Annie's Song by Catherine Anderson

⭐⭐⭐⭐

Taking a little break from FaRoFeb, I needed to get in the book for the February meeting of Rake Appreciation Society. The club is hosted by Crystal and Jenn and they chose Annie's Song by Catherine Anderson for this month! I was able to use this to cover the prompts billionaire, CEO or businessman hero for the 2nd board of Winter's Kiss and the jazz bagpipes prompt for the Heaving Bosom's 2022 Reading Embrace.

Annie became deaf at the young age of 6. Her parents didn't realize that she had become deaf and instead took her disability as becoming mentally disabled. She has been raised as such a person and never really got proper schooling or socialization. After Annie gets raped and becomes pregnant, the agressor's brother Alex steps up and offers to marry Annie to help keep the child. When he takes her into his home, he realizes her true disability and goes about trying to give her the life she always deserved and more.

Now, there is a trigger for rape right off the bat. There's also what we would call insensitive words now used to refer to Annie. Despite that rough start, this really is a beautiful love story between two people. I loved Alex and he was such a great hero. He really made the book for me and saved it from being rated lower. The way that Alex was so willing to do everything to help Annie learn to write and use sign language and just do normal things as she could was so heartwarming. There were also some great moments of humor that really brought some lightheartedness to the situation.

I can see how the way that Annie's character was portrayed would be very off-putting for some. Yes she was deaf and turned mute, but she was also very childlike in her mental state. There were some things she would understand, but others not. For me, I was able to reconcile that with the fact that she never got any schooling past the old timey version of kindergarten. Once she started learning and being spoken too as someone with the capability to learn, you could see her really start to mature. She was still able to keep that spark though. For me the dock in rating was really that I just struggled to connect emotionally. A lot of other readers mention crying and tearing up during this book, but I never felt it. That's weird for me since I am such an emotional reader. I'm still not sure if it was writing style or what it exactly was that didn't speak to me, but it just didn't hit me in "the feels."

I loved chatting with everyone during the live show! There were a lot of good contrasting opinions on the book that were able to lend to some really great conversations. If you've read the book or want to learn more before picking it up, definitely check it out! I am intrigued to read more from Catherine Anderson, but I do have to say she's not at the top of my historical authors backlist list. She is on there though!

Have you read Annie's Song?

Bookishly Yours,

Stasi🍎

STATISTICS: Annie's Song, Catherine Anderson, 4-stars, 0 days, eBook, 410 pages, published in 1996, traditionally published