Official Review:Joszann St. John's Sonnets in Waking Moments

[Timea]

Joszann St. John's novel Sonnets in Waking Moments caught my attention with the title. It instantly evoked in me expectations for a sweet state of a dreamlike melancholy. But this state never took hold of me.

The book is an invitation to journey back to the period of the Great Depression, characterized above all, by instability and uncertainty. But we, as readers, will experience this social background through Anna and her family. There is a constant mirroring between the large scaled crisis and the more intimate setting of a family's struggle to survive. However, the two mirroring surfaces fail to flow into each other; they seem somewhat disconnected, broken. So, from the beginning of the story until its end, there is a sensation of the family being somehow near the social context, and not so much in it.

We are introduced to our guide, Anna, in the opening paragraph. This first contact is intimate and revealing, it happens while she's being absorbed by her household duties. Immediately after this close-up, the author pulls us back so we can have a wider view and we are now able to place Anna in a dull, faded room. So, even if we are spatially distanced, we actually close in on the character.

The story is split in half, being composed of two parts - books - each one has six chapters and there is an additional epilogue. There is an interesting change in the dynamics of the two parts, the first book feels a bit slow, while the second is a bit rushed. If in the first part, the focus is on Anna, in the second the responsibility of being the reader's guide is passed down generations, to Anna's daughter. She will take us to different realms and offer us another perspective on those times. Also, as she grows up we will have the opportunity to observe the manifestation of love in her life and compare it to her mother's love story.

All in all, Sonnets in Waking Moments proved to be a pleasant read before going to bed. I was never fully emerged in the reality the book presented, I remained a distant spectator. However, even if I did not bond with the characters, I felt rewarded by the author with some captivating snapshots of the Great Depression and World War Two.

So, I give it 2 out of 4 stars, because:

- The plot failed to impress me
- The dialogue is rather cheesy
- The characters are blurry
- The relationships between the characters was not fully exploited
- The ending seems a bit abrupt
- There is some captivating information about the period of the Great Depression
- There were some great parallels, like the one between the mother’s and the daughter’s love stories