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Book Review of All Things New

All Things New
writerforchrist avatar reviewed on + 154 more book reviews
Helpful Score: 3


In a time when its more popular to write a novel about the lives of Antebellum plantations during the Civil War, All Things New begins at the end of the war and continues into the late months of that same year.

I will admit to wondering what the point of the novel was going to be in the first couple of chapters, but once I read past the preliminary set up, I was taken into a world completely far from my own. Its a devastated South with plantations families that have been destroyed, their lively hoods gone. Their past rising to haunt them, with no money or threats to keep things quiet. To imagine once having so much power and now having it stripped away as though it never existed except you have to live in the evidence.

This novel gives a windows view from the newly freed slaves, a young woman forced into a new identity, or maybe just discovering Christs identity for her and an aristocratic mother who cant release her past.

The different threads and layers of the story made for a great plot. The subtle taste of romance was just enough added incentive for me to become that much more invested. I was taken into 19th century Southern culture, for it truly was a culture, a way of living completely upended. This novel shows it so well. The reader will only continue to find hidden depths.

This review is my honest opinion. Thanks to the publishers through CFBA for my copy to review.