Though I really enjoyed the concept, being a Kentucky girl, I found the beginning of this hard to read, but because I was curious about Silas, who filled my stereotypical bad boy quota, I kept reading, and reading, and reading. Weak writing almost killed it for me, but this was a debut novel, and I felt Allison Jewell had finally found her "voice" in the last 50 pages, which is why I rated this 3 stars over the 2 I was most certainly going to give. I've since added the rest of the series, and am looking forward to seeing if she gets more and more confident in her writing as the rest of Shine On unfolds. I read this book because of the very good reviews published on amazon.com : rich characters, very real, a page turner, interesting historical background...The book description explains that Emmie's sole purpose in life was taking care of her moonshine loving step-father and we also learn that Allison Jewell, the author, lives in southern Kentucky with her husband, two sons, and dog. The photo on the paperback cover shows a young woman with rather fair hair. I must say that I read the book with pleasure : the plot is good, the characters nice even if rather predictable, the historical background, interesting as it's the first time I read a book set in this period.However, I'm quite disappointed with the publisher and Miss Jewell. It doesn'ts seem they care very much about their readers...First, the stepfather was not loving but a drunk who abused mother and daughter... Second, one can suppose the cover shows the photo of the heroine....except that she is not fair-haired but described with ebony hair ( chapters 21 and 45). Third, Miss Jewell is said to have a dog... Weird... Because she doesn't seem to know much about their life hope....Chapter 3, whe learn that when Emmie was 5, she was given a pup instead of the baby brother she wanted. At the time of the novel, she is 21 (chapter 19). So, her dog is 16 - which is quite old if you consider that the average dog age is 13. Nevertheless, he doesn't show any sign of old age and is quite full of energy for such an old dog.Fourth, the novel takes place in 1924. In that time, about 10% of the people owned a telephone. Whe can only imagine they were the richest. I can't see how Emmie or her family could have had one, given their financial problems.... Same thing for Walter... Still more inaccurate is the process described to phone : she picked the receiver and dialed who she wanted to call.... Except that it was not so easy : when you picked the receiver, you didn't dial : this put you in relation with an operator to whom you gave the number you wanted and this operator would put you through....So, all these approximations and mistakes make less of this book... And I haven't yet research the history of prohibition... Let's hope, this at least was well documented !
What do You think about Shine On (2013)?
loved the book and storyline but the story itself jumped around a bit as if not edited correctly .
—Ginger
I never cared about the characters. Good concept but not a very well formulated story.
—marta23
