Olivia, Mourning

At the beginning of the book, Olivia is a girl with a rather boring life that wasn't going anywhere fast: no suitors, limited skills, and no more parental guidance due to the recent death of her father. An opportunity arises when she discovers she could inherit her uncle's farmland. She, along with her Black friend Mourning Free, travels to Michigan and starts a journey on becoming a farmer. I really enjoyed the dynamic of Olivia and Mourning and how their relationship progressed from being friends to business partners. It was also interesting to see Olivia's thoughts on race, gender, and society and how they differed with most of the other characters in the book. The first half of the book focused on this and I wish it would have continued Olivia's conflict between her outlook and society's norms.

However, a tragic event occurs and the tone of the book changes completely and unexpectedly. The next chapters once the tragedy ends, Olivia's attitude about the whole world changes, which understandable due to what happens to her, and the book becomes bleak and depressing.

There is another slight tonal change in the last chapters of the book when Olivia returns to Five Rocks. While still keeping its overall depressed tone, the last few chapters seem like filler (unnecessary chapters used to add to the length of the book). Very few things of note occur and I honestly believe that a lot of the more useful information could have been communicated to the reader in one or two chapters rather than the like six or seven it actually took.

Finally, the ending was probably the most disappointing part of the book. It resolved nothing and left the reader without an answer to one of the biggest questions in the entire book! The eBook version I have included a preview of the next book, which answered some questions, but still left a lot to be desired.

Overall, Olivia, Mourning had an interesting story and conflict at the beginning but with the drastic tonal change, the filler chapters, and the poorly executed cliff-hanger ending, I find that this isn't the best way to introduce a series or to keep someone reading the rest.