Where Dandelions Bloom

For the first 60% of the book, I wavered between four and five stars, but it went downhill after that. When the heroine becomes a spy, she crosses the line multiple times, swears (I wouldn't have gotten as bent out of shape over a d* which would have been more historically accurate, but she unleashes a British profanity that's equal to using an f bomb? Yeah, nope.), and encounters Southerners who are 100% vicious, bloodthirsty, psychotic, or rapist. Not a single one of the Southerners are portrayed as decent people. That really bugged me.

The ending leaped suddenly from one bit to the other and motivations suddenly went up in the air. Because events got summarized so quickly, I lost touch with reality of the chain of events. Johnson left a historical note at the end that her character was modeled on Sarah Emma Edmonds and goes so far as to copy her alias, but makes no attempt to sort fact from fiction in the postscript. I was actually quite disappointed that a few realities got put in but that this story mostly makes everything up. Why try to draw a connection by name and city of enlistment with someone real? The real lady was a Canadian, not a born Michigander; etc etc, with only a few events being the same. I was annoyed that the author would borrow a real location of enlistment and a real name and then invent so large a difference.

Anyway, I'll probably try her again, but with caution.

Thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for a free reading copy. A favorable review was not required.