INTO THE WILDERNESS (The Wilderness Series Book 1)

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Then once in a while she’d show me something she was working on and I’d show her something I was working on. People were sometimes very insistent on that, and I know that Diana was sometimes irritated by the whole debate.

You'd be reading Elizabeth's POV for pages and then suddenly it would be Nathaniel's, no break or warning. I find the lead female character inconsistently intelligent, inconsistently rational, inconsistently inexperienced, and rude to her husband as a result. Obvious borrowing is really distracting, from the Gabaldon series (the hanging scene in a later book in the series and names from Cooper and Gabaldon) and details that are interesting but don't add to the story (like including Burns as exciseman and poet but not AT ALL necessary to the plot) are distracting. Nathaniel wants Judge Middleton's land, too, for his adoptive people--but, unlike Todd, he also wants Lizzie for herself.Join the ladies of That’s Normal as we read a new book (paranormal/YA/guilty pleasure/romance) each month and discuss it over drinks on a Google Hangout at the end of the month! HNS Awards have helped discover and launch the author careers of Michel Faber, Ruth Downie, Hilary Green, Martin Sutton, Kelleigh Greenberg-Jephcott, Nikki Marmery, Margaret Skea, Warwick Cairns, Katherine Mezzacappa and Elizabeth Macneal. But on the eve of the War of 1812, an unexpected guest arrives from Scotland: It is the Bonners’ distant cousin, the newly widowed Jennet Scott of Carryckcastle.

I guess it is because Donati had the temerity to make a nod to Diana Gabaldon's Outlander series (with a short passage about a few of Outlander's characters). Still, however, several “scenes,” and truthfully, sometimes they felt beautiful and the timing in the plot fit just right but then many times I felt like our author said, “oh, it’s been a while since we had a scene, we better have one now,” and that annoyed me. On the surface, Donati's writing seems as though it could be comparable to Gabaldon's, but, in actuality, it didn't even come close for me. Sure that all is lost, and sick unto death, Hannah finds herself in the care of a family and a friend from her past, Dr.Diana Gabaldon’s popular Outlander series, and the TV adaptations, are full of danger, steamy passion, and Scottish history. Jemima Southern is a dangerous schemer who has destroyed more than one family, and her anger touches everyone, as do her secrets. If you've read INTO THE WILDERNESS or any of Sara Donati's other books, feel free to post your reactions here (whether positive or negative). I was over-joyed to see the promo for the second instalment advertised in the back cover, less so when I realised I would have to wait two years for it, and for each one thereafter.