Title Tuesday: Red Sky Over America

Welcome to  Title Tuesday, my favorite day of the week! This day is dedicated to book suggestions, news, cartoons, and reviews. I write this portion of my blog because I am a big believer in the motivational speaker Charlie Jones' quote which says, "You will be the same person in five years as you are today except for the people you meet and the books you read.” I try to meet as many new people as possible and to read everything I can. This is my way of sharing that information with you. You can see a visual summary of the books I have reviewed for both adults and children over on my Facebook page. If you are interested in understanding my rating system for books you can read my Book Review Explanation here and What I Believe here. If you want to check out what I am currently reading or what I want to read next, friend me on Goodreads!

Today is an unusual day here at the Forgiven Former Feminist. Today we are going to be taking a look at a fiction book, which basically never happens. If any of you have checked out my Goodreads then you know I LOVE historical fiction. 

I was recently asked to read and review Red Sky Over America by Tamera Lynn Kraft. I usually stay between Greek Empire and the Renaissance but this story of antebellum Kentucky seemed like a fun way to try getting my feet wet after my 6 month break from reading fiction. So with all that being said, lets jump in! 

I SO wanted to love this book.
I really did. 
Somehow I just couldn't get into it.

Things I liked:
The honesty of the evils of slavery and that it was a sin for one man to take another in to bondage. 

Things I didn't like:

• The name of the main character. Her name is America (with no explanation as to why?) But the other characters often call her Merry. It is difficult to follow this kind of thing when the writing is really solid. which brings me to my next point...
• The writing in this book is very choppy scenes move back on forth without clarity. Often times the reader cannot be sure of who exactly is talking to whom. 
• There are significant character issues. Luke (America's brother) seemingly disappears for 85% of the book and yet we are supposed to mourn his character at the end. It seems like the author started writing Luke's character and go distracted with ALL the others (there are a lot) and just kind of forgot about him until the end. 

Overall I give this book a low B. It is a fine read if you aren't looking for anything spectacular, but I probably would check it out from a library rather than actually owning it.