This should have been more historical fiction or romance/women’s fiction. It definitely wasn’t thriller and I wouldn’t even classify it as mystery either. It just followed historical events that you knew were going to happen, without much suspense.

I didn’t dislike it but honestly I got kind of bored. I didn’t feel like Jean and John had any extraordinary chemistry that prompted them to have a sort of soulmate connection that spanned decades. It could partially be lost in translation the way the audiobook was narrated tho. The narrator didn’t have much, if any, change in her voice for different characters outside of a handful of accent changes for foreigners. It was the same voice, inflection, octave for men, women, etc, which gave it sort of a flat and sometimes confusing feel.

While it ended well, the dynamic of the adults in the 2003 timeline felt like everyone was just not communicating, assuming the worst, and giving up really easily. It made the way everything wrapped up feel a bit contrite and simple given the up-to-this-point fully self-focused perspective they all had.

Thanks to Netgalley for the advanced copy of this audiobook. All opinions are mine.

The author did a nice job describing the brutality of the civil war in every aspect from the war itself to the fight over slaves. There were great topics explored and truths dealt with. The only thing I disliked in the book was how extremely hot and cold the initial relationship between Joshua Ivy and Cadence was. The first 2/3 of the book they both would make these tremendous negative judgements towards each other with no thought to asking or talking about whether they were correct. They would just up and leave assuming the worst of the other. Then in the next section they’d be right back enthralled with each other for the next 2 seconds till they went off again. It felt a little like whiplash mentally at times and made me so frustrated with them, feeling like the interaction was a little ridiculous.