This is a new author for me as I have never read nor heard of this author in the past. The synopsis made the book sound good but once started it was difficult to read. The book needs to be tidied up and reviewed for grammar and verbiage this distracted from the story tremendously. The book follows Alice's journey from divorce from a lousy husband that leaves her with nothing to starting to find her feet again. At the ends of her rope and no focus on the future she decides upon cleaning up the recently purchased 200 year old schoolhouse and she becomes educated on the history of the town, the heritage of herself and the true meaning of being part of a community. In working on the schoolhouse and learning about her past she discovers her strength from discovering her past. There is a paranormal overtone within the pages which is a different way of learning about past generations. The book has a variety of characters and offshoots of storylines that blend in the story, but it does takes the reader a while to understand how it all ties together. The book has a lot of repetition which takes away from the storyline and starts to bore the reader. I was frustrated with how child-like Alice was made to sound. She talks and carries around with her a stuffed rabbit from her childhood. The immaturity also came across in how she dealt with the departure of her husband as well as how she handled driving away from the her home with no destination and not paying attention to what is going on around her. It was hard to get attached to Alice's story.

I do want to thank the author and wish her all the luck with this novel, thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for the ARC.

This was a little different than I thought it would be. alice's husband has left her and cleaned out their bank accounts. She packs up her things into a pickup truck and leaves with no destination in mind. She is stopped by a blizzard in Rail Stop Cafe, a ghost town. She buys an old schoolhouse to live in that is inhabited by several ghost and spirits. Slowly Alice becomes part of the community. This is her story of finding herself. I received a copy of this ARC in exchange for a fair and honest review.

Unfortunately this wasn't for me. The synopsis sounded great, but I ended up DNF'ing this book at 13%.. I just couldn't even get past the introduction. The writing felt passionless and Alice sounded like a child. I wish I would've loved it, but unfortunately I didn't.

Thank you NetGalley and the author for an eARC of this book, in exchange of a honest review.

Thank you Netgalley for the chance to read Barefoot Alice by Jan Porter. Dumped by her husband and homeless, middle-aged Alice finds herself at the Rail Stop Café in a northern gold mining ghost town during a snowstorm. Surrounded by wilderness Alice finds shelter in a 200-year-old schoolhouse. Facing the inevitability of a life alone, she unravels legacy secrets with the help of a kindly old man, the community around and a mysterious wilderness man. She encounters descendants of Dr. Barnardo’s British Home Children, gold rush fever, an unconsecrated baby burial, ghost hunting tourists and infringing upscale cottage estates.
I found this book hard to get into, and putting it down several times. While this story was not for me, others might enjoy it.

Barefoot Alice is a woman rediscovering who she as a person after being ceremonially dumped by her husband of over 20 years. Along the way Alice ends up finding where her parents came from and about her grandparents.

Alice lived a very different life after her parents died. She lived a sheltered and lonely existence till she was older and married her husband who managed everything and when he left her then he basically left her with nothing.

Alice happened to fall into a community at Golden Lake and she had just enough funds for a down payment on a 200 year old schoolhouse. Alice was able to commune with the ghosts of the schoolhouse as several other people in the community.

The book is not your first impression of the title. Barefoot your thinking beach, but it does have some of that in the storyline. The book has a variety of characters and offshoots of storylines that blend in the story, but it does take you a little to tie it all together.

I received a free advanced copy from NetGalley and these are my willingly given thoughts and opinions.

I received this book as an ARC from NetGalley.

Alice is a woman who is having her world ripped apart. Her husband has filed for divorce, turned their home back over the bank to avoid forclosure, and has left her almost completely broke. Alice packs up her beat up pickup truck and leaves town. With no direction in mind, she starts driving and ends up in a really bad snowstorm. She pulls over for a meal and to pee at the Rail Stop Cafe. She gets stuck there overnight. At a loss for what to do going forward, homeless and alone, she decides to purchase a 200 year-old schoolhouse as a place to live.

As she cleans up the house, she learns more about the history of the town, her heritage and what it means to be part of a community. She also learns she is a lot stronger than she thinks she is.

The story is wonderfully written and paints a beautiful picture of the area. I really enjoyed this book, but the ending made me sob. I agree and disagree with the way the book ended.

The premises of this story was excellent and I so wanted to love it. It is a self re discovering road and would have been excellent though I felt it was missing something, not sure if it was editing or rewriting some parts.
It sure got potential and the writing style is nice, I'd try more for the writer.

The description of the book sounded good but the lack of editing rather put me off (words joined together, punctuation errors, grammar mistakes...) . Sadly I don't feel very inclined to finish as the character of Alice isn't inspiring any curiosity in me to be find out what happens.

I'm sure this book could be tidied up and be all the more readable for it.

I really wanted to read this book, especially after discovering that it was written by an author from, and set in, Ontario. The same province I live in. I had never heard of the author so before I started reading I found out some information about her. I had learned that she had won many awards for her writing. So knowing all this, it had to be a great read, right? Unfortunately, for me, it wasn't.
It started out okay but I soon tired of the repetitiveness of the details. Yes, we know that Alice's husband left her. We understand that he left her with almost nothing.
I was also frustrated with how child-like Alice was made to sound. She talks and carries around with her a stuffed rabbit from her childhood. This also came across in how she dealt with the departure of her husband. Or how she handled driving away from the her home with no destination and not paying attention to what is going on around her. It was hard to get attached to Alice's story.
I could have continued through the story, maybe skipping the repeated information and stop back reading to try to figure out what I got confused about (it seems to be some proofreading and editing is still waiting to be done before publication). Maybe I would have eventually connected with Alice but the final straw is the continual pointing out of Alice's body size and shape. I just could not handle reading that over and over like it was some awful thing about Alice. Why is this needed?

I wish the author well on this book and truly hope that many great reviews are received.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for giving me the opportunity to read and review this book.

DNF. Tried to start and ended up stopping several times before I gave up. The beginning is confusing and just didn't make me want to continue reading. The description sounded interesting, but struggled with reading this one. Sorry.

This was a very difficult book to read. I had a lot issues because the characters were not well flushed out and all over the place. The type face had several different fonts that also contributed to the difficulty I had with the book.

DNF at 8%. I was really looking forward to this book. The description sounded like something I would be really interested in. I think the story could be really interesting but just needs a few more rounds of editing.

I could not get past the beginning. There is always a fine balance between developing a character well and moving the story along. I admire writers that accomplish this well because I know it is not easy. In this book, the author definitely leaned heavily toward the character development side, but just didn't pull it off well. It starts off slow, which could be forgiven if I really got wrapped up in the protagonist and felt I was fully in her camp. I did not. Rather than diving deep into what made Alice Alice, the author just repeated the minutia over and over. I understood that Alice's husband left her for a younger woman he worked with this first time it was pointed out. Rather than delve deeper into how Alice felt about that and how it impacted her life, it was just pointed out several more times like I might have forgotten.

I know that often, the ARCs I receive from NetGalley are not completely edited and formatted yet and that is clearly marked on the review copy. This one was not marked that way. It does need a lot of editing and formatting yet. There were quite a lot of typos - mostly two words with no space in between. There was also a lot of switching of tenses, which should have been corrected before the ARC is released.

I would love to read this story if it is developed further, but it was just too painful to read as it is.