😊😊😊🌗 (3.5 happies)

by Kristin Hannah

Description:

In the rugged Pacific Northwest lies the Olympic National Forest—nearly a million acres of impenetrable darkness and impossible beauty. From deep within this old growth forest, a six-year-old girl appears. Speechless and alone, she offers no clue as to her identity, no hint of her past.
 
Having retreated to her western Washington hometown after a scandal left her career in ruins, child psychiatrist Dr. Julia Cates is determined to free the extraordinary little girl she calls Alice from a prison of unimaginable fear and isolation. To reach her, Julia must discover the truth about Alice’s past—although doing so requires help from Julia’s estranged sister, a local police officer. The shocking facts of Alice’s life test the limits of Julia’s faith and strength, even as she struggles to make a home for Alice—and for herself.

My Review:

My feelings about this book and how I thought I was going to rate it were a bit of a rollercoaster. I loved the original plot idea so that got me excited to read it from the start. I had a bit of trouble relating to the main characters from the beginning and wasn’t sure I really even “liked” them. Also, I wasn’t sure they were believable at first either. Not that they were people who couldn’t easily exist, but the more I read about them in the beginning, the more often I found myself thinking “That doesn’t seem like how I would have pictured this character”. This happened with everything from personality, relationships with others and even their physical descriptions. Then after a few chapters I felt like NOTHING was happening. The interesting plot was spilled out there early but then very little happened for most of the middle of the book. I got bored. Instead of being a book that was hard to put down, it was kind of hard to pick up. Also, the author has a great gift for using very descriptive words but does this almost TOO MUCH. Instead of painting a picture the scene in my mind, it was to the point of boring me and taking me out of the story with all of the similes and metaphors.

We had a long car trip to see family though and so I had a long time to sit and read and not many better options so I got back into it and started getting really into it the last third of it. I really enjoyed the remainder of the book and it even almost brought me to tears a few times towards the end. The characters began to grow on me and became more interesting and there were a few events both unexpected and expected that made it much more interesting. In the end I think I would recommend it however would warn people of the fairly dull middle, but to stick with it. I gave it 3.5 happies because it started at 3 for me with the interesting plot to build on, was maybe a 2 throughout much of the middle, but ended at about a 4 so I think both the story and Author were redeemed.