Mrs. Benedict Arnold by Emma ParryMy rating: 2 of 5 stars
I really don’t like giving bad reviews, especially to debut authors, but this book was a real disappointment for me. I was really looking forward to this one because I’d read The Traitor's Wife and liked it a lot. So when I saw there was a new book about Peggy Shippen Arnold, I was really excited. Unfortunately, I just didn’t like this book. For one thing, it got off to a very slow start — so much so that I almost DNFed the book about halfway through. But because I knew I was going to give this a low rating, I wanted to be fair to the author and read the whole book, just in case it got better. While it did pick up in tempo, and I did increase my rating — from 1 star to 2 — the book is still not one I can recommend. There are a few reasons for that. One is the slow tempo. In addition, the characters were a little flat and I didn’t feel any real emotion from any of them. Also, the author chose to give Peggy a more sympathetic treatment than other books have, giving Peggy altruistic motives that didn’t resonate with me. But the biggest annoyance was the author’s use of modern language and idioms, not just once, but throughout the book. At one point I found 3 on a single page! Things like ‘not a hill worth dying on’, ‘you do you’, ‘we are in this together’ and so many more! It pulled me right out of the story. I’m really not saying don’t read this. For readers that aren’t familiar with Peggy’s story, this is an interesting book. Just don’t expect it to be the whole story. But for those who’ve read The Traitor's Wife or watched the TURN series, you might want to give this on a pass.
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