This book is perfect.
I went into this book knowing absolutely nothing of the storyline. I'm not entirely sure why, but I was under the impression that this story was about beekeepers.
Spoiler: this book is not about beekeepers.
This book is about librarians. ON HORSEBACK. Basically, cowboy librarians.
Is there a more enticing subject than that?
But, if you still require further encouragment to read this book, fear not. I am full to bursting with appreciation for this story, and this review is far from finished yet :)
I've read 2 books by Jojo Moyes (Me Before You & The One Plus One) and it's fairly easy to identify her writing style from those: romantic and extremely British.
So when I first realised this story is set in Eastern Kentucky, I was gearing myself up for awkward, stilted writing. I was not expecting her to be able to glide so effortlessly into writing about an entirely different culture.
But she does it, and she does it with style. Somehow, she still managed to make the book both romantic and extremely British, too. Honestly, this novel has convinced me that Moyes has writing superpowers, or something.
I don't know how she kept such a good track of all the characters. They just kept coming. She introduced character upon character, and yet all of them were real and flawed and had so many things going on in their own individual stories and were just so incredibly loveable . She didn't skimp on characterisation at all, no siree. I cared so much about ALL of them, and it's been a long time since I have felt this strongly over book characters. The fact that this is historical fiction doesn't make the story unfeeling or irrelevant, not at all.
I learnt so much while reading this. I didn't realise until about a third of the way through that the story is based on something that actually happened. Once I knew that, somehow it made the story even more enjoyable.
I cried big, real tears reading this book. That's how good it is. Just go read it already.