A Transcontinental Affair

This is the story of Harriet and Louisa and their cross-country train excursion on the Pullman Hotel Express. Harriet is a teenage rebel who, much to her father’s chagrin, chooses to wear pants and doesn’t want to get married unless it is for love. Louisa is a pastor’s daughter with a club foot, which he left to grow unevenly for too long because of his resentment over her mother’s infidelity. When the two girls end up on a train together, Harriet on her way to meet the man she is to marry in San Francisco, and Louisa as a governess to an unbearable rich man, his gold digging wife, and their ill-behaved children, they spend more and more time in each other’s company and little by little, fall in love. When an incident happens on the train, they start to suspect that maybe all the glitter and glam of the Pullman Express isn’t as innocent as it seems.

I received this book as an Amazon First Reads exclusive. I was delighted to see a lesbian historical fiction novel available and jumped at the chance to read it. Sadly, that was where my excitement died. The book description makes this book sound like it’s going to be a raucous train ride (literally) filled with scandal and intrigue, with a love story developing throughout and culminating in a final, blow out last stand with the girls on one side and the world on the other. That is not the book that I read. At all points of conflict, when the story could have been fleshed out and made into something captivating and beautiful, Jodi chose to cash it in and make each scene as boring as possible. Even the action scenes – of which there are about two – are just . . . boring. The ending feels slapped together, like the author realized she had to end her book somehow but had left herself very few options.

I’m giving it 2 out of 5 stars because I love the concept, but hate the execution. It’s not unreadable – I was just left wanting at the end of the book. This was an opportunity to bring light to the struggles of the LGBT community in the 19th century, and especially those of women who were expected and required to find husbands and bear children. This book did absolutely none of that, and fell far flat of its potential.