I'm a really big fan of Lackey's books. The romance in this one was very sweet. Anna was a very likeable main character. The dialect made it a bit harder to read than I would have liked, but I managed to understand most of it.

Mercedes’ Lackey is one of my favorite fairytale authors! I found it interesting that she moved away from Europe and set this in Tennessee. This made for it to be a very intricate setting! The retelling seems to be pretty faithful to the original! The story was very fast paced. It has humor, romance, and magic! I recommend this for fans of fairytale retellings!

Sadly this book wasn't the right one for me. I tried, and it is quite interesting objectively, but it wasn't the one for me. I am really sorry about that.

I truly enjoyed this. It was a light read. I haven't read any of the others in this series, but I do love Mercedes Lackey!

Jolene is the start of an exciting new opportunity for the Elemental Masters series to grow. I love that Mercedes Lackey brought the series to America and flavored the characters with legends from American Folklore. This is a wonderful treat and adds a great flavor to an already marvelous series.

I love this series. It was a little jarring to read the dialog but once you figured out how to it was a quick read. It was a little strange to be in tennessee rather than. England bit it was not a bad strange.

Jolene (Elemental Masters Book 15) by Mercedes Lackey: Riveting
The beloved Elemental Masters series moves to America for the first time in a rich retelling of The Queen of the Copper Mountain, set against the backdrop of Tennessee coal country.
Anna May Jones is the daughter of a coal miner, but a sickly constitution has kept her confined to the house for most of her life. Hoping to improve her daughter’s health—and lessen the burden on their family—Anna's mother sends her to live with her Aunt Jinny, a witchy-woman and an Elemental Master, in a holler outside of Ducktown.
As she settles into her new life, Anna learns new skills at Aunt Jinny’s side and discovers that she, too, has a gift for Elemental magic that Jinny calls “the Glory”. She also receives lessons from a mysterious and bewitching woman named Jolene, who assures her that, with time, Anna could become even more powerful than her aunt.
But with Anna’s increasing power comes increasing notice. Billie McDaran, the foreman of the Ducktown mine, begins to take an interest in Anna and her abilities—even though Anna has already fallen in love with a young man with a talent for stonecarving.
If she wants to preserve the life she has come to love, Anna must use her newfound powers to oppose the foreman and protect those around her.

Every book that I read by Mercedes Lackey is deeply absorbing and engaging. I am never bored. While I’ve loved all of the Elemental Masters books, I found this one most intriguing for the setting. Set in America for the first time, I wondered how that would change the more familiar elements. One of the changes is more explanation of the ability of Anna May Jones, her elemental magic and the teaching that her aunt Jinny does. While the minutiae could have been too much, Mercedes Lackey has a wonderful ability to hone in on the key information needed for the reader to understand the process and magic while not drowning the reader in too much detail. Because Anna May is a beginner with no knowledge of magic, her tutelage is part of what makes the story so endearing.
I have often pondered why I find the series so absorbing. The story is simple and straightforward. I think for me it is the characters and the history of the time that made this novel so engaging. Anna May is caring and her desire to learn is logical, she can learn how to take care of herself. Her friendship with her aunt is realistic and authentic. Jinny is as interesting as Anna May and the mystery of Jolene pulls the reader into the story. I very much appreciated the history of the time being woven into the story, especially the truth of the mining businesses including how they treated their miners and the families. It is a piece of American history that is less pleasant but is truthful. And included in that history is the treatment of the Cherokee. I especially love the inclusion of the Cherokee in the narrative. I also like that the author does not sugar coat the past and is not misleading in the history of the time. All of those weave together to make a riveting story with interesting characters.
If you like fantasy novels set in historical times, this is a great novel. It is well researched, authentic and the characters are realistic. The story is engaging with interesting characters who have meaningful actions and a plot that sweeps you up into the details. The plot is not complex but it is engaging. The characters are using the language of the time and area but references within the story will aid the reader in understanding. And the language choices add to the authenticity of the story. If you like Mercedes Lackey, I recommend this latest in her Elemental Masters series.
Rating: 5 out of 5 elementals.

I'm a huge fan of Mercedes Lackey and I thoroughly enjoyed this story even if I found it sometimes too slow.
It's a well written story, the character and the setting are interesting and I liked the world building.
It's recommended.
Many thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for this ARC, all opinions are mine

Mercedes Lackey continues her Elemental Masters fantasy series with an American edition, Jolene. Anna May Jones is the daughter of a miner and has weakened lungs due to the pollution in the coal town. She is sent to live with her herb mistress Aunt Jinny. a witchy Elemental Master in the woods. Anna May discovers her own elemental earth powers and is being trained by her aunt and on a whimsey the unearthly Jolene who is more than an elemental master also gives her lessons. However she is stalked by an evil town magician. Can she keep her will and her new beloved?

This book is like the lazy river in a water park: not much happens, but you're in good company and the scenery is good. I enjoyed reading this but as other reviewers have noted, the main antagonist isn't even introduced until halfway through the book and any plot this book has doesn't happen until 85% in. Basically, this could have been a short story but for about 200 pages of scene setting. Would I read it again? Probably not.

An atypical Elemental Masters tale, set in the US and based on a Dolly Parton song instead of a fairy tale. The actual danger part starts late and is resolved almost too easily. It's still enjoyable, except for one thing. The speech is all written in East Tennessee dialect. I'm not fond of dialect anyway--it slows my reading down considerably--and this is especially jarring because Lackey persistently uses singular 'y'all'. That glaring error jarred me out of the story every single time--sometimes multiple times a page.

Thanks to Netgalley for an ARC of this book, in return for a fair and honest review.

I always enjoy Mercedes Lackey's books, in all her myriad universes, and this was no exception. Jolene is the most recent book in the Elemental Masters series (although not, as the blurbs say, the first set in the US, unless you're going to ignore The Fire Rose and San Francisco).

This book does have a different feel to it than the previous books in the Elemental Masters series. To begin with, I was surprised to find that the main character was not Jolene (I kept waiting for Anna May to get renamed, until Jolene showed up). Once again, we have a main character who is strongly gifted, yet unaware of her gifts or even the existence of gifts. She's fortunate enough to fall into the hands of her aunt, who is an apparently moderately gifted earth witch, and who is ready to care for her and teach her.

We have a villain - a strong magic user who wants Anna May. It's not altogether clear that it's totally for her magic that he wants her, but regardless - nothing good will come of it if he gets his hands on her!

And then there's Jolene, an intriguingly ambiguous character. We know that she's an incredibly strong magician, presumably earth magic, since she's noted as being a protector of miners. But there's also the Snow Queen type activity, as she tries to pull aside young creative men to live in her domain. I seem to recall most of the elemental masters in the earlier books being either good or bad.

I enjoyed this - definitely worth reading as an entry in the Elemental Masters series.

A nice story set in a (for Mercedes Lackey) unusual place- 1890s rural Tennessee. It took mw a while to get used to the dialect used throughout the book, but Lackey was good about keeping it the same "sound" throughout, never letting it feel like the reader was seeing a different time or place. I enjoyed the descriptions of life, especially when Anna gets to Aunt Jinny's and sees how well the people of the Hollow live- and how differently they live compared to where Anna grew up. The story dragged a bit in the middle, then quickly got going at the end. Some expectations were turned upside down and I enjoyed that, just as I enjoyed how Jolene is depicted. There were no definitions to Jolene, she got to be many things, and I enjoyed the fairy tale take on Dolly Parton's "Jolene" song very much.

I received an ARC of this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review

No, the title isn’t fooling you.  Jolene is indeed - at least in part - a fantasy retelling of Dolly Parton’s seminal country tale about a woman begging a mysterious, gorgeous woman not to take her man – though the tale also takes inspiration from the Russian folk tale Queen of the Copper Mountain.  In Lackey’s able hands, it soars, only stylistic choices disrupting its flow, because as engrossing as Jolene is, it's important for readers to know that every character's dialogue is written-out in an approximation of a heavy redneck-cum-deep-southern accent.  Some readers will find this to be a severe impediment to their enjoyment of the book, but I didn’t find it too hard to follow.

Our heroine lives in the coal mining town of Soddy, Tennessee.  Anna May Jones’ parents are poor, in debt to the company store, and Pa has a coal cough from the mines – and worse, they have little love and low regard for Anna, who’s just a part and parcel of their general misery.  When her father dies of black lung, Anna and her mother are turned out of their home due to said debt to the company store.  Anna May’s mother writes to her sister Jinny in desperation – and to her relief, she agrees to house Anna in Lonesome Holler, within the Ducktown Basin.

Circumstances in Lonesome Holler seem much nicer, but Anna  learns the truth soon enough – that the people see Aunt Jinny as a witch because she practices herbal medicine.  But Jinny isn’t a witch, she’s a Root Woman, a form of an Elemental Master – making medicinal tinctures that improve if one follows the proper recipe given in an ancient tome and with the focus of her own powers.  She works with the elements of the Earth to form those powerful herbal medicines, calling it The Glory.  Naturally it’s taken for witchcraft.

It seems that Jinny wants Anna to be her apprentice, and she soon falls under Jinny’s tutelage, showing magical abilities of her own. Jinny becomes the first real parental figure that Anna’s ever had, and Anna begins to flourish in Lonesome Holler, making new friends and experiencing new things – and learning how to make her own potions.  Just the clean air, hearty food and good water are better than anything she knew before.  But Jinny’s ways – avoiding church as she does – and the inexplicable feeling that she’s being watched begin to haunt Anna, leaving her balanced between the magical world and the realistic, Appalachian world of her parents.

Then Anna meets Joshua, a stonecutter whose gorgeous work draws him a hefty clientele, all of whom want him to carve their headstones and other such statuary.  But Joshua remains dissatisfied with his own work – he craves a realism he cannot create with his own chisel.

Along the way, Anna meets Jolene, a gorgeous, elegant woman who practices a form of The Glory that is highly advanced.  Jolene seems to have an intense interest in Joshua, and he – oblivious, single-mindedly perusing his betterment – is drawn to her for reasons beyond her incomparable beauty.  When he disappears into those fearsome woods one day, Anna goes in pursuit of him.  But Anna herself is being pursued by a powerful man named Billie who would do anything to possess her – and her magic.  What will Anna do – and who is the mysterious Jolene, really?

Jolene is a good blend of fairytale, fantasy and Appalachian atmosphere.  There are a couple of points that might turn readers off, but overall the tale is enchanting.

Anna May is your classic protagonist who turns from innocence to resourcefulness, though this may take far too long for the reader’s enjoyment.  I liked Jinny much better, a woman who has loved and lost and become tough, but is vulnerable when it comes to the last kin she’s got left.

Joshua (and yes, I caught that reference to another Parton song, author!) is a classic absent-minded artist, who learns eventually that the price of perfecting his art is not worth the human toll of life around him.

Jolene is wonderfully enigmatic in of herself – human and very much not, kind and not.  Complex in a way that the other characters are not.

I enjoyed the way Lackey plays with the setting and makes reference to the Reconstruction-era racial tensions that plagued the nation in a way that avoids triteness.  The only big problem the novel has is that Lackey has chosen to written the dialogue in a manner that may be hard to parse for some – a thick hillbilly inflection with lots of abbreviations.

Overall, Jolene is a cracking good tale that works from start to finish as properly delightful, if one can surmount the phonetic accent in which the author has chosen to write it.

Note: Lackey gives her own content warning about the period-typical attitudes and racial sentiments used by her characters at the start of the novel.  Those sensitive to such subjects should heed her call.

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Loved the references to the Dolly Parton's song. A poor, sickly girl (Anna) goes to live with her aunt who is better off. Anna starts learning her aunt's business and finds out both of them have Elemental powers. Anna falls in love with a boy. Both she and the boy have other's who want them.

Very enjoyable story and liked the new characters.

Thank you to the author, publisher and NetGalley for my eARC in exchange for an honest reveiw.

Mercedes Lackey is generally an author I really enjoy, but I had a hard time getting into this book. The way it was written in the Appalachian accent seemed over-the-top, to the point where I couldn't enjoy the story as I was taking too much time deciphering the language. It's not that it's hard to understand by itself, but when you're trying to digest the depth of story that Mercedes Lackey typically writes, you need full concentration. I simply couldn't do that with the writing as it was. I'll need to come back to it at a later time maybe, but after several failed attempts at finishing this book, I have to take a step away and focus on other books on my list.

Who knew that the song Jolene and the fairy tale of the Queen of Copper Mountain would go so well together? This is an excellent tribute to Dolly Parton (though near the end it did get a little pointed, what with the echoing "Jolene Jolene Jolene Jolene" and Anna's plea), and I'm thoroughly convinced that Dolly's Jolene is, in fact, a Great Elemental.

The most striking thing about this book (aside from Jolene) is the writing. It's written entirely in dialect - late 1800s/early 1900s Tennessee - and it is scrupulously consistent. It's easy enough to read once you get into it, but at first glance, it has little in common with today's English.

As for the story, it reminded me a lot of Anne of Green Gables but with magic. I never got bored - the pace moves along steadily as Anna settles into life on her Aunt Jinny's homestead and grows into her magic.

I appreciated that while this is an Elemental Masters novel, it doesn't rely on knowledge of the previous novels, except for some basic world-building. I have read most of them, but not all, and not in the past few years. Luckily this proved no hindrance. I also had some prior knowledge of the tales of the Queen of the Copper Mountain, but while this allowed me to anticipate some plot points, I don't think it's necessary to follow the story.

What if? I imagine the author listening to the Dolly Parton song Jolene and saying what if and coming up with this incredible story. This tale takes us to a place and time I’d not gone before; the mining towns of the 1890’s. Life is hard and the income divide is cruel. Anna May and her Aunt Jinny are fascinating and strong each in their own way. I was pulled into this story and got lost in it from the fabulous cover through the very last page. Though this is a part of a series it can be read standalone. I loved it.

For sure the book isn't perfect. The entire book is written in an Appalachian sort of dialect, with the dialogue being much heavier but the text itself having that same twang. It was not my favorite, but I got used to it pretty quickly and it fit the feel of the book. Also, basically the entire conflict/resolution, or the part that was the fairy tale retelling bit, took place in the last 10% of the book. That's no exaggeration, Anna finally gets to a place where I'm like "Here we go! The fairy tale part!" and I looked and I was 92% of the way through the book. I wish there'd been more pages given to that part of the story, but it didn't feel rushed or incomplete so I guess Mercedes Lackey knows what she's doing!

I'm just SO RELIEVED to finally get another book in the Elemental Masters series that's not about Nan and Sarah! Psychic Nan and Medium Sarah play a major role in the fourth book in the series, The Wizard of London, and I really didn't care for them. "Oh well," I thought, "each story is about new people so at least I won't have to see them again." But alas - books 11-14 in the series deviate from the fairy tale retelling format and all follow Sarah and Nan on their adventures helping solve mysteries with Sherlock Holmes (or something, I haven't read them, I disliked Nan and Sarah that much...) Jolene is the 15th book in the series and FINALLY returns to the roots of being based on a fairy tale, with an exciting move to America in the late 19th century!

Jolene is based on the Russian fairy tale "The Mistress of the Copper Mountain." I hadn't previously read the fairy tale, but going in with a character named "Jolene" I assumed eventually Anna would be begging of her please don't take her man. (And if you haven't ever listened to Dolly Parton's "Jolene," PLEASE go do so!) I think Mercedes Lackey took as much inspiration from the song as she did from the fairy tale, and it made me SO HAPPY to read. The real conflict and action of the book doesn't take place until the last 10-15%, but it still never felt slow to me. I was content just to "set by an' watch Anna May git her some learnin'."

If you're not familiar, the Elemental Masters series is a collection of stand-alone but interconnected fantasy books that take place in a world that's much like ours, except secretly some folks have elemental magic. There's some interconnection between the books, like Dr. Maya from The Serpent's Shadow shows up as a side character in some of the later books, and Lord Alderscroft shows up in a few books before eventually getting his own in The Wizard of London. The characters in Jolene are entirely new, and I'm hopeful the series will continue with fairy tales and myths from some different cultures. This is book 15 in the series, but can be read as a stand alone.

Jolene is the fifteenth novel in Mercedes Lackey's Elemental Masters series, only, there's a pretty major twist this time around. This novel is set in America.

Anna May Jones has never exactly been healthy. The daughter of a coal miner, growing up in a small town with little access to clean food and water, Anna May got used to this life. Until the day she was sent to live with her aunt, with the hopes of finally getting better.

From that moment onward, Anna May's life changed forever. It turns out that her aunt is a witchy-woman and an Elemental Master, both of which Anna May herself has plenty of potential in. This is the setting for her adventure, as she falls in love and takes great risk to save those she cares about.

“Ain't my fault I'm sickly. Not like I did this t' m'self.”

There are a few things I really want to start this review off with. First, I just want to say that I absolutely adored the fact that Mercedes Lackey included a warning at the beginning of this book. It went into detail warning readers about some of the triggering subjects contained within. Honestly, I wish more books were this self-aware. Then again, this is Mercedes Lackey we're talking about, so I'm not surprised that she thought it through this far.

Second, Jolene is written with a very strong dialect, specifically an Appalachian accent. I'm far from an expert on that dialect, so I'm not going to comment on the accuracy. But I do know that not all readers love it when strong dialects make their way into books. For what it's worth, it isn't as intrusive as one might imagine. It gets better over the course of the novel, as we learn more about Anna May, her life, and her adventures.

Overall I think that Jolene was a wonderfully written novel – Mercedes Lackey is a talented author, and it really shows here. The detail put into describing everything from the food to the land is simply beautiful. It does, however, slow down the book by quite a lot.

I'd say that the main plot isn't introduced until about the halfway mark, which should give you a solid idea of what you're in for here. Still, it was a worthwhile read, especially for fans of the author or the series.