Review: The Violets of March

Title: The Violets of March
Author: Sarah Jio
Listening Time: 9 hours 22 minutes
Challenges: None
Rating: 3/5

Summary from Goodreads:

 A heartbroken woman stumbled upon a diary and steps into the life of its anonymous author.

In her twenties, Emily Wilson was on top of the world: she had a bestselling novel, a husband plucked from the pages of GQ, and a one-way ticket to happily ever after.

Ten years later, the tide has turned on Emily's good fortune. So when her great-aunt Bee invites her to spend the month of March on Bainbridge Island in Washington State, Emily accepts, longing to be healed by the sea. Researching her next book, Emily discovers a red velvet diary, dated 1943, whose contents reveal startling connections to her own life.

A mesmerizing debut with an idyllic setting and intriguing dual story line, The Violets of March announces Sarah Jio as a writer to watch.

I downloaded The Violets of March a few months ago from Audible, and never found the time, or the want to listen to it.  I thought the story sounded intriguing and definitely something I would enjoy.  I love nothing better than stories within stories, especially ones that move from the past to the present with an interconnected story.  Finally, this past week, still coming off the high from "14" I decided to check out The Violets of March.

The story started off really strong.  I really liked the main character, Emily, and found her story to be intriguing.  I quickly fell in love with her Great-Aunt Bee, and found myself excited to get to work to see where the book would take me.  However, after a few hours, that high was gone and I thought the book went downhill fast.  While the writing was excellent, the plot of the story left a lot to be desired.  I had the mystery solved extremely early in the story, and spent the next several hours wondering why it wasn't clicking with Emily when I had figured it all out so soon.  The clues were right there in front of her fast!  Because of this, I found myself distracted a few times, and having to rewind the book to catch some things that I had missed.

Another thing that bothered me about this audio was the reader.  I had a hard time connecting with her characters voices.  Sometimes they didn't seem to fit the description that the author was giving the character, especially Emily's best friend Annie.  To me she came off as a haughty snob, but the author described her as this easy going, laid back kind of person.  The two just didn't mesh well for me.

However, despite my dislikes of the book, I'm not going to give up on Sarah Jio.  Her writing was too well  done, and it may just be this particular title that I didn't completely agree with.