Lindsay L's Reviews > The Women
The Women
by
by
2 soap opera stars.
Too cutesy and romance focused.
No one is more surprised (and disappointed) than me to be giving a 2 star rating for this much loved and highly anticipated book. I started this novel thinking it would be an easy 5 star read. My rating quickly lowered to 3 stars by the halfway mark and then slowly dwindled down to 2 stars by the end.
This novel follows a young womans harrowing journey as a nurse in the Vietnam war.
The main character was likeable enough, but she lacked any sort of grit or believability for me. She felt very surface level and cutesy from start to finish, giving the overall tone a soap opera feel. Unfortunately I do not enjoy cute stories, especially when it comes to historical fiction. The lighter tone of this novel made it easy to fly through but neglected to leave any sort of lasting impression on me (other than disappointment).
When I read historical fiction, I want grit, heaviness, atmosphere, rip-my-heart-out emotions along with the factual detail. The only aspect I received from this novel was the educational component of learning about this time in history. It had some atmosphere , but my detachment from the characters had me distanced from the plot altogether. There was no grit or emotion to pull me in. There were a couple of heart wrenching moments, but they didn’t truly move or impact me in any way.
Romance is a heavy theme throughout this book. Unfortunately romance is a genre I do not enjoy reading. The main characters’ love interests had me confused and distanced from the storyline as none of it was even remotely believable. I think most of my lack of connection is that I wasn’t bought into any of the romance pieces and this is an integral part of what makes the storyline work.
I also found this book extremely predictable and very cheesy at times. My eyes rolled a lot in the second half. I predicted several large plot points in the second half which took away any sort of shock factor or enjoyment I may have received from those reveals. The author also included an extreme amount of hot topics, like she was trying to touch on too many things without truly fleshing her ideas out.
Overall, this was a complete miss for me. I am thankful to have read it solely for learning about this time period but I received zero enjoyment from an entertainment perspective. I have loved all of this authors previous historical fiction work, so if you are looking for a gritty, heavy, impactful historical fiction book, I encourage you to read those before picking this up. Please note, I am the outlier with my thoughts so make sure to read the countless raving reviews before deciding on this one.
Too cutesy and romance focused.
No one is more surprised (and disappointed) than me to be giving a 2 star rating for this much loved and highly anticipated book. I started this novel thinking it would be an easy 5 star read. My rating quickly lowered to 3 stars by the halfway mark and then slowly dwindled down to 2 stars by the end.
This novel follows a young womans harrowing journey as a nurse in the Vietnam war.
The main character was likeable enough, but she lacked any sort of grit or believability for me. She felt very surface level and cutesy from start to finish, giving the overall tone a soap opera feel. Unfortunately I do not enjoy cute stories, especially when it comes to historical fiction. The lighter tone of this novel made it easy to fly through but neglected to leave any sort of lasting impression on me (other than disappointment).
When I read historical fiction, I want grit, heaviness, atmosphere, rip-my-heart-out emotions along with the factual detail. The only aspect I received from this novel was the educational component of learning about this time in history. It had some atmosphere , but my detachment from the characters had me distanced from the plot altogether. There was no grit or emotion to pull me in. There were a couple of heart wrenching moments, but they didn’t truly move or impact me in any way.
Romance is a heavy theme throughout this book. Unfortunately romance is a genre I do not enjoy reading. The main characters’ love interests had me confused and distanced from the storyline as none of it was even remotely believable. I think most of my lack of connection is that I wasn’t bought into any of the romance pieces and this is an integral part of what makes the storyline work.
I also found this book extremely predictable and very cheesy at times. My eyes rolled a lot in the second half. I predicted several large plot points in the second half which took away any sort of shock factor or enjoyment I may have received from those reveals. The author also included an extreme amount of hot topics, like she was trying to touch on too many things without truly fleshing her ideas out.
Overall, this was a complete miss for me. I am thankful to have read it solely for learning about this time period but I received zero enjoyment from an entertainment perspective. I have loved all of this authors previous historical fiction work, so if you are looking for a gritty, heavy, impactful historical fiction book, I encourage you to read those before picking this up. Please note, I am the outlier with my thoughts so make sure to read the countless raving reviews before deciding on this one.
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Katie
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rated it 4 stars
Feb 18, 2024 09:42PM
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This description makes it a definite no for me, then.
I saw this book come around so many times with great reviews that I moved it up in the pile to read now. Im one who usually knows after reading 15-20 pages if a book will pass my personal muster test. :) Im not far enough to recognize what you write about above, but so far after 20 pages I began to feel like an outlier. Think I will give this another 10 pages before I make a judgement call.
Sad to say Lindsay, the book and I didnt mesh. I havent written a review yet- not sure I will.