Reviews with content warning for Child death - Inden vi blev jeres

This book was a very difficult and emotional read. I cried a lot near the end. The secrets in the book are easy to predict, and at times I wanted to tell the present day character to figure it out already! I had no knowledge of the real history the book is based on prior, and I want to learn more about the real children's stories. One thing that troubled me about the present day narrative is that it clearly took place in the South, and there are mentions of a slave cabin and plantations, but no acknowledgement about the similar tragedies that slaves experienced being separated from their children and parents. It was unsettling that the present day narrator had no qualms with developing romantic feelings while researching in a slave cabin.

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breezythebibliophile's review against another edition

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dark emotional mysterious sad slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? Yes

4.0

It was a slow start for the first third of the book and slightly frustrating because the connection between the two timelines was so unclear for so long. But once the dots started connecting, I couldn’t get to the end fast enough.

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nataliecoyne's review against another edition

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dark emotional informative reflective sad medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

3.5

I debated myself a lot on this 3.5 star rating, as I did really enjoy this novel and found the history to be very interesting, albeit very sad. But it is what I landed on due to two issues I had with the book that just took me away from it. The first issue I had was with the romance subplot between

Avery and Trent

. A lot of people probably would like this, but I personally felt it was quite forced and almost read like a Hallmark movie. Don't get me wrong, I wasn't a super fan of

Elliot

either, but I just think the romance part of things could've been left out.

Second was how Wingate got across the character's accents. I understood the choice, I really did, and I think this can really bring a story together when done well. But, with this, some of the additions and some of the taking things out made some dialogue hard to understand.

Again, as for the overall content of this novel, I really enjoyed it and I think this is a dark period of history that others should know about. I'm not entirely sure if I'm going to read the book's nonfiction companion piece, but I am seriously considering it. But I couldn't bring myself to give it a higher rating, unfortunately.

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emoshtay's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional sad medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.5

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