Jenna Butler

(*I received this in exchange for an honest review through Goodreads Giveaway program.)

This novella could have been better. It wasn't bad, but it wasn't amazing either. The author, Jenna, has some good points and a good voice through which she writes. However, I found many of the points repetitive and that she kept reiterating the same thing multiple times within each chapter and in the next chapter.

I had been hoping to get a bit more insight into beekeeping, but it seemed to sort of be talked about, but at the same time, the focus was elsewhere. It would start out about beekeeping, but then go into about how we need to coexist with the environment and bees are becoming endangered or how more women are getting into bee keeping. Which are all great, don't get me wrong, but Jenna kept bringing up those points multiple times without really exploring answers.

I know several species of bees are on the endangered species list. However, other than writing about it and then talking about how no one cared until a species of honey bee made the list, there are no action steps posed to the readers. Nothing about how they can personally help, like what kind of fauna species of bees might like that would help support more than honeybees.

I often find that people pose issues, and I agree that these are issues, but I also feel like there could always be suggestions to motivate people. The novella gets you to think about some of the problems facing bees and bee keeping, but it doesn't provide insight into what the average person can do. I feel like Jenna could have expanded on that instead of repeating the same sentiments over and over.

I also wish it focused a little bit more on the bee keeping. I learned that bees can sense emotions and feed off of that. She talked about wrapping the hives for winter and a little about the process of making honey. However, I would have liked to delve a little deeper. Walk me through the process of collecting the honey from the hive and how you can separate it from the comb and filter it to make honey. How do you pick the flowers you plant for the bees. Those kinds of things.

Again, not a bad novella, just, one that could have been expanded on and some of the repetitiveness taken out. It wouldn't have changed the impact of the book, just made it less monotonous at times to read.… (más)

In Jenna Butler’s Wells, a fictional biography takes the form of a long poem broken into chapters, the fragments of memory and story attributed to a woman with dementia. The poet-narrator is the observer, the family member who struggles with the loss of her grandmother, and pieces together the snippets of family history and sentiments as her loved one fades before her very eyes. Please see the rest of my review at The Door is Ajar, rel="nofollow" target="_top">http://shernor2.wordpress.com/2012/07/09/book-review-wells/.… (más)