About the book
BOOK SUMMARY
When Beth’s first love returns to her village, old secrets and buried tensions resurface, leading to a murder. Forced to choose between her past and her present, Beth must confront the lasting power of first love and the consequences it brings.
Published 2025
Historical Fiction
319 pages
Gimmicky structure, weak main character
January 6, 2026
Not understanding the high praise for this one. I appreciated the quality of the prose, but narrative structure was frustrating. Key information, such as who is on trial and who was killed, is withheld for so long that it stops being intriguing and starts feeling gimmicky. I spent much of the book wondering whether I’d missed something. As a reader, it felt like there was an inside joke happening that I just wasn’t in on.
I also did not love the characters, especially Beth. I struggled to identify a single redeeming quality in her, which made it borderline absurd to me that two men were supposedly madly in love with her. Very little time is spent developing Beth and Frank’s relationship beyond establishing that Frank is repeatedly used as a convenient target to take advantage of. As a result, Beth’s constant woe-is-me anguish over loving two men felt hollow when she doesn’t seem show genuine care for Frank at any point.
A lot of the conflict between Beth and Gabriel also seemed to hinge on long-ago misunderstandings that could have been resolved with more honest communication, which made all the tragedy and suspense feel forced.
Frank is clearly meant to be the moral champion of the story, but his whole martyrdom schtick had me rolling my eyes at times. Some of the choices he makes, like covering for a crime, suppressing his anger at Beth and Gabriel, and distancing himself from his own child, felt illogical and unnecessary rather than noble. Not my favorite.
kelsi’s reading diary 