Firstly, thank you to netgalley for an e-ARC of this book for my honest review.

Solid 3.75 stars and after sleeping on it I still have a pretty positive feeling about it.

The start of this book is enchanting. I loved it. I think I should've been made more aware that this was going to involve an OC literally having a romance with Nathaniel Hawthorne and is not a Scarlet Letter retelling. It's more of an alternate history but it affects only a 1 year period and the universe continues as we know it. I don't find this bad, necessarily, but it did catch me off-guard for a moment.

Isobel and her backstory are well written and complex. Almost every character has some ulterior motive or complex narrative and are each attractive in their own way

funnily enough, I think Hawthorne is probably the only exception, but I think it's because as a reader it's assumed you might already know his work and can project more information onto him

. 

The themes of repeating history, how tragic events can separate people for generations (the accused and the accusers), and hidden truths, are woven together throughout the narrative and the prose is nice, sometimes a little purple - usually

whenever synesthesia is described, or 'the colors' and such. It can be a bit too heavy handed there

. The setting is historically accurate and has multiple facets, which is refreshing since most historical fictions rely heavily on one or two aspects of the past; Laurie creates an entire atmosphere of Salem circa ~1817.

I think my only issues were:

Roughly halfway through the book Isobel is <i>painfully</i> ignorant on many issues, including the slave trade (and I mean like NO IDEA about slaves? really?), classism, sexual assault etc. Which are all things she had plenty of opportunity to learn/hear about in Scotland. I know that Isobel is like 17/18 at this point, and that it's super plot dependent that she doesn't just figure things out, but she was so stupid about some sensitive topics that I almost put the book down in disgust. It got better, it did, but that one section was so painful.

The ending was lackluster - and honestly if it had been more thought-out and maybe focused more on Isobel's life after her brief stint with Nathaniel, I would've given a 5 star rating. It's just too glazed over. I wanted to see more of her and

Captain Darling, being happy and not just '18 years later I realized I loved this man who let me live in his house... for 18 years and then we had gentle sex lol

. It really brought me down from the extreme high that the climax of the book had brought.

It's never mentioned that Nathaniel Hawthorne has a deeply emotional affair with Herman Melville. :( /j