"The Longing" by Wendy Lindstrom

An essay-like review of a historical romance, fiction novel I read during winter 2016

The Longing by Wendy Lindstrom was a piece that felt as much on the surface of the writing as it attempted to dig under the surface of the characters and the stories they lived through. Not an overly exciting novel, it was the type of thing a reader may want to read just for the sake of keeping up their recreational reading habits when nothing else seems to keep the mind occupied.

This reader read Lindstrom's tale during the winter to the very early parts of winter and spring 2016. It was something picked up from the shelves at the local library when my mind was searching for something, perhaps, a little more risque but had to "settle" on this tale of two people, hoping it offered something in terms of sheer excitement. Which it did, in parts.

A historical romance piece, the story felt a little too simple with its characters and plot. The critics and quoted folks pushing for marketability of the piece may have over boasted on the bound pages, sure. However, this mind felt a little less than impressed.

Romance stories involving families with multiple siblings often give themselves to rather simple story lines. One sibling does this; the other does that. They both work a family-owned business "job" and have recurring relationship difficulties or joys in such predicaments. 

Such was the case with Kyle Grayson and Amelia Hart, daughter of Tom Hart. Tom and Kyle were business owners of saw mills in 18th-Century New York. Their livelihood depended upon how well their respective mills produced cotton, lumber or whatever the boys had a contract to handle. 

Anyway, the tale was 85 percent dialogue of simple nature. Kyle, for instance, said something about the business, his tough exterior and welcoming interior, or some guilty trait he was always looking to fix, either with Amelia or his brothers. And while I can understand the authors' need to develop their characters so the reader can understand who they are and, perhaps, why they are the way they are, developing only to the point of understanding a simple guy, in the end, for me doesn't do enough to want to remember that character. They need to have deeper, hidden motives. 

The other 15 percent was about 10 plot narrative passages and sequences of events and 5 reflective "life lessons" the characters picked up from their various situations. They were really just simple, everyday things we all come to understand here and there. Thus, the characters were made to feel more believable, though simple for their simple interactions. A brother visiting his sibling, with his wife, on a Sunday afternoon; a mother checking up on her daughter, wanting to make sure the daughter is "following a good path" that leads to society's expectations of them. Those sorts of things.

To me, though, they felt a little gushy, in terms of their developed context, attempt to be romantic in spite of various non-romantic situations they found themselves in, and lack of deep interior and exterior motives. 

Was it a good read? Sure, it kept the reader, me, hooked enough to want to follow Kyle and "Aimee", as she preferred to be called. Did it inspire my mind to be so hooked that I wanted to follow the rest of the Grayson brothers' tales? No, not quite that inspiring. 85 percent simple dialogue doesn't do the trick for me. That 85 becomes mixed in with the rest of the 95 percent of talking I hear from daily people I hear mingling here and there and those voices jutting out from the screen at 4, 5, 6, 10, and 10:30.

Nevertheless, it was a mental workout of 285 pages, give or take.

Though I was expecting more specifics of details, narrative interaction and feeling in the romantic scenes department of the story, Lindstrom chose to keep those details within the context of the story. Perhaps on purpose, perhaps to keep the reader focused on the story she wanted to tell. She chose, instead, to keep the story going to offer fluidity versus providing "distracting" writing so as to keep it about the story (character development and such) versus erotica. Again, historical romance was on the spine. Not other labels. It had to be about story, above all.

Easy enough to follow, I would recommend it only for the simplicity. Otherwise, don't bother wasting your time with it or others similar to it. The suggestion I could make, if you are one of her loyal followers, is go ahead and read her tales to find ways in which you can relate to her characters, to see if there is anything you can recognize from her words that will "click" as the same you've felt in your own, identifying experiences. Maybe then you will come to appreciate her words and what read them can mean to you. I know that happened a few times when I soaked up her pages.