I’m sorry The Unmaking of June Farrow, it’s not you, it’s me. (Well, it’s a little bit you, too)

Before I get into the spoiler parts let me just say that this wasn’t the book that I thought it would be. It felt from the summary that this would be more about the women of a family having some kind of magic—I expected something involving plants since they own a flower farm—but it really is just straight up a time travel story, and the flower farm features very little. The book was fairly well written, with nice descriptions of settings, but contained too many frustrating things that were really just not for me (but YMMV). Now for the part with spoilers:

Spoiler

- I’ll get this out of the way, I just plainly did not like June Farrow. I found her whiny and overall spineless and deer-in-headlights for a big part of the book. She has her moments, and the conclusion reveals how proactive she has been, but a lot of those proactive moments we aren’t privy to because of said time travel. At first she seemed to be on top of things, getting clues as to what’s happening to her, looking into them, etc but the moment she crosses that door to the past, she becomes overwhelmed and annoying. It’s not unrealistic. It’s actually perfectly understandable at times, but it just annoyed the fuck out of me. I know denial and panic are normal reactions to impossible things happening, but I prefer my characters to accept the situation a bit faster. June goes “what” “what’s happening” “omg” “what’s happenniiing” for way too many chapters.

- there is no communication between characters for a big chunk of the book and I wanted to SCREAM. Eamon and Esther clearly don’t want to tell June some things. June knows this. June doesn’t DEMAND to know. June ends up in situations that make things worse that could have easily been avoided if people had talked to her. There are a few reasons that SOME things couldn’t be said, but some things clearly could have been or at least a version of the truth could have been told. It felt cheap and contrived even if yes, in real life, people also are bad at communication.

-The ending was okay, when all comes together and things make sense (as much as a time travel story can make sense), it was kinda cool. The reveal around Birdie was nice. But honestly so much hinges on the love story between Eamon and June, and her love for their daughter Alice and none of it we really see. So I had a hard time caring about her choosing them (especially since there’s timeline where her and her best friend in 2023 fall in love). All we get are memories.

-Another pet-peeve: Women from our time travelling back in time and falling in love and choosing to stay there even though everything there apart from their love is more terrible and awful on every single level. Fuck that. Choosing to stay in 1951 IN THE AMERICAN SOUTH and farm on a failing tobacco farm (with 50s technology) when you come from 2023 is INSANE to me. ESPECIALLY when we know she could be perfectly happy with her BFF Mason (and yes, she’s obviously white). But, if she did, she wouldn’t have Alive, which brings me to:

- Now this is really more personal, but I just have a hard time with stories about motherhood these days. Because stronger than her love for Eamon, is her love for Alice, and everything June does is to help and save Alice and I’ll be honest, I’m just not about that life right now. I don’t mind reading about mothers and motherhood, but there are stories where it just doesn’t jive with me and this was one of them. Especially when the book starts with her unwilling to have children (tbf, she did want them, just wasn’t willing to pass on the curse). There’s no real reason why she decides to have Alice either, other than she’s in 1951 and I guess contraceptives and abortion were not top notch.

- Poor Mason

- Honestly just found the book really annoying for the most part, with some bright moments. I wouldn’t completely reject another by this author. But this one was really not for me.