Book: Black Woods Blue Sky

 Book: Black Woods, Blue Sky

Author: Eowyn Ivey

Pages: 496

This is my 62nd read for the year

What Amazon says:

Birdie's keeping it together; of course she is.  So she's a little hungover, sometimes, and she has to bring her daughter, Emaleen, to her job waiting tabls at an Alaskan roadside lodge, but she'e getting by as a single mother in a tought town.  Still, Birdie can remember happier times from her youth, when she was free in the wilds of nature.

Arthur Neilsen, a soft-spoken and scarred recluse who appears in town only at the change of seasons, brings Emaleen back to safety when she gets lost in the woods.  Most people avoid him, but to Birdie, he represents everything she's ever longed for.  She finds herself falling for Arthur and the land he knows so well.  Against the warnings of those who care about them, Birdie and Emaleen move to his isolated cabin in the mountains, on the far side of the Wolverine River.  It's just the three of them in the vast black woods, for from roads, telephones, electricity, and outside contact, but Birdie believes she has come prepared.  At first, it's idyllic and she can picture a happily eve after: Together they catch salmon, pick berries, and climb mountains so tall it's as if they could touch the bright blue sky.  But soon Birdie discovers that Arthur is something much more mysterious and dangerous than she could have ever imagined, and that like the Alaska wilderness, a fairy tale can be as dark as it is beautiful.  

I didn't really like this book that much.  It was okay - not great.  I read The Snow Child earlier this year, and when I saw it was the same author, I should have walked away.  It was fine - the writing is fine, the characters are fine.....it just didn't draw me in.  

Stars: 3