What readers think of The House Girl, plus links to write your own review.

I loved this story. I did not mind that the book was written in the present and in the past. I was always wondering what would happen next in either the past or the present. In the past, this is a story about a young girl who is trained as a house slave; in the present, this is a story about a young female lawyer who is helping to put together a case for reparations of descendents of slaves in the US. There are many stories being woven together to make this story; the author has done a fine job. However, there are too many coincidences, such as the lawyer's father is an artist; she accidentally meets a musician who turns out to be a possible descendent of the house slave; the lawyer collects a big piece of the puzzle in the form of a letter that has been hidden in a book. The history in this novel really makes it very interesting if you do not know much Civil War history; however that was one of my favorites parts of history in college which made this story all the more interesting----the buying and selling of slaves, the Underground Railroad--all a fascinating part of the South and our slave-owning past of the United States. This issue nearly tore apart our country. This novel is one of the best ways to learn about that past!

'The House Girl' takes place in two time periods, 2004 and 1852, and explores a legal case for reparations for slavery. The book took several chapters to really catch my interest as it laid out the foundation of the story. As the story progressed, however, my curiosity increased and I was unable to put the book down until I finished it.

The chapters smoothly flowed back and forth between the time periods, focusing on the staid young lawyer who was researching the reparations case in 2004 and the young slave girl in 1852. It wove together art and family secrets that occurred in both time periods, and both protagonists had to find their own identities. This was a very unique approach to the search for truth, and I enjoyed it very much. I would recommend this to book clubs!

While the subject is interesting I found the weaving in of the sub-plots disjointed and not as developed as they could have been. As a member of a book club, I do not think book clubs would enjoy having this book for discussion. I think there were to many characters in the book, all who could have been developed more.

This is a good average book with the parallel stories of Josephine Bell, a slave in 1852 Virginia and Lina Sparrow, an attorney working on a slavery class action case in 2004 New York. I could not connect with Lina's story, sometimes borderline Harlequin romance type of story, and honestly could not have care less. I would have been a great book if the author based her story on Josephine and only Josephine and people gravitating around her. Too many of characters stories were undeveloped and let me guessing.