Sign up for our newsletters to receive our Best of 2024 ezine!

Read advance reader review of The Commoner by John Burnham Schwartz, page 3 of 3

Summary | Reviews | More Information | More Books

The Commoner by John Burnham Schwartz

The Commoner

A Novel

by John Burnham Schwartz

  • Critics' Consensus (2):
  • Published:
  • Jan 2008, 368 pages
  • Rate this book

About this book

Reviews


Page 3 of 3
There are currently 15 member reviews
for The Commoner
Order Reviews by:
  • Mary Goulding (River Forest IL)
    Unfulfilled promise
    If you're in the mood to read another "Princess Diaries," but without the happy ending, you might even like it. I have a weakness for peeks behind royal curtains, so kept reading, certain there would be interesting things to come. For some unknown reason, even to me, I forged through the first 150 pages of labored writing about an uninteresting young Japanese girl who was to become the Japanese Empress. Spirits definitely lifted when the wedding day rolled around. The writing became better, but the girl less interesting, and I never got to really know any other character, as everything is told in her own voice. Even the backstage revelations dissolved into soap opera with the requisite evil mother-in-law. Some suspense in the last chapters kept me turning the pages, and hope didn't die until I'd read the last one...when my remained hopes unfulfilled.
  • Page
  • 1
  • 2
  • 3

More Information

Read-Alikes

Top Picks

  • Book Jacket
    The Frozen River
    by Ariel Lawhon
    "I cannot say why it is so important that I make this daily record. Perhaps because I have been ...
  • Book Jacket
    Prophet Song
    by Paul Lynch
    Paul Lynch's 2023 Booker Prize–winning Prophet Song is a speedboat of a novel that hurtles...
  • Book Jacket: The Love Elixir of Augusta Stern
    The Love Elixir of Augusta Stern
    by Lynda Cohen Loigman
    Lynda Cohen Loigman's delightful novel The Love Elixir of Augusta Stern opens in 1987. The titular ...
  • Book Jacket: Small Rain
    Small Rain
    by Garth Greenwell
    At the beginning of Garth Greenwell's novel Small Rain, the protagonist, an unnamed poet in his ...

BookBrowse Book Club

Book Jacket
The Story Collector
by Evie Woods
From the international bestselling author of The Lost Bookshop!
Book Jacket
The Berry Pickers
by Amanda Peters
A four-year-old Mi'kmaq girl disappears, leaving a mystery unsolved for fifty years.
Who Said...

We have to abandon the idea that schooling is something restricted to youth...

Click Here to find out who said this, as well as discovering other famous literary quotes!

Wordplay

Big Holiday Wordplay 2024

Enter Now

Your guide toexceptional          books

BookBrowse seeks out and recommends the best in contemporary fiction and nonfiction—books that not only engage and entertain but also deepen our understanding of ourselves and the world around us.