Blue Thread is a historical YA novel that explores the possibility of a magical prayer shawl linking biblical characters with people of more contemporary times. This volume follows a young suffragette and the movement’s connection with the daughters of Zelophehad’s having asked for their inheritance thousands of years in the past. There is time travel.

I went into reading this without realizing that it had a biblical-fantasy element to it, so I was a little thrown when I got to that point. I felt like the main story could have carried itself well enough without the forays into the past; the personal conflicts the main character deals with in the context of the larger struggle for suffrage made for interesting and compelling reading, even if the author did try a little too hard to ground it in Portland (the most annoying thing about that being that it’s a version of Portland that no longer exists). The scenes in the ancient past seemed muffled and inconsequential, even when the protagonist was in danger, and I only cared about her trips insofar as they affected her present once she returned.

Despite my complaints, I don’t feel like the story’s premise is necessarily terrible; the writing itself is good, and I’d probably be writing a very different review if I’d researched it more carefully before reading. I just don’t like it when a story seems fine as-is and then something supernatural happens partway through to completely change its course, even though it show more was probably unnecessary in terms of intrigue for the reader (the other book I immediately think of that did this is Rose Madder). It’s not a bad book by any stretch—again, the writing is solid, and the main plot is compelling—but if you go into it without knowing all the different genres it fall into, you might be disappointed. show less