Take a photo of a barcode or cover
winecellarlibrary 's review for:
What the Wind Knows
by Amy Harmon
First, I would like to thank NetGalley, Amazon First Reads, and Lake Union Publishing for providing me with a free copy of a Kindle version of this book in exchange for an honest review.
A tale of time travel in Ireland, “What the Wind Knows” had me rushing through my last read in order to start reading this book. The premise is intriguing; Anne, a wildly successful author, is transported in time from pre-9/11 2001 back to 1921 Ireland. Caught in a challenging situation in which she is believed to be her doppelganger great-great-grandmother, Anne assumes motherhood of her 6-year-old grandfather while receiving medical care under the humble and caring Dr. Thomas Smith.
However.
I was immediately bored upon starting this book. I pushed through, hoping that once the time travel event occurred that the storyline would pick up. Unfortunately, the book just got increasingly more tiresome. I can usually finish a book in one to two sittings, but this book took me three weeks to complete. It did not hold my attention. Marketed as historical fiction, it turns out that this novel is actually literary fiction, so the plot is minimal and the discussion of the political situation in Ireland in 1921 is prominent. This book reads more like a history book than a work of fiction at times. And when we do read from Anne’s point of view, it is accompanying her on shopping trips (I don’t even like clothes shopping for myself so I was miserable reading about Anne trying on various 1920s fashion at the department store).
If the author had held back the exhausting historical discussion, this could have been an AMAZING story. The uneasy chemistry that Dr. Smith and Anne have with each other, as well as the looping time element (Anne does not disrupt the time continuum but finds that her presence in 1921 is actually crucial to the life she knows in 2001), were well-constructed and beautiful ideas. The end of the book was lovely. As I felt after reading “Game of Thrones”, I just wish I could remove 75% of the filler content and re-read the tale with just the juicy bits included.
I believe this book could easily make a great movie because visualizing the situation would be a much better medium than reading an author’s meticulous description of each and every historical detail. I understand that the author incorporated much of her own family history into this tale and that she spent a great deal of time researching for it, but her inclusion of so much of that research detracts from the brilliance of the story.
#netgalley #whatthewindknows
A tale of time travel in Ireland, “What the Wind Knows” had me rushing through my last read in order to start reading this book. The premise is intriguing; Anne, a wildly successful author, is transported in time from pre-9/11 2001 back to 1921 Ireland. Caught in a challenging situation in which she is believed to be her doppelganger great-great-grandmother, Anne assumes motherhood of her 6-year-old grandfather while receiving medical care under the humble and caring Dr. Thomas Smith.
However.
I was immediately bored upon starting this book. I pushed through, hoping that once the time travel event occurred that the storyline would pick up. Unfortunately, the book just got increasingly more tiresome. I can usually finish a book in one to two sittings, but this book took me three weeks to complete. It did not hold my attention. Marketed as historical fiction, it turns out that this novel is actually literary fiction, so the plot is minimal and the discussion of the political situation in Ireland in 1921 is prominent. This book reads more like a history book than a work of fiction at times. And when we do read from Anne’s point of view, it is accompanying her on shopping trips (I don’t even like clothes shopping for myself so I was miserable reading about Anne trying on various 1920s fashion at the department store).
If the author had held back the exhausting historical discussion, this could have been an AMAZING story. The uneasy chemistry that Dr. Smith and Anne have with each other, as well as the looping time element (Anne does not disrupt the time continuum but finds that her presence in 1921 is actually crucial to the life she knows in 2001), were well-constructed and beautiful ideas. The end of the book was lovely. As I felt after reading “Game of Thrones”, I just wish I could remove 75% of the filler content and re-read the tale with just the juicy bits included.
I believe this book could easily make a great movie because visualizing the situation would be a much better medium than reading an author’s meticulous description of each and every historical detail. I understand that the author incorporated much of her own family history into this tale and that she spent a great deal of time researching for it, but her inclusion of so much of that research detracts from the brilliance of the story.
#netgalley #whatthewindknows