The Words Between Us: My Review

The Words Between Us

About the Book:

Robin Windsor has spent most of her life under an assumed name, running from her family's ignominious past. She thought she'd finally found sanctuary in her rather unremarkable used bookstore just up the street from the marina in River City, Michigan. But the store is struggling and the past is hot on her heels.

When she receives an eerily familiar book in the mail on the morning of her father's scheduled execution, Robin is thrown back to the long-lost summer she met Peter Flynt, the perfect boy who ruined everything. That book--a first edition Catcher in the Rye--is soon followed by the other books she shared with Peter nearly twenty years ago, with one arriving in the mail each day. But why would Peter be making contact after all these years? And why does she have a sinking feeling that she's about to be exposed all over again?

With evocative prose that recalls the classic novels we love, Erin Bartels pens a story that shows that words--the ones we say, the ones we read, and the ones we write--have more power than we imagine.

My Comments:

The cover is what drew this bookworm to this book.  As noted above, books were an important part of Robin and Peter's relationship back in high school and they are the way he brings himself back into her life today.  Back in high school Peter used to give her books that had belonged to his mother, an English teacher who had died recently.  The books had is mother's highlights and notes; all were sad an all included women whose lives were unhappy.  To "pay" for the book, Robin would write poems for Peter.  

When Robin left town suddenly, she returned the books to Peter, leaving them on his doorstep.  Now he is sending them back, one at a time, and inside the books, he wrote her poems.  Why?  

Besides the Robin/Peter plotline there is the question of what happened all those years ago that landed her parents in jail.  Her dad is supposed to be executed but receives a last-minute stay.  

Erin Bartels' writing is lyrical, the prose is practically poetry.  The descriptions are lush without being overdone.  It is one of those books where I can read a paragraph out loud just to hear the beauty of the words.  That's the good.  

Robin runs a used book store and during the course of the book is engaged in building a dinosaur out of used books.  She also daily gives her parrot an old book to tear up.  She notes that there are some books that stand the test of time; their characters become part of reader and the reader's life whereas in other books, like those used for the parrot or the dinosaur, readers don't remember them after they have read them. For all the beauty in the writing of this book, it falls squarely in the second category.  Basically, none of it rings true.  Knowing what I know about law (and which I'll admit most people do not), the story of her parents has too many holes in it.  Robin's finds that convince her to leave town seem improbable at best.  What she does when she leaves town?  Nope, doesn't sound real either.  How the problem of her parents gets solved? Farfetced to say the least.  

The book is published by Revell, which is a Christian imprint, but two thirds of the way through the book I had no idea why it was considered "Christian".  Robin's grandmother went to church but about all that was said about it was that Robin refused to go.  In the last third of the book Robin meets a minor character at church and we hear the sermon, and later get some advice from the minister's wife, but I didn't find faith to be a major factor in the book and if it otherwise appeals to you, I wouldn't let a dislike of faith-based literature dissuade you from reading this. 

I got the book from my library via Hoopla.  It is available at no addtional cost if you are a Kindle Unlimited member.