While Love Stirs by Lorna Seilstad
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
Truly unique premise about a young woman who studied nutrition. She's a bit misguided about what she really wants. It seems her real passion is to make sure people in hospitals have good nutrition, but she says out loud that she deeply desires to be a chef or to have her own restaurant.
Seilstad does a good job in developing the main character, and a fairly good job in developing the doctor although she uses a bit of a heavy hand there. On the other hand, men of that day had that same kind of mentality so maybe not so heavy a hand.
She sidetracks the entire story while she builds some back story for the 3rd Gregory sister. Why? The necessity of that is not clear at all. There are too many points of view here to tell this story well.
Head hopping from scene to scene gives the story flow a jerky feel. There are no, or very few transitions that would make the flow much more even. When hopping from one character to another there is no reason given to make the reader want to jump into the head of the next character. That gives the story a forced feeling.
I think Seilstad did her research well, and the historical part of the novel is good. I did not notice any out of place, modern slang or unduly modern motives of the character so the feel of the times comes through very well. Job well done on that score.
If she had stuck with one or two points of view, this novel would have received 4 stars from me. As it is, I rate it with 3 stars.
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