3 stars. "It was ok" about sums this book up.
I felt it was more a book about what would theoretically happen if a white girl and a black boy fell in love and got married in 1940s America than a story about real people. Everyone seemed fairly two-dimensional; it felt as if they were acting and speaking like someone in those circumstances would be expected to act and speak rather than reacting honestly. I didn't get why Robert fell for Isabelle. I understood why she fell for him - he was handsome and kind, he was there, she was bored and used to getting her own way. But a real black boy in that situation at that point in history would have run a mile. It didn't feel to me as if he loved her, and her love for him read more like a Romeo and Juliet teenage crush that she would and should have got over in six months than anything else.
Having said that, there were some good points - the characters of Isabelle's father, of Nell the young black maid who was Robert's sister, and of Dorrie, Isabelle's black hairdresser companion on her road trip seemed believable and more human than the rest. I enjoyed Dorrie's own story, running alongside the narration of Isabelle's from the past, although I never really believed the basic premise that Isabelle was telling Dorrie her story as they travelled. It read like a written report; it wasn't conversational at all. Isabelle and Robert's story should have been compelling and interesting, but the storytelling let it down. Disappointing.