But I, unlike so many others, cannot offer adjectives like haunting, beautiful, or mesmerizing about it. Inch by inch and page by page, I pulled myself along and finally did achieve enough of a mild interest to continue with the story and finish the book without hating it and the time I spent between its covers.

This is not an easy thing to do, let me tell you. Despite all the raves, I found myself struggling to pick this one back up after putting it down, trying to claw my way into a narrative that sadly only struck me as tedious and boring, desperately trying to care about characters who had suffered terribly and yet who were dull enough to evoke no sympathy. The Women's National Book Association has named it one of their Great Group Reads for 2012's National Reading Group month. The Dovekeepers has been lauded as a magnificent novel, called mesmerizing, and overwhelmingly praised far and wide. YA fiction, magical realism, lighter women's fiction, and, of course, historical fiction like this one.

Hoffman is a favorite author of many, many readers and in reading about her previous books, it seems as if she has a varied and unusual repertoire in her many novels.

The dovekeepers book