I recently finished reading The Violets of March by Sarah Jio (Grade: B+). I chose the book because I love violets, and I picked this month to read it, because that made sense given the title. March is on the early side for violets, both here and in the setting of the story, but it is the month when I start looking for the first violet of the year. Around the time that I was reading the book, I checked the progress of the violets in the yard. In the warmest, most sun-soaked areas, a few violet plants had sprouted and the leaves had started to unfurl, but there were no buds in evidence yet. As of yesterday, there were some buds, but none close to blooming.
The main character of The Violets of March is Emily, a writer. Her first book was a best seller, but now she has a chronic case of writer’s block, and she’s fresh off a painful divorce. She needs some recovery time away from her New York apartment and reminders of her failed marriage. She goes to stay with her great aunt on Bainbridge Island, a 10-mile island near Seattle. The island is also a place that evokes memories, but pleasant ones of the summers she spent there as a youth. On the island, she meets with friends old and new. Among the new are her aunt’s neighbors Henry and Jack. Her aunt goes out of her way to avoid the neighbors, and that confuses and troubles Emily, because Henry, an older gentleman, seems sweet and Jack, who is around Emily’s age, is both attractive and available. When she’s not out socializing, Emily spends her time reading a diary that she found tucked away in the guest room of her aunt’s house. The diary is that of Esther, a young woman during the 1940s, who was part of a love triangle. Emily begins to suspect that her family is involved in Esther’s story somehow, even though she’s never heard of anyone by that name. And, as the life she’s living on the island runs along a similar course to Esther’s, there is the suggestion that Fate intends for Emily to bring closure to the other woman’s story.
This book is a tough one to grade. On one hand, it was exactly the kind of book I wanted to read at the time–a light, easy read with a beautiful setting. I raced along, eager to unravel the mystery of Esther’s diary. There were some lovely asides that would have made great Crostic quotes if they’d contained the right combination of letters (alas, they did not). When I reached the end of the story, I was sad to have to leave that little patch of fictional world.
Sadly, the more you like a story’s premise, the easier it is for it to disappoint you, and this one did sorely disappoint me. Along the way the author kept slamming hard on the brakes, withholding information in a way that frustrated rather than piqued my curiosity, and I started to suspect that she wasn’t quite playing fair with her readers (and I was right). At the conclusion, though everything was tied up neatly (too neatly in many respects), I was unhappy with the way some of the characters had behaved, and I thought Emily’s romance had deserved a little more attention (Esther’s completely stole the show). For me, The Violets of March was worth the time I spent on it, because I liked parts of it immensely, but I can’t recommend it to anyone else.
