I feel a little bad putting this my 'can't bear to finish' shelf, but it's not working for me. The writing is too slow, Sarah is too perfect, Kathy wasn't even that bad considering how even her parents didn't like her, Owen is annoying me with his whining, and so on. I don't know if I'm in a slump or what, but I read to 27% over two days, and I have no desire to continue the rest of the story. :/ I can see why this could work for people though, because Sarah says at some point how she wants to work for herself and not be 'taken care of' by a man, so that ticks off the need for feminism, and Owen has a deep love for learning, and reading, so that ticks off the sensitive and learned man need. The writing, though painfully slow and dull for me, had some beautiful descriptive passages, but it wasn't anywhere near able to make up for the rest of it for me.
Here are a few examples of the slow writing:
She was curious, avidly so, but she had resisted the urge to explore. She knew there would be consequences if she broke her parents' rule, and more importantly, they'd be disappointed in her. If nothing else, Sarah was a good girl. As she thought about that, Kathy's words from early came back to haunt her. "Little Miss Priss," she muttered.
"And... and maybe, if that's what he likes, then maybe he's not as special as I thought he was. Let him have his buxom girls. At least I don't look like a milk cow, unlike someone I could name. (I liked that she could move past that boy, but the milk cow reference about Kathy annoyed me.)
She said a prayer for them the whole way. (that's just showing how angelic Sarah is)
Kathy and Randall had moved in when Ira had been diagnosed with cancer and it became apparent that Eliza needed help. Sarah privately thought they'd been so eager to help because Randall had seen a free ride on his horizon, but she keep that thought to herself. (More villainy from her sister, and once more I didn't get the why of it. What kind of free ride would her husband have gotten?! It never said.)
One of the first rules Shirley had explained to her had been to respect the privacy of the patrons who used the library. That included asking them out socially. (I just thought this was stupid)
To her dismay, Sarah was diagnosed with strep throat and wasn't able to return to work until the following Tuesday. When she clocked in that morning, she apologized profusely to Shirley and the library director. Both assured her that she wasn't in trouble, and that they understood.
"At least you didn't get pregnant on purpose so you could quit school early like someone whose name we won't mention." (That was Sarah and Kathy's mom there referring to Kathy. Sarah is an angel and Kathy is the devil)
After the part where Sarah was dismayed about missing work because she was really sick, I skipped ahead and read the end of the story. It didn't make me want to know what I had missed.
