Tess of the D’Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I absolutely had to read this book because my husband has been complaining about it ever since we were dating. He called it the most depressing book he’d ever read, and after finishing it, I honestly don’t blame him. I had a terrible time getting through the first 100 or so pages. I tend to do well with older fiction styles, but I found myself just not caring at all about Tess, which made it tough to want to keep reading. When the turning point occurs, it’s so covered in flowery language, I had a hard time being sure I understood what actually happened – I needed to go on a summary site to be sure I had read correctly (I had) because I was confused why such a major event would be glossed over so quickly. 
Once Tess moved onto the dairy farm and began her relationship with Angel, things started to pick up for me. It wasn’t so much the romance that was engaging, but rather the tension of Tess deciding to tell Angel or not. Early in their relationship, I was rooting for Tess, but time after time she missed her chance to tell ANgel the truth, and I finally got fed up with her. Later, when she goes to visit Angel’s parents and stashed her boots, only to see them stolen, she doesn’t speak up, and I decided that Tess deserved everything coming her way. By the time the climax of the book hits, I felt completely blindsided. I absolutely loved the ending, but it seemed so out of left-field. 
**Massive spoilers**Hardy is invested in Tess as a character. The events of her life are secondary to how she reacts to them, which is frustrating when some really interesting (not good!) things happen to her like rape, death of a child, stalking, and murder. To have a writer gloss over such important events felt really frustrating. 
I will say this book gave me strong opinions about Tess in the second half. It’s necessary to make it through the first half to get to where you can care enough about Tess to be invested in her life. There’s a huge factor of ‘train wreck” in this book. Tess’s life is so incredibly awful, it’s hard to look away, and I almost enjoyed seeing how things managed to get worse and worse for her.

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