Title: It’s in the Leaves
Author: Patricia Gruenwald
Publisher: Westwood Books Publishing LLC
ISBN: 978-68536-048-1
Genre: Fiction
Pages: 296
Reviewed by: Suzanne Gattis
Pacific Book review
It’s in the Leaves is a book about history and future, mothers and daughters, teacher and students and finding that elusive soul mate. Author Patricia Gruenwald weaves a story with all these themes in her novel.. A family and cultural tradition, tea leaves reading has been practiced in this family for centuries and often tells of warnings or things to come. This practice gives this particular family a uniqueness.
We follow the story of Tessa from her youth as she goes out into the world and makes her own adventures. It is a coming-of-age story for sure; watching Tessa come unto her own throughout the book was enjoyable. You see her make mistakes and achieve magnificent things. I liked the character development within the story. We weren’t just told this is who she is and this is what she wants; we were able to find that out ourselves through thoughts and experiences.
One thing that I like about this book is that it is set in the past. Imagine not having a working toilet in the house and or running water and where there were classrooms where multiple grade levels meet at once. It takes us back to a time where things seemed harder yet was just seen as a way of life. The setting added a lot of good detail to the story and led us to imagine ourselves in that world.
The writing overall is good throughout the book. There are times to laugh, to cringe, and to cry as experiences unfold. At times, I found the conversations to be a little naïve and not completely worked out. Through that I mean I don’t know that I could envision people actually carrying on a conversation that way. However, overall, there was great character development and the setting lived, and I would recommend this book to others.
