I got into this without realising what a sprawling epic journey it would be - but that's reading on a Kindle for you. It took me a while to read because there are parts of the book that are slightly less compelling than others.

The book centres around learning to be a woman in America in the late 70s/Early 80s - I think reading it as a younger girl would've allowed me to love it more - as it was a lot of the description of the love of Evie's life (Rourke) verges on Edward in Twilight territory - I know that this is often how you feel as a teen so it was difficult for me to figure out whether the book itself is annoying or it's just Evie's character.

My other complaint is that (I assume) because Evie is such an "artist" the story is often not congruent and she darts from place to place without filling in the appropriate backstory. Usually this type of thing doesn't bother me, but with something this sprawling it became a little irritating.

All of this aside it was a great book to sink into and get swept up in, there's enough tragedy and hopelessness and "will love conquer all" stuff to keep anyone happy, but alongside this the book is well written (as a whole) and smart - something you don't tend to come across all that much in the genre that is romance.

( )

Near the end of this book Eveline, the heroine of this book declares : "I didn't intend to think of Rourke today. I don't want to live any more of my life in absentia." Well that was the problem with this book. Eveline spent so much time lamenting her loss of Rourke and not doing anything to get him back. I was thinking; enough already , stop thinking, do something. It took 600 pages for Eveline to finally take action. ( )

Many reviewers have commented on the "beauty of the language" in this dense, 600 page novel. The problem is that Thayer Hamann does not know when to hold back. My patience officially snapped on p.271.

"Say it, he said, the words caught at the base of his throat. No one.

No one, I said, I swore, but you.

I said it because it was true. There was no one but him, and there never would be. I loved him with pain and with something greater than pain, with a barren ache that pealed not in the heart but in the desert dry alongside it. I knew it was so even then: if in his arms I was a woman, beyond them I was nothing."

You may say that this is really not that bad, and quite possibly, I could find worse examples if I cared enough to find them. The real problem, however, is that there is 600 pages of this. The prose, and Eveline's internal monologue, wind up choking the book. In 600 pages, largely consisting of Eveline's internal monologue and musings, I should have a sense of her as a character. I don't. She remains vacuous and passive, reacting to the men around her while spouting platitudes about the female condition. I have no idea why men are irresistibly attracted to her. I have no idea why she and Rourke have The One True Love. In fact, I know very little about Rourke at all. Or Eveline's parents. Characters like Kate simply drop out of the story.

The plotting? Well, there's a plot, though it's not exactly 600 pages worth of plot. It's not helped by Thayer Hamann's technique of explaining events 200 pages later, making me say, "Oh. So I didn't miss the explanation for what happened back there. Now it makes sense."

The only thing worse than reading this novel would be to have read the unedited vanity press edition. ( )

“I was an American girl; I possessed what our culture valued most — independence and blind courage.”

I had heard good reviews about this book, and there was no waiting list for the eBook version of it, so I downloaded away and started in. And then paused, confused. This didn’t seem at all to be a work of great literature, but rather a long-winded and rambling narrative of a rather self-absorbed teen. Well, I thought to myself, this is about an American girl, and not the Pleasant Company brand either. And plodded onward. Somewhere around page two hundred eighty, I started wondering who exactly would enjoy this particular brand of teenage egotism and angst, but forced myself to finish in the hopes that it would have some sort of reward at the end. Still, by the time I got to the last page, six hundred sixteen, I was more than happy to part ways with Eveline. This novel starts out with a fairly ordinary girl growing up in the ’80s, chronicling her on-and-off best friendship with Kate, the traumas of school, her relationship with her boyfriend Jack. But after the first few hundred pages, I lost interest and drifted through the rest. I’m not quite sure who would be more likely to enjoy this novel, but I know that I only finished it because I hate to leave books unfinished. ( )

It seems as though this is one of the books that is either loved or hated. I loved it. ( )