The German Bride: Failed to deliver

The German Bride: A Novel by Joanna Hershon

My rating: 2 of 5 stars

I liked many things about this book: primarily the plot elements. The idea of a Jewish-German woman in the mid-1860s, who flees Europe to get away from her horrible guilt...and ends up in Santa Fe, New Mexico, with a gambler tyrant of a husband...this was a great idea for a book.

Given the potentially rich settings, however, I had a hard time really settling into these characters. I struggled with Eva's motivation for her affection for Heinrich, given the fact that her first sexual experience was akin to rape. I thought many times of putting the book down, because it just didn't connect with me. It was lyrically written, but it did not hold my interest well enough.

When I find myself looking forward to finishing a book (and it's not because of the unsettling nature of the book), that's never a good sign. Perhaps I should have given up before slogging through to the end.

So in summary, this book held great promise but failed to deliver for me.



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