Kristi Hawthorne

It was beautifully descriptive but I felt like I was reading a romance novel similar to The Notebook. I found a number of things implausible. While I did enjoy the easy read, I was not enamored with the sophomoric story of an orphan illiterate girl who grows into a beautiful accomplished author, artist and poet simply because she grew up alone in the marsh and loved birds. The heroine was described in terms of filth and dirt and then transformed in a beauty. When or how did she brush her teeth when she only had enough money to survive on grits and mussels? Her hair was always a tangled mess and unkempt. When did she begin to brush it and braid it? What about deodorant? Of course this ugly duckling had to grow into a swan — or did she? She had to be attractive to men apparently to make the story interesting? Really? Too bad. Characters were two dimensional, if that. I felt this may have been suited for teenagers or made as a Lifetime movie rather than a serious literary work.