Dear George, Dear Mary

Author: Mary Calvi
Genre: Historical Fiction
Publisher: St. Martin's Press, 2019
Pages: 336
Rating: Do Not Recommend

Synopsis: Did unrequited love spark a flame that ignited a cause that became the American Revolution? Never before has the story about George Washington been told. Crafted from hundreds of letters, witness accounts, and journal entries, Dear George, Dear Mary explores George's relationship with his first love, New York heiress Mary Philipse, the richest bell of Colonial America.

From elegant eighteenth-century society to bloody battlefields, the novel creates breathtaking scenes and riveting characters. Dramatic portraits of the two main characters unveil a Washington on the precipice of greatness, using the very words he spoke and wrote, and his ravishing love, whose outward beauty and refinement disguise a complex inner struggle.

Dear George, Dear Mary reveals why George Washington had such bitter resentment toward the Brits, established nearly two decades before the American Revolution, and it unveils details of a deception long hidden from the world that led Mary Philipse to be named a traitor, condemned to death and left with nothing. While that may sound like the end, ultimately both Mary and George achieve what they have always wanted. 

Review: It's been awhile since I've been this disappointed in a novel. Perhaps this is a case of the author choosing so obscure a topic that entirely too much filler information was required. 

The language was too flowery. The characters motivations went unexplained. And, the romance was anticlimactic. Because I was able to actually finish it, I rated it two stars, but save yourself and avoid this one.