It’s mostly a lighthearted, sweet romance book, but with more complicated themes of race, religion, complicated family dynamics, etc. However, it is extremely slow and I likely wouldn’t have finished it if I didn’t listen to the audiobook version while drawing/baking.

A very beautifully written, insightful book about love, loss, alienation, honour, duty, and more. Despite the plot itself not being all that remarkable or exciting, Helen Simonson was nevertheless able to maintain an intriguing and captivating reader experience that captures the beauty of everyday life, even when its happenings seem mundane at first glance. I thoroughly enjoyed how Simonson depicted "normal, day-to-day life" as still possessing a certain uniqueness, even if one's experiences are similar to others. For example, disputes over family inheritance – particularly monetary – are not necessarily limited to the Pettigrew family, yet this account is specifically reflective of existing Pettigrew family tensions (such as how Major Pettigrew felt the guns to be rightly his) and therefore a distinctively unique story: because of the representative role that it plays, it serves as a foundation for the rest of the plot to build around.

Simonson also did a great job of crafting a cast of characters who serve a clearly recognizable role in the story and in Major Pettigrew's life – appearing and reappearing throughout the narrative in a way that made logical sense, as if you yourself were happening upon them at the club, or the shooting exhibition, or around town on an afternoon walk. It really helped build a certain level of comfort and calamity as you read, getting familiar with the the landscape and geography, the daily happenings of Major Pettigrew's life, the gossip and talk going around the town – making this the perfect before bedtime read, to pick up and put down and have a reliable sense of calamity to return to.

That is, until the last 25 - 50 pages of the book.

I do feel that the attack on Amina and her son was quite out of left field, even though the novel had been hinting at the underlying tensions between her and Abdhul's families and the expectation of duty. While I recognize that Simonson may have included it as a way of showing how such expectations of honour can go too far, it felt thrown in, as if the author had included it as a way to add some tension out of fear of the book seeming too monotonous. I also have some concerns about the decision to show such an extreme specifically in the context of Amina/Abdhul's families, while depicting the tensions within the Pettigrew family as slightly more "harmless".

Furthermore, I do also feel as though the characterizations themselves, however well-suited to the novel's framework and storyline, could be a bit over-the-top at times, and lacked well-developed backstories - particularly in the case of Roger. I would've loved to hear more about the relationship between him and his father, why Major Pettigrew had felt he had neglected him (as well as how that connected to his own distant father), and how that could've impacted the person that Roger became. Doing so would've provided greater insight into why Roger acts so self-righteously and self-servingly, but the extremes his behaviour went to at times – particularly words used in conversations with his own father – made his character come across rather cartoonishly.

I definitely enjoyed this book and found it to be an impressive debut novel – especially in its storybuilding, at least in the first 7/8 of the book – but it definitely could've had a bit more depth and consideration as to the purpose and messaging behind its ending. 

“We are all small-minded people, creeping about the earth grubbing for our own advantage and making the very mistakes for which we want to humiliate our neighbors.”

Charming, predictable, cliché...my top three words for this book. I added a fourth when I came here to write my review and I found out that I had already read this book—forgettable! 

While the characters were well-developed and there was plenty of charm and emotion on the pages of this book, it didn't bring me anything new or original. Every character was entirely predictable and I knew everything that was going to happen. 

If you're looking for a feel-good book that isn't going to disappoint or challenge you in any particular way, this is a good option. Although I'm not sorry I read it once, I am a bit sorry to have done so twice...I'll never get through my TRB list if I do that!