Portrait in Sepia by Isabel Allende
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I thought it would be fun to try out a historical novel as a break from all the fantasy I’ve been reading. I’ve enjoyed the last several that I got from my Grandma, so I opened this one and started reading, not even really knowing anything about the author nor having read anything from Ms. Allende before. And, I can say that the book was enjoyable and engaging.

It is written in typical romance style (romance the culture, not the genre), with strong descriptions, beautiful prose, troubled characters, and meandering story lines. Not that the last is bad, it is just different from the typically straight-forward approach of American writing.

I felt that some things were just drawn out or left unexplained for too long – for example, the true story of the death of the grandfather – but I kept reading because of the interesting characters. I wasn’t really surprised by the plot twists (in fact, I saw the husband thing and her future lover thing coming long before), but, then, I was more interested in how the various characters would handle it.

I wanted more with Severo at the end, but this is not really his story.

The book is divided into 3 sections, with no other chaptering, so it felt rather long at times. However, there were scene breaks that let me feel like I could put the book down.

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