The Kitchen House by Kathleen Grissom

I love it when a friend recommends a book I haven't heard of, and I always want to like it.  And this one starts off with such promise.  It takes place on a Southern plantation in the late 1700's and early 1800's, and I wanted it to be like The Help where we see the relationships between the slaves and masters.  And for the first quarter of the book, I was pretty hooked.  But then it just started to fall apart and irritate me.  The writing is not good, and the author has the annoying tendency to repeat things over and over as if I didn't catch them the first time.  The book contains every type of tragedy you can imagine: incest, child abuse, rape, murder, spousal abuse..... the list goes on.  And there are all these secrets (who fathered who and such) that some people know but for some reason don't reveal to the other characters.  Anyway, I just got tired of all the drama.  I think the author tried to throw in everything that possibly happened back in those environments into the book, and it was overwhelming.  Sorry, but I don't recommend this one.  -June