Winter Sea - Susanna Kearsley

Date Started: 8/6/11
Date Finished: 8/12/11

One-Word Summary: Scottish!

So another thing about me: I am obsessed with Scotland. I've been twice and I absolutely love it there. I love the landscape, the friendliness of the people and the gray cities. There is some part of me that feels like I am home when I am in Scotland, though I don't think any part of my family tree hails from there. In any case, I've never had the pleasure of reading a book set there, and since Winter Sea was, it automatically had a head start in terms of me liking the book.

The story is split in two: there is modern-day Carrie, a successful historical-fiction writer, and Sophia, the narrator of Carrie's latest story, set in Scotland at the time of the '08 attempt to bring King James back to the throne. At first Carrie thinks the characters are simply speaking to her more strongly in this book but she comes to find that she has a far closer attachment than she would have thought.

She has Sophia's memories - as in she inherited them genetically. So although she is writing a story, she keeps finding historical facts that back up what she is writing. The whole idea of genetic memory is dumb to me - so in my opinion the story would have been better with this "explanation" removed. Why not leave it to mystery and for the reader to fill in themselves? But in any case we have this explanation which the side character of Dr. Weir helps to explain. There is also the obligatory romance with Carrie ending up with Graham (who also may or may not be very distantly related to her?).

I liked this story; I liked the characters, the historical elements and obviously the setting. That said, I thought it was fairly obvious that McClelland would end up being Moray though I was surprised that they didn't go back for their daughter, Anna. That seemed very strange and somewhat unbelievable. I thought both story-lines were compelling (though I would have liked less references in the modern line to how the characters were speaking to her and pushing her to write - it seemed like every chapter made that reference). I would recommend to those who like historical fiction and who don't mind navigating some Scottish language along the way.