bennysbooks's Reviews (668)

Charming, easy to read, not overly sweet but not overly complicated. The pacing and structure was really worked for me. I grew to love Laurie and Sarah, and I appreciated how their friendship was as important to the story as their romantic relationships. A great holiday read.

Extremely well-done. The few times I have picked up historical non-fiction in the past (outside of a classroom), I have found it quite dry. This book was not. The short chapters make it more easily digestible. The author goes into detail without bogging the reader down with irrelevant information. The subject matter is ENGROSSING. I appreciated the way that the author dealt with the colonialism of the islands by Westerners - careful to maintain that while it was a fascinating time of cultures meeting on the islands, it was also a time of destruction for the original people. I also LOVED that she questioned frequently the supremacy of Western 'ways of knowing' vs Polynesian 'ways of knowing'. You could feel their passion throughout (they are married to a Maori man, and their children are Maori, so of course she is invested in the topic).