Ross Poldark by Winston Graham

I actually finished this right before school started, I think, around mid-August, so it took me a good while to actually write on this. Over the summer, I started watching the show on Amazon, which is AMAZING by the way, season 4 just aired and it has me emotional in every episode. Anyway, I noticed at the beginning that the title sequence mentions "based on the novels by Winston Graham" so I dashed to look up the book and there are TONS. Apparently, this show is based on a loooong series of books and I was shook- especially at the fact that the books were old- 1940s-60s I think. He took like 10 years between two of them, and I know I would've been soooo mad- thirteen-year-old me was mad at Rick Riordan for waiting a year and a half to release another book. Anyway, I hunted on Thriftbooks and kept my eye on Ross Poldark until I finally broke and bought it along with a few others in July. When I started the book, I was immediately hooked- a goner from day one. Granted, I knew everything that was happening (and would happen) but the writing was so good and interesting and it felt like I was there. I was struck like I hadn't been struck by another book in a while (except Outlander but that was a whole different story). One thing I enjoyed in the book was the sense of age of the characters. Graham gives an age for Francis, Elizabeth, Ross, and Demelza which helps give perspective to just how young they were and the age differences among them. Honestly, this book was a masterpiece of storytelling and thoroughly enjoyable. The EMOTION will knock you down. I'm very invested in these characters through the show and the books, but I think any reader who just starts the series with no previous knowledge or exposure would be hooked just like I was. This book wasn't very action packed, so if you need something like that to get you involved, this might not be the book for you. However, the thing that got me was the deep emotion of it all. My favorite thing was Graham's ability to show the rawness and realness of grief, pain, rejection, and all other feelings everyone goes through and show true human nature through his characters. There are protagonists and antagonists, the good, bad, and ugly, but at the end of the day we're all human and we go through many of the same things. Great read.