Book Review: The Midwife's Tale

The Midwife's Tale 

by Delia Parr 

(At Home In Trinity book 1)

From the back cover:

Martha Cade comes from a long line of midwives who have served the families of Trinity, Pennsylvania for generations. A widow with two grown children, she's hopeful that her daughter will follow in her footsteps, but when Victoria runs off, Martha's world is shattered.

Worse, a new doctor has arrived in town, threatening her job, and she can't remember a time when her faith has been tested more. Still determined to do the work she knows God intended for her, Martha is unprepared for all that waits ahead. Whether it's trying to stop a town scandal, mending broken relationship, or feeling the first whispers of an unexpected romance, she faces every trial and every opportunity with hope and faith.

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I hate to give negative reviews, but sometimes it can't be helped. This book was, for the most part, extremely boring. I feel like it could have been done way better, as there were some good ideas and plots presented, but unfortunately, they were nothing more than ideas, because hardly anything happened in this book. 

(SPOILERS AHEAD) By the end of chapter one  Martha finds out that her daughter has run off with a troupe of traveling actors and decides she should leave to try and find her. At that point, I'm thinking, "Oh, exciting! Already the book is starting off with a journey! Maybe it will even switch to Victoria's POV and show some snippets of her life as a traveling actor!" Not so. Chapter two starts off with Martha returning from her journey three months later and then gives us a hardy dose of narrative summary of how she failed to find Victoria and what happened on her journey. In fact, whenever anything exciting was about to happen in this book it skipped over it and instead tells us how it went in the next chapter or scene. When I read a book, I want to be thrown right into the action, I want to experience everything right along with the characters. I do not want to read about how it all went down after it's over with. No thank you. 

The book did have a few exciting, right there in the action scenes, but not enough to really count. So basically the book was about Martha wandering around the town thinking about how she's failed as a mother, thinking about what she's going to do. She eats a ton of sweets, befriends a bird and a little boy, and there are a few birth scenes, but really not as many as there should have been considering the book's title. And then there's her love interest... at least I think he was her love interest?? I don't know, because they loved each other in the past but now all she does is think about how she turned him down in the past and is now confused about her feelings for him, and said love interest might as well have been a cardboard cutout. 

One thing I did like was the friendship that started to grow between Martha and the new doctor who moved into town. (Maybe he was the love interest?? But he's young enough to be her son!) 

So, in conclusion, I feel like this book was sorely lacking, and that the author might have had a good idea for a book ending, or a series, but had to come up with some kind of beginning and middle so she threw some stuff in that was pretty irrelevant to the plot. I have a feeling the next book might dive into more action and finally get things rolling, but if that's the case, this book really didn't need to exist, and unfortunately I won't know because I have no interest in reading the next book in the series. 

I give this book a rating of 2.5 out of 5 because of the ideas that were good, the few scenes that did grip my interest, and the friendship between Martha and Doctor McMillan. (and I also enjoyed learning a bit about what midwifery was like back in those days).

I was provided a free copy of this book from Bethany House Publishers in exchange for my honest review.