The Giver of Stars

Really liked this and the stories of the packhorse librarians and their messed up marriages, awful parents and gossipy small town. Ah, small towns. I loved getting to meet the families that Alice and Margery visited as they did their library rounds up and down the Appalachian mountains, and how that simple act of delivering books made such a difference to the remote parts of their communities. The sense of place was so great, and these characters and their struggles were believable. For a book whose pace was often languid, it read quite quickly and I powered through the last third of the book in one sitting.

The only thing though, is it always irritates me when an author has a great story and muddies it up by throwing a MURDER INTRIGUE plot in where it's not needed. Like, there was enough drama happening here, between Alice and her husband who didn't want to touch her; her abusive father-in-law who also happened to own the mining town next door and wanted to shut the library down and also control Alice by slandering Margery all over town; Izzy, whose mother didn't believe she was capable of librarian-ing because of her bum polio leg; Sophia, a black woman breadwinner whose brother lost his leg in a mining incident, but who worked in the library despite white townspeople not wanting her there. I was never like, you know what this plot needs is MORE ACTION! There was plenty going on!