11.10 Judgment - The Last Train to Key West (The Perez Family #3) by Chanel Cleeton

Bestest Friend and I are doing a blog project. Each day we will write a blog post on a pre-determined theme chosen by a random noun generator. The theme for the tenth day of the month is "Judgment." I have personally decided that I will pass judgment on a book on the tenth day of each month.

****************

I read The Last Train to Key West by Chanel Cleeton without realizing it was the third book in a series. It looks like, from the descriptions, the books can be read as standalones, but I wonder if I would have liked it better if I'd read the previous books. This is the story of three women whose lives intersect during a hurricane.  The hurricane in the story was based on a real event, the 1935 Labor Day hurricane, which was one of the strongest and deadliest storms to strike the United States. There were World War I veterans living in the area who had been sent down to Florida to work on a highway and many of them were killed when the camps they were living in couldn't be evacuated. (Honestly, another thing that would have greatly enjoyed my reading of this book would have been a MAP.)

A map like this would have made everything a lot clearer to me! Source

I did spend a lot of time trying to figure out what was real in this book and what was made up, but that's my own idiosyncrasy and doesn't have to be yours. Camps for veterans = real, train derailment = real, hurricane = real, gangster characters = fictional, but probably based on real people. I just saved you some work. 

It took some real work for me to power through some of the early scenes of graphic domestic violence, so just be aware that if you're a sensitive reader, this might be hard to read. 

But the actual story here? I thought it was sort of insipid and boring? I thought all the three main female characters sort of read as similar in action and tone and I had to keep reminding myself of who had what background. I thought they could have been a bit more distinct in their voices and that made it sort of hard to follow because the POV kept moving around.  Also, the ending nearly killed me with its super perfect bow on everything. I would have preferred a grittier ending. I feel like that's almost blasphemous because I'd be IRATE if a romance novel didn't have a HEA, but this one seemed too happy in light of the rest of the book.  

Eh. I can see why people would like this. It all turns out all right in the end despite the hundreds of people who presumably died in the storm. That's appealing in its own way, I guess. It just didn't work awesomely for me. 3/5 stars

Lines of note:

“Marriage is complicated. It’s no easy thing to bind yourself to another, for their moods to dictate yours, for your needs to come second to theirs, to bend yourself to the will of another. It’s exhausting,” I confess. (page 33)

"...Who really knows what goes on in a marriage besides the people inside it?” (page 56)

It’s strange how quickly everything can change. How your life can be on one path, and suddenly, you’re on a completely different one with little to no warning at all, ill-prepared for the challenges ahead. (page 68)

There have been investigations, and congressional hearings, and men fired, and to some perhaps that is its own form of justice. (page 286)

Hat mentions:

I have seven hat mentions. Three were of "tip their/his hat" varieties and two were literally "hat in hand." Lazy writing. Here are the other two. 

“Evening,” the one closest to me calls out, his hat pulled low over his face, moving with the languid ease of a man with booze in his belly loosening his limbs. (page 71)

Sam in his somber suit and hat looks like the quintessential government man. (page 135)