Serena- the book not the Gossip Girl!

Serena by Ron Rash.
When this book first came out it caught my eye, but I only recently got around to reading it.  I didn't write the title down when I first read about it and although I knew it was a woman's name it alluded me for months before I finally remembered enough about it to track it down.  Sometimes when you go through the effort to track down a book you get rewarded with a gem of a story, and then other times...

I really wanted to like this book.  It's about a man and woman (the Serena of the title) who are young, married, rich and deadly. It takes place in the late 1920's/early 1930's, an era that interests me.  The man. George Pemberton, impregnates a poor mountain girl before marrying the much more suitable Serena.  The pregnant girl and her dad greet the newlyweds as they arrive back from the east coast.  There's a knife fight.  It's a great beginning.

However, the Pemberton's are in to logging.  And the book goes in to great detail about this subject, which I have to admit loss my interest.  Serena, who turns out to be a bit ruthless and crazy- which I love, is not featured nearly enough.  And it takes a lot longer than I expected for the plot to get to what the blurb on Amazon promises- namely Serena loses the ability to have kids and goes after her husband's illegitimate child and baby momma.  There's a weird Snow White parallel to the story, but I don't know if it's intentional or a sign that I just watched to much Disney as a kid.

I ended up getting through the novel, and there was some good to it.  I just skipped the incredibly boring and dull logging descriptions.  In my opinion the story had more promise than what was offered, but Serena is still a wonderful villain.  I just wanted more of her.

Serena gets a Midnight Book Rating of:

it's a good read, but a little on the slow side at times.