The Cutting Season: A Novel

BOOK REVIEW! This book gets: 3.0 Bookmarks out of 5 This book has: 1. A very unique story about a woman who is managing a historical plantation with events, reenactments and a museum. Her family history is tied to the property and one night they find a body of a dead migrant worker who worked in the cane fields behind the plantation. 2. Lots of layers to this book. You get a murder mystery, historical information of life on a plantation before, during and after the civil war. 3. We dive into the relationship of this plantation to the characters. For some currently, it’s a means of income and for the main character, she is tied to the plantation through an ancestor who was a freed slave who remained on the property and was killed. His disappearance was never solved. 4. Great character development and well written. You could really feel the air in Louisiana as the author describes it. 5. Really a story about when is it time to move on from your past and when we should hold on. Things that didn’t work for me: 1. Slow pace. The author is a bit like Stephen King and describes every blade of grass and piece of furniture. This can get cumbersome. 2. I think this falls in line with the slow pacing but it took a long time to get some clues as to who killed the woman on the plantation. It was a bit draw out. 3. At the beginning of the book, it felt like it was going in a supernatural direction but i didn’t. So, it took a minute for me to understand the direction of the book.

The sense of place was beautifully evoked by the author, but the characters seemed somewhat under developed. Our group spent well over an hour discussing the book, and most agreed they would read more Attica Locke, and possibly more of this genre. Recommended for book clubs as you HAVe to have an opinion on this book.