Alyssa Helton

3.5 stars--it's a "slice of life" novel set in the Great Depression/WWII times. It follows a large farming family--primarily one of the sons and his relationship with a neighbor's daughter. There is also a nurse and a reporter, who eventually marry one another, who become friends with the family through a census in the case of the nurse and a story in the case of the reporter.

The story is quite well told though a bit passive. The author also has not mastered how to make family names plural. For example, I'll use the author's last name. Her family would be the Heltons (not the Helton's. The 's denotes ownership or possession so it would be correct to say Helton's land if you were referring to her land, but if you wanted to refer to family land it would be the Heltons's (or Heltons', depending on which school you subscribe to) land.) The author routinely uses the 's when she wants to indicate more than one person from that family--something I noticed often enough to annoy me.

The ending seemed quite abrupt to me.… (més)