Book Review ~ A Place For Us by Harriet Evans

Title: A Place For Us
Author: Harriet Evans
Release Date: September 9th 2014
Publisher: Hachette (NZ)
Source: Received from Booksellers NZ for an honest review

The day Martha Winter decided to tear apart her family began like any other day.

So opens A Place for Us by Harriet Evans, a book you'll dive into, featuring a family you'll fall in love with ... and never want to leave. If you devour Rosamund Pilcher and Maeve Binchy and have discovered Jojo Moyes, you'll be thrilled to add Harriet Evans to your collection of favourite authors.

The house has soft, purple wisteria twining around the door. You step inside.

The hall is cool after the hot summer's day. The welcome is kind, and always warm.

Yet something makes you suspect life here can't be as perfect as it seems.
After all, the brightest smile can hide the darkest secret.

But wouldn't you pay any price to have a glorious place like this?

Welcome to Winterfold.
Martha Winter's family is finally coming home.

I have to admit I found A Place For Us very difficult to get into. I found the constant changes in POV far too regular and that frustrated me. I wasn’t given enough time to familiarize myself with one member of the family before I was being thrust upon another.

I had the same problem with the time differences and I had to make a conscious effort to push through my misgivings and carry on because if I hadn’t this book would have ended up on the DNF (did-not-finish) pile less than 100 pages in!

It’s not that it was a bad book in any way, the writing is well developed and the story has merit – a little romance, some mystery, but it was all just a bit ordinary. I mean, I’m sure there are plenty of readers that will love this slowly paced family saga; I just found the time shifts and multiple points of view a little overdone and it made the flow of the book too clunky for me. And I prefer my family dramas more real, heated, scandalous, and full of gasp worthy moments – A Place For Us was just too safe and vanilla for my tastes.

Still a good if safe read, 3.5 stars.