The Widow of Larkspur Inn

This book was a good ensemble cast sort of read. We follow the lives of the heroine, her children, her lodgers, and the vicar who moves from Oxford into town, and I felt as if I was reading-watching a BBC period mini-series.

A good read, not too heavy-handed with the inspirational aspect, but also nothing that super inspired me to write myself, which I was hoping for.

A very quaint story. The characters were interesting, and I appreciated that it didn't fall in the trap of “literally everyone in town immediately loves the charming newcomer.” Even by the end of the book, there was a number of characters who had no particular interactions with Mrs. Hollis. The characters were all interesting without being “small town quirky.” There's so many characters that most of them don't really have a moment to BE “small town quirky,” so they come off more as regular people.
Remarkably, this book is set in England but is by an American author, and it feels pretty authentic. There's a few word choices here and there that maybe wouldn't be accurate to 1860s England, but nothing sticks out as an egregious Americanism - at least to me, an American.
I had no idea going into this book that it was so... religious? I mean, it's really not all that overwhelming. The characters praying to God and such makes perfect sense given the setting. The main religious aspect comes from one character being sort of wheedled into studying the Bible. It's a long process, during which that character brings up a lot of interesting points. In my opinion his conversion was sort of sudden, but it wasn't all that bad.

My biggest complaint is the writing for the teen characters seems REALLY off. One of the main characters is 13 for most of the book, and then 14, but I kept imagining he was more like 10 or 11 because of how he was behaving. I can't really pinpoint what was so off about it - it's not as if I was expecting him to be thinking about girls constantly, but a 14 year old who just goes fishing all the time and doesn't protest at all to his mother tucking him in at night? That just seemed really odd.

All in all, an enjoyable book. 4 stars because I enjoyed reading it but I'm not totally sure I'll read it again. I will say that this entire book series would be great for some light PBS tv series.