

Still I highly recommend it for readers of historical romance. I had a nice good ugly cry at the end too.