In a one-room schoolhouse, a young girl (high school age) falls in love with a boy, who is superior in Algebra plus logic and thinking, but this boy has a deadly disease. They fall in love and the boy dies.

What? Where is the conflict in this one?

So it is a tear-jerker, and the writing and prose are good, but where's the story? All forty-some reviews in Amazon have given it five stars with only one four-star review. Doesn't anyone care about story construction?

Another thing I don't like is that the character of the boy, Tucker, is made into a superior character. Since this is a romance, is it too much expect some kind of a balance between characters? He takes his suffering with a stiff upper lip and tells Sarah, the girl, how things are and what means what. This is just plain sexist.

But to be fair, some of the applause for the writer Joanne Bischof is by those institutions readers might value. Such as:

"Bischof kicks off her Cadence of Grace series with a tale of love blossoming in the most daunting circumstances. A gem by an author sure to draw fans." -Publishers Weekly

"Bischof has written a heartwarming and inspirational historical romance..." -Library Journal

It might be my own shortcoming, but I expect some kind of a story in a novella. Something sappy and prose-poem style in novella length is not a story for me.

weeping over a so-called love-romance where the male lead dies

is Joanne Bischof, Christy Award-finalist and writer of spirituality/religion-based, melodramatic novels, such as Though My Heart is Torn and Be Still My Soul.

Read at your own risk.

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Created Feb 15, 2015 at 12:08pm • Submit your own review...