Books that skip back and forth from century to century usually leave me cold. I find it too distracting trying to keep differing story lines straight, especially when I am enjoying one story line but not so much the other. That is what I found happening to me with this book. I really enjoyed the chapters involving Sophie/Catherine but felt that story line was hampered and somewhat garbled by the constant shifting to today's Katya and her supposedly immigrant angst that she really, really wallowed in. I know we were supposed to identify with her inner struggle to not feel out of place in a country she was not born in, but darned if that did not just get old after a while, and too, the ultra-rich clients she moaned about but sure did not have a problem enjoying the amenities they offered just did not sit well either. Not going into detail here so as not be a spoiler, but the ending, really, really felt flat and enlightening. It will be interesting to watch the discussion on this one.

I loved, loved, loved this book, but I suppose that is pretty obvious by the very short time it took me to gobble this one up. Two days ... shoot I am not sure I ever got through a Longmire novel as quickly as I read this one and that is a really big compliment indeed! Starting in the summer of 1914 this fictionalized account about Constance Kopp, one of the very first female deputy sheriffs, is a rompin' stompin' riot of a read from the very beginning to the end! Packed with rotten bad guys who like to toss bricks into windows and shoot guns at houses, arsonists, baby kidnappers and 2 sisters who were somewhat reluctantly dragged along with her as Constance embarks on the mission of receiving repair of and payment for a wagon she was riding in that was broadsided by car ... a car loaded with the aforementioned bad guys no less! By the end of this 2-day readathon I was actively casting the movie for this one in my mind because if it does not get picked up for that somebody is missing a sure thing.

For me Colleen McCullough's Rome series will probably always be the best books about ancient Rome that I have ever read, but this one, in its own way was a very good read.

While not as scholar-oriented as McCullough's, it made up for that with an underlying sense of drama that compelled me to read to the end even though I knew it how would end from other books on this topic. I enjoyed Smith's emotional pitch thoroughly, it was enough to make me almost feel the character's thoughts myself, but not so overblown that I wanted to shut down and distance myself from it. I think that is probably the best selling point for this book. I will definitely look forward to reading her next one.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book. The pacing of it, the slow, yet steady, buildup to the final scene was beautifully done. While I have read quite a few vampire stories, the amounts of information this book brought out about Elizabeth Bathory was absolutely intriguing, and, mind boggling to contemplate. How anyone, in any age, could have so consistently murdered and tortured over 600 women is something that is really, really hard for me to wrap my mind around. About the only criticism I could have for this book is that, for me, the final chapter was a bit weak., I think, given the amounts of detail in the rest of the book, it might have been nice to provide a bit more in the way of sharing how the two sisters and the psychologist involved managed to overcome the things that happened to them instead of just plopping down the happy ever after scenario.

The first couple of pages took some getting used to, it is written in a rather frenetic fashion that sort of left me breathless at times, and I did not think I was going to like it. But for this book, once I got a little further into it, in this time period of early 1980s Belfast, Ireland, with all its political uncertainty varied with the outlying country settings of arcane silliness, that frantic feeling that one must gulp down the words as quickly as possible method of getting the plot lines out and jumping seemed an appropriate fit. Indeed, I read this book quickly in just 3 days.

By the end I was rather sad to leave the trials and tribulations of the quasi-heroine of this story.

I have to admit I have really mixed feelings about this book. I found myself admiring the sheer bluntness and candid honesty of Shah's feelings upon learning of the severe disabilities her child was born with. The knee jerk reactions of both she and her husband were at once difficult to read and in some ways easy to understand. His almost instinctive personal defensive action to simply walk away and leave the child in the hospital is disturbing in a way I find difficult to explain. As a parent, part of me fully understands that first, "OH NO, not my child," feeling, the desire to retreat to the "perfect child fantasy," while at the same time I was secretly gloating and patting myself on the back because my children are nice and normal and I did not have to face the difficult decisions they were faced with.

And, if I am to be as brutally honest as Shah was in describing her feelings, it is that instinctual parental gloating that gets in the way of my really enjoying this book.

I can't say I liked either one of these parents very much, even after they did finally snap out of their individual wallowing around in angst and self-pity, yet ... I cannot say I would not have reacted in the very same ways if it had been my children and that makes for some disconcerting reactions on my part while reading.

While on one had I did admire Shah's ability to show all the "warts and hidden excrescences" that being dealt that shattering parental blow must create, I did find reading her detailing of it extremely uncomfortable.

Almost all the southerner's I know can tell and enjoy a good story, and when I say tell, I mean t...e...l...l, with all sorts of long-winded side steps and meanderings before getting to the point. It's sort of like we were born with the innate ability of knowing just how many adjectives can be thrown into a single sentence before it is time to move on to the next one. Unfortunately, when the author exceeds that limit of acceptable adjectives per sentence some part of the southerner tends to shuts down with the clangy twang of the door of a coon trap, resulting in loss of the rhythm of the story. That is kind of what happened to me with this book. Even though I enjoyed reading it, and in parts it was amazingly touching and humorous, in other parts there were just too darn many adjectives happening to make it a totally satisfactory read.

That said, the plot line was intriguing, it did keep my interest all the way through, and I am immensely grateful it ended in an upbeat way before I used up an entire box of tissues (another sure-fire way to suck a southerner into the plot line, throw in lots of "drama" and this author surely did that well too).

I compare it to taking that spray can of "Fluffy Whip" and squirting a big dollop into the mouth, but once you swallow the sweet satisfaction just disappears too darn quickly. It was, however, a fairly good way to spend a long afternoon in the porch hammock.

The word "forest" certainly is an appropriate word in the title, because for most of the book I felt like I was, indeed, stumbling around in a dark (or in this case, milk white) forest trying to follow some sort of mythical trail of crumbs.

It always pains me to have to admit that I did not really enjoy a book, especially when I know that someone labored lovingly to bring their vision to light ... but I just really did not enjoy this book. In fact, I finished it with an oddly unsettled, creepy, is that all there is sort of feeling, as if I had stepped an inch too far off the pathway and was now hopelessly stuck in the middle of that same Empyrean the characters in this book were struggling so hard to attain. Perhaps that is what the author was aiming for, to create that unsettled feeling in the reader ... if it was then he certainly succeeded on that level.

I did admire the craft that went into this book. The ability to reproduce that florid, over-blown verbiage that Victorian gothic novels had without requiring the endless wading through adjectives to get to the salient point was very well done, without being "overdone." Something I know can be very, very hard to do.

At times there were certain sentences that resonated, "She was a woman born of plant matter," that I have to admit did keep me reading, hoping that somehow the plot line would do something to live up to those intriguing lines, but in the end, the plot just sort of petered out into a less than satisfying denouement.