2014 Challenge: Book 10 "Barbara's Marriages"
SUMMARY:
REVIEW: This book was a bit of a struggle. Somehow it kept my interest enough to finish it. It felt like it was written much earlier than 1915. It was also - albeit probably true to the time and place (Virginia)- also pretty racist in parts. Both in the character's attitudes and the narrator's.
The heroine was kind of annoying. The first plot twist was crazy and melodramatic. Leonard was a complete asshole, and Barbara was completely fooling herself for most of the book. It made sense, since she had no experience with love or men. But it still annoyed me. He was such a pretentious dickhead. I was glad she ended up with Stephen. It did have some interesting plot twists - the unconventional relationship she embarked on with Stephen, and her justifications to herself. Everything about propriety and how social conventions are there to protect women's hearts so they don't give themselves without an assurance of 'rights' to the man they love. Barbara's insistence that her baby was better off with no father was better than a father she couldn't trust to be a decent person. Her refusal to marry for the third time if she and Stephen didn't love each other.