This is a beautiful story with a great sense of place about a humanitarian worker from New York who arrives in war-ravaged 1990s Southern Sudan to teach English.

Diana Calloway isn’t seeing life through rose-tinted glasses. She’s no stranger to overcoming challenges. I was swept up in the story as she dealt with road bumps in her physical environment, her health, the culture she was submersed in, and her career. When she meets a long-lost friend, Qasim and a boy named Khalil, it compounds her challenges. The plot is engaging and the author fulfils her purpose.

However, I struggled with challenges relating to the third-person point of view. At one point, I started giggling as I got distracted and started counting the number of times ‘she’ appeared on a page - especially the times it began a sentence! I would have enjoyed the story more if the author had cut directly to the experience making the experience the subject of the sentence rather than how the character experienced it. It would take care of all the repetitive pronouns.

I was really confused with the placement of this book. NetGalley suggests it is book 1 in a series, but the author’s website claims it’s book 2 of the series. Regardless of placement, it’s marketed as a standalone, in the ‘A Bridge Between Shores’ women’s fiction series. I do feel that I’d have liked to know more about Dianna and Qasim’s relationship prior to ‘potentially’ hopping in a book late to the series.

I was gifted this copy by Ground One Press and NetGalley and was under no obligation to provide a review.

This was a strong start to the Bridge Between Shores series, it had that feel that I was looking for and enjoyed getting to go through this story. It had a strong story going through it and enjoyed how realistic the characters were. Kathryn Brown Ramsperger has a great way of telling the story and thought everything worked together to tell the story.