1 Followers
22 Following
kLorene17

2manybooks2read

Currently reading

Blood of the Lamb: A Novel of Secrets
Sam Cabot
Little Elvises (Junior Bender, #2)
Timothy Hallinan
Freud's Mistress - Karen    Mack, Jennifer Kaufman This review was written for LibraryThing Early Reviewers.
Hmmmm...what must it be like to sleep with Sigmund Freud? Minna Bernays probably knew, as "Freud's Mistress" proposes. I found the storyline fascinating but the characters and their dialogue did not ring true for me. Often Minna made comments that seemed out of place for 19th century Vienna. The authors also are good at presenting Minna's initial conflict, how to survive as an unmarried, intelligent woman, with no family money and no suitor prospects that are even remotely attractive. I felt her pain. Her second conflict, how to justify sleeping with her sister's husband, while living with the married couple and taking care of her nieces and nephews...whew. I guess Minna was attracted to Freud's beautiful mind, b/c as a person he seems quite boorish...not to mention the shock his theories were producing...Minna was definitely ahead of her time! The book was just 'meh' for me...I felt compelled to learn Minna's fate, and while the the authors do a good job of presenting Minna as a sympathetic character, she wasn't a very likable one. Actually, none of the characters were likable, except perhaps Jessica, whom Minna meets when she is forced to stay at a sanitarium; sadly, Jessica occupies only a few pages toward the end. "Freud's Mistress" is a terrific idea not completely realized...