Bury the Living

3 stars

This is a hard book to rate. In 1990 Nora is a teenager in Northern Ireland during the Troubles. She makes a mistake and her brother is forced to join the rebellion and is killed. She then joins the IRA to fight for her country’s freedom. Next thing we know its 10 years later and Nora is working for an aid agency in Sudan. She begins to have vivid dreams of a man she’s never met. When she travels back to Ireland to attend a funeral, she is drawn to Kildare to find out more about him. She is given a relic of Brigid of Kildare and told that she must travel back in time to find the mystery man. She is transported to Ireland in 1923 in the midst of the civil war. She finds the mystery man and learns that she must help him and also help try to win the war so that all of Ireland is united and free.
The overall premise of the book was interesting. The book is very heavy on the history of Ireland and its fight with England, as well as some of their folk legends. At times it becomes a bit overwhelming, particularly since I only have a rudimentary understanding of the wars and almost no understanding of their legends. So, when some of the characters pop up in the book, their importance is pretty lost on me and the author doesn’t really explain why this person is such a big deal. Another thing that really bothered me was the way some of the characters talk. While I’ll admit that I don’t have a lot of experience listening to Irish people talk (I visited the beautiful country for 10 days a long time ago) the dialogue seemed over the top. I couldn’t help but conjure up the image of the guy in the Lucky Charms commercials when reading the dialogue in the book. I kept waiting for a character to describe something as “magically delicious”. I know, not PC, but I kept hearing the cartoon guys accent in my head when I read the book and it was distracting.

This is book one of a series. There are SO many good books out there to read. I’m not sure if I’ll read any more books in the series.