Hello friends, happy Wednesday! I hope you’re all having a good week so far. Today I’m going to be posting my review of Hannah Tinti’s novel The Twelve Lives of Samuel Hawley.

The Twelve Lives of Samuel Hawley by: Hannah Tinti: Samuel Hawley has lived his life on the run, but now that his daughter, Loo, is a teenager he wants to give her a normal life and stay in one place – his late wife’s hometown. Slowly, as they start this new life, Loo begins to uncover the secrets behind a mother she never knew and what led to her death. This was a father-daughter story that had grit and was definitely raw and somewhat gripping. This novel started out confusing and proceeded to confuse the reader until about the first third of the way through. The reader really liked the writing and that’s what propelled them forward in the beginning. Once the reader understood the structure of the novel and the point it became easier to follow. The concept and the idea for this novel was really good, but the execution just didn’t live up to how good the concept sounded. Told in a back and forth from past to present way we learn who the characters are and what their story is. The back and forth, in theory, sounded like the perfect way to tell this story, but in reality it blurred plots, characters and places. The characters were deeply flawed and they were really dimensional. The reader actually really liked how dynamic they were but even though they were really strongly built the plot took a lot of what could have been great development away from them. Too much weaving back and forth really lost the reader and had them caring very little for them. Overall, this novel had potential, but it fell flat for the reader.