Recommended by the Reviewers Club
This is a complex novel with many different threads running through it. When Mia’s mother dies in a farm accident, 15-year-old Mia resolves to escape the cult community she is living in and find a new life away from her charismatic but evil “father” Joel Davis.
Mia’s salvation comes in the form of books – expressly forbidden by the cult – which she secretly discovers at the local public library. She is particularly drawn to The Scarlett Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne, which perfectly mirrors the pain and loss that Mia finds inside herself.
Then time travel takes her back to the time when Hawthorne was living and she falls in love with the author himself.
I enjoyed the first part of this book, but I am not a fan of ‘magic realism’ and the latter part of the book, I found simplistic and unconvincing. However, I did learn something about a classic American novelist that I have never read!
Well written, and recommended for readers of this genre.
3/5 Stars