Bookish Thursday - In Common by Norma Watkins

So it's time, once again, for a book blog tour!

This time I am reviewing In Common by Norma Watkins, which is sponsored by Wow-Women on Writing. 

First, a bit of 'business' about the book - 

Lillian Creekmore grows up at her family's popular rural spa. She successfully runs an entire hotel, yet longs for a husband. Then she meets Will Hughes.

Velma Vernon accepts life on a small, struggling farm until a boy she barely tolerates proposes marriage. To accept means duplicating her parents' hard life. Alone, she leaves for the city and triumphs, not as a wife, but by being the best at her job. Velma is content until the most beautiful man she has ever seen walks into her office.

This moving and darkly humorous novel follows the intertwined lives of women willing to surrender everything to a man.

Publisher: Black Rose Writing

ISBN-10: 1684339235

ISBN-13: 978-1684339235

ASIN: B09V1NNLSZ

Print Pages: 595 Pages

Purchase a copy of In Common by visiting Amazon, Barnes and Noble, or Bookshop.org.

About the Author

Raised in the South during the civil rights struggles, Norma Watkins is the author of In Common and two memoirs: The Last Resort, Taking the Mississippi Cure (2011), which won a gold medal for best nonfiction published in the South by an independent press; and That Woman from Mississippi (2017). She lives in northern California with her woodworker husband and three cats.

You can find her online by visiting her website or reading her blog.

Now my opinion -

When I received my copy of the book, I was a bit concerned. It's almost 600 pages and most of the books I read for the tours are 300-ish. And once I started reading, while I enjoyed the story, I felt the descriptions of Velma and Lillian's lifes could have been condensed a bit. There were a lot of times I felt like 'I understand, let's move on'.

But once I got pass setting up Velma and Lillian, the story did progress nicely. I did want to find out how they twined together.

The time the book is set in, the aspirations of the two women was very typical - all based around a man. The two women approached it from different avenues, which leads to how they dealt with both loving the same person.

There was some tears on my part by the end of the book. And I felt sorry for the two women and how they both hung their lives on one man, a man who didn't really deserve their love (in my opinion). Overall, I did think the first part of the book could be edited down a bit, I found myself really enjoying the story and would recommend it to anyone looking for a 'family saga' style read.

For other opinions, check out the following -