Year of Wonders in Crazy Challenge Connection

Jan 16, 2015 Connie N. rated it really liked it

Shelves: historical-fiction, death-grief, 1600-s, brown, bookclub

This is a fascinating look at a small English village in the 1600's. The plague arrives, apparently in an infected bolt of cloth from London, and it strikes the village intensely. The local pastor directs the town to isolate themselves, with the intention of saving other people by not spreading the disease beyond their boundaries. So the townspeople face it alone. This story is all about relationships and how they bend and change as hardship is endured. What's so sad about this story is that no ...more

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Jul 03, 2018 Sam rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: books-i-own, books-of-2018

**See my full review HERE at The Literary Hooker.**

This is my second novel by Brooks, and much like the first, the writing is absolutely fantastic. Her style melds modern prose with period-appropriate dialogue in a way that makes perfect sense. The only thing preventing this from being a five-star read for me is the ending. The author takes one of the main character and completely destroys anything redeeming about that character in the span of a single chapter. All in all it's an incredibly well ...more

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Dec 07, 2014 Suzanne rated it really liked it

Shelves: historical-fiction, 1600s

Sort of ironic that Anna, a servant and a peasant, would have the most profound understanding of "why bad things happen to good people." Opposite ends of the spectrum grappled with this question from the Reverend Mompellion's beliefs that God was testing his people and the superstitious villagers accusing some of witchcraft and resorting to charms and spells. Anna said that Nature just was.

The story moved somewhat slowly, although my interest was always enough to keep reading. Brooks' explorati ...more

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Nov 18, 2010 Chris rated it it was amazing

Shelves: historical-fiction, fiction

Wow! This was definitely one of the best reads of the year. I had put off reading this since it came out because I wasn't crazy about a story that would obviously deal with a lot of deaths. In fact, I was wary as the story began, fearful to like the characters too much for fear of what would happen to them. And Brooks does a great job of foreshadowing! But you come to care for (or loathe, as the case may be) all the characters in the story. When plague arrives in the tiny English village in 1666 ...more

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Nov 13, 2011 Melissa (ladybug) rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: 100-books-challenge

This book started out wonderful. A full 5 stars, but then at the end it dovetailed. If you can say written by an athiest without saying it, the author did in this one. This is not historically accurate at all for the time period. There may have been athiests, but they would have been too afraid of being executed for them to act as the characters did at the end. It would have not even occurred to them to question if there was a G-d or not.

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