Winter Counts

Overall the book was enjoyable, but I could also so easily start nitpicking on it, which is not great. It's really a 50-50 book in terms of what I liked and what I didn't like.

I'll start by saying that I quite liked the plot in big lines, I liked the way it started and where it went. I think it was pretty well thought and planned out. I actually had a moment of gasping somewhere in there when some things were revealed and that alone is a golden star from me.

And I said I liked the plot in big lines. If I look at it closer, I didn't enjoy the execution as much. At times the action was too over the top, too mainstream, and the outcome didn't quite satisfy me. Actually, not at all. Yeah, there was justice served, but it could have been so much better.

The setting of the book was great and I enjoyed reading a book centred around Native Americans, I liked the use of native words, but at the same time there are a few things that I didn't understand because of it. Virgil did explain some of the words, but others were a mystery. There are some words that were used quite often and I have no idea what they mean. Granted, I get that Virgil explaining each and every one of them would have felt unnatural and forced, and I could have just looked them up, but I still would have liked the book doing a better job at explaining some words, it did great on some of them.

About the characters, and here I mean Virgil since he's the main character and we basically see everything from his perspective, I didn't feel like Virgil was constant in his feelings, he was all over the place. There was a random bout of jealousy at some point that came out of nowhere and had no resolve. There was a random wondering of heartbroken cures in the middle of the book that also came out of nowhere and had no resolve. I couldn't tell you what happened there.

Like I said, the book is overall enjoyable, but it really doesn't stand out. The description is fine, the plot is fine, the characters are fine. Definitely not outstanding in any way.