A soft 4 out of 5 stars

I liked this book. I didn’t love this book. If I could give this book something like a 3.8, I would. But that feels a little cuckoo. So, here we are. 4 is very good, 3 is eh. And this book is somewhere just short of 4.

Joanna Shupe is a very good writer. There are some beautiful sentences in this book, that make you appreciate her skill with words. She also does a great job building and describing the landscape here. For example, I could easily visualize the pool where a lot of the romantic tension takes place, and the supper club where a number of scenes occur.

I felt bored at times. There was this prolonged focus on Nellie’s stubbornness and reluctance to accept Andrew’s love. It often just made me frustrated and a little … tired. It just didn’t seem like it had to go on so long. And perhaps it was repetitive too. At times, I had to push myself through this book.

But there were also many ways in which I liked and enjoyed Nellie. She’s a real firecracker and her commitment to women’s freedom (in all forms) is amazing. But, in other ways, she seemed a bit cavalier about men’s feelings- like the ones she describes having trysts with. She sometimes show such a significant disregard for their feelings that it seems careless of her.

It’s overall a good book. But, I give a lot of weight to the unputdownable quality in books, and this one didn’t have enough of that for me.