In which trek reviews Summer Snow

During a bout of insomnia last night, I finished up Summer Snowby Nicole Baart. As previously mentioned on the blog, this is the second of a three book set: After the Leaves Fall,Summer Snow, and Beneath the Night Treeand I (accidentally) read them out of order: Beneath the Night Tree, After the Leaves Fall, Summer Snow.

After the Leaves Fall covers a ten-year span in the life of Julia DeSmit, from the time her mother, Janice, leaves until her freshman year of college. Occasionally, time skipped a little disjointedly, but overall the action flowed well. Summer Snow follows the term of Julia's pregnancy, during which she must decide whether or not she is going to keep the baby or give the infant up for adoption.

If facing the possibility of being a young, unwed mother in a small Iowa town wasn't stress enough for Julia, Janice returns... with her five-year old son Simon, Julia's half-brother, in tow. Nellie, Julia's grandmother, insists that Janice and Simon stay with them, hoping that Julia and Janice might reconcile and heal the rift between them.

I enjoyed this selection though I felt there was a problem in the transition between it and the third volume. Beneath the Night Tree picks up five years after the conclusion of Summer Snow. At the end of the second book, certain relationships between characters are being established. Right from the beginning of the third book those relationships are represented entirely differently by the author, creating a dialectic shift in the interaction of the characters involved. Baart makes no attempt at all to explain why or how the change has taken place.

Taken alone or in combination with the first book, Summer Snow was good. Open issues and unsecured threads were tied together and there was a sense of resolution and hope at the end of this book. Viewing this as the second book of a three book set, I was left with the feeling that Beneath the Night Tree was a forced sequel, written in haste.

Given that I was operating in a fog of sleeplessness, I decided not to attempt to write this post in the middle of the night. I waited until this morning and reviewed the last couple of chapters. While the sense of disgruntlement can be attributed to the insomnia, the unexplained change in the personality of a major character still remains a flaw when seen during the daylight hours.