The Cornish Midwife by Jo Bartlett

 *I was provided a free eARC of this book in exchange for my review.  All opinions are mine.

In good conscience, I've gotta start by saying I don't usually read women's fiction.  I've read Bridget Jones's Diary and a few Jodi Picault novels.  

(Here's a great article, by the way, that differentiates women's fiction from romance. Main difference? Women's fiction is about a woman's journey, often emotional or spiritual, and growth.  Romance has the romance as the central arc of the characters, and there's a happily-ever-after or a happily-for-now.)

(Side note: do not challenge a romance author on that last point.  It will end poorly for you.  Just change your definition of romance right now.  You'll live longer.)

The Cornish Midwife starts with Ella Mehenick's carefully-planned life being towered. (Think of The Tower from a tarot deck, or just read this.) So she moves back in with her parents and take a job in the small coastal town in Cornwall where she grew up. 

Most of this book is Ella coming to terms with the fact that she needs to rethink her childhood definitions of success.  She catches up with old friends, make news friends, and reconnects with an old love. It is her journey, and that's why I'm categorizing this as women's fiction.

If you like the type of story that has a lot of internal struggle and self-inflicted strife that could be corrected by some straightforward conversation and trust, you'd probably love this book. It will also introduce the typical U.S. reader to some Cornish slang and scenery.

And you should stop reading this review and go pre-order the book now.

If you're more likely to pick a romance than chick lit, keep reading.

I found this character's journey completely annoying. 90% of the way through the book she was making the same mistakes she made in college.

AND SHE HAD TO GET HIT BY A TRANSIT VAN TO SEE THE ERROR OF HER WAYS. 

At the point she's putting her old boyfriend through the same trauma she put him through a decade ago, I actually yelled at the book "Good, you're better off without her."  

And then she got hit by the damn van. (She's fine.  Just a concussion that apparently caused some synapses to fire that had been dormant up to then.  She finally realized that her parents didn't think she needed to be in London to be successful, for example.)

I also felt like the sheer amount of internal struggle meant the reader was cheated out of some interactions between Ella and the supporting characters.  At one point, you're told that she considers her new boss her friend, but you don't really see that friendship develop.  She also falls back with her old boyfriend even though she spend one-third of the book thinking he's a horrible capitalist who needs to take better care of his sister. (Ella is wrong on both accounts.  I really don't know what he sees in HER.)

So, yeah, this book didn't make me fall in love with women's fiction.  That genre and I are not getting a happily-ever-after or even a happily-with-this-book.