Great, until the End

BLACKBERRY WINTER                     By: Sarah Jio                       3 Stars

To be fair, I was really into this book, until the end. Let me set it up for you a little bit. The author is a journalist and the protagonist is a reporter. Unless I am giving way too much credit to those professions, aren’t they supposed to pay attention to facts?  Beyond that, doesn’t an editor specialize in paying attention to details too? Why then did the facts in this mystery not end up fitting together?

Claire is a present day reporter who recently lost her unborn child. Vera is a maid at a prestigious hotel in 1933. Blackberry winter refers to a late winter storm in May, which happens in both storylines. Besides the storm on the same day, Vera also lost her child after she came home from work to find her three-year-old, Daniel, missing from their apartment.

Claire feels a connection to Vera and wants to find out what happened to her child in an effort to help herself heal from her own loss. Their lives intertwine with many similarities that help the story unfold. Even with Claire and her husband’s lack of communication (which always bothers me in books and movies, at least their reason makes sense while they both grieve in their own way) I found both characters to be endearing and wanted things to work out with a happy ending for both.

So, the book was great, then I get to the end where things start falling into place, only to be frustrated that the details don’t connect and even more annoyed that the people who should notice the facts don’t fall into place seem to miss the obvious. It might just be me, this book is a Reader’s Choice nominee at my library and others I have talked to have loved it. Perhaps they didn’t notice that the details didn’t fit, or perhaps it didn’t bother them.

In reality, the main detail that annoyed me did slightly change for the better, but the answer still didn’t fit with the story characters and more research could have been done to make everything work. Instead the book just ended, and a little too sugary-perfect I might add. Either way, pick up the book and decide for yourself what to think.