Days of Hope, Miles of Misery: Love and Loss on the Oregon Trail

This is my blog/book journal, so I feel like I can be more honest here than anywhere else. I did not finish this book. I read the majority of it, but I did not finish it.

I won this book in a giveaway, and I felt like I should finish it, and that's probably the only reason that I stuck with it for the seven months that I kept working my way through it. There were definitely days where the title rang very true. To tell the truth, my feelings on the book vacillated a great deal between thinking it was a wonderful book that I enjoyed a great deal, and wishing that I was simply done with it or hadn't begun it at all. (Maybe that's a little like the characters felt about setting out on a long journey on the Oregon Trail.)

Please don't misunderstand me. There is nothing fundamentally wrong with this book. It appears to be wonderfully researched, and you will learn a great deal about the times and the practices. If you're a history buff who loves a side of fiction, that'll be wonderful for you. The book is well-written. The book includes characters from all walks of life, including those that are often looked over in books like this. There's a little romance, too, for those who want that.

Why then, you might ask, did I not enjoy it as much as I should have? I've been asking myself the same thing.

I'm not really sure. If I'm trying to find reasons, though, it might be that there were too many characters for me to comfortably keep up with during the novel. It may also be that you could never be too sure how long a character would remain part of the story. I don't think that I was ever really able to properly bond with the characters and, knowing me, that was likely what kept me from really loving this book.

I'll be honest, I put the book in my "Maybe Later" folder in my Kindle collections. Maybe I'll go back to it, someday, and give it another go. For now, though, I think I'm ready to move on.

I'm including the link below. As usual, I don't make any money from the sales of the book.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B08MQYH9BP?ref_=dbs_m_mng_rwt_calw_tkin_0&storeType=ebooks&qid=1641986126&sr=8-1