Author: Harper Lee
Genre: Fiction
Publication: HarperCollins
Release Date: July 14th 2015
Pages: 278
Spoilers: There isn’t really anything to spoil to be completely honest.
Rating: 
(3 / 5)
I’ve read To Kill a Mockingbird in high school and absolutely loved it. So you can’t imagine my excitement when I heard that there was a sequel coming out. I was lucky that I had to work the day that Go Set a Watchman was released and immediately started reading after I finished work.
Maycomb, Alabama. Twenty-six-year-old Jean Louise Finch–“Scout”–returns home from New York City to visit her aging father, Atticus. Set against the backdrop of the civil rights tensions and political turmoil that were transforming the South, Jean Louise’s homecoming turns bittersweet when she learns disturbing truths about her close-knit family, the town and the people dearest to her. Memories from her childhood flood back, and her values and assumptions are thrown into doubt. Featuring many of the iconic characters from To Kill a Mockingbird, Go Set a Watchman perfectly captures a young woman, and a world, in a painful yet necessary transition out of the illusions of the past–a journey that can be guided only by one’s conscience. (goodreads)
So I do have a lot of opinions about this book. It’s a great read, and I absolutely love the way Harper Lee writes and describes things. It’s also very nice to know how the characters from To Kill a Mockingbird are doing later in their life. We follow the story of Scout who is an independent woman living in New York City and is back home in Maycomb, Alabama to visit her father and friends. Instead of it being a nice homecoming trip, it turns into a reality check for Scout about the town she used to live in and about her family and friends, especially her father. The funny thing is that we get another insight in the way Scout thinks, and to be honest I think that she hasn’t really changed in her way of thinking if you compare it to To Kill a Mockingbird.
The story is nothing really spectacular, and I know I shouldn’t compare it to To Kill a Mockingbird but off course I did while reading it. To Kill a Mockingbird has this amazing build up to the trial and everything around it. Go Set a Watchman doesn’t really have a build up, it has flashbacks to the past and it contains catch ups about the characters but nothing really important in my eyes. I also found that the ending was rushed it was like a flood of words and explanations all of a sudden, it wouldn’t have hurt to add another 50 pages so that it would have been less chaotic. The overall story was good though and the meaning behind it is definitely great in addition to To Kill a Mockingbird. It was like a reality check for both me as a reader and Scout as a character. So yes it was a great read but a tiny bit unnecessary!
