Great rich tapestry of a number of lives, well-written, but it was a miss for me. Too many characters, didn't have to be that long, and while the author several times in the book tried to explain the concept of it overall through a 'covenant of water', I felt that was a bad title..and not necessary tie-in. A friend of mine read it just before me and said the same thing. We both wanted to love it more.
i'm not sure another review of this book is needed but here i am anyway. i adored the author's book "cutting for stone" and was excited to read this one. maybe it's the difference of many years between the two but i was definitely not happy about holding a 700 page book endlessly. i think the book would've been fine, more than fine, at 500 pages. hell, maybe even 400 pages! what i loved? following the history of the land itself and the families who lived there. just beautiful. what i didn't love? i didn't feel that pull to read forever. i didn't want to keep those characters with me forever. without spoiling it for anyone, the closing of the book, the pulling together of the entire story, did leave me feeling more complete, so i'm grateful for that. and i am sure that i would've enjoyed the audio book version more, for all reasons.
The book is very well written but so long. I put it down because it didn't seem to be going anywhere. After the holidays I decided to finish it. If you can get to page 508 it becomes worthwhile and the story comes together beautifully
