Rating: 3.5⭐️
Half an Orange in Gretna Green is very, very long. And densely packed and unfortunately, repetitive. It’s not a the book I’d been looking forward to reading or frankly one I’d recommend.
Find someone you know and let them give you the cliff notes.
By Thursday, chapter 49 the story was still basically Niki, the Recorder going around asking everyone in power or close to her if they thought they had an answer for the Galicia problem. Because she’s not going to act on her own, she needs input.
Hint. No, the answer was always no. For 3/4 of a very long book. Tons of input. No answer. No action. But this religion bad. Women being terribly suppressed. That’s really bad. We don’t know what to do. Let’s ask more questions. For hundreds of pages. I’m talking 770 pages here.
So no one acts at all for almost the entire book. There’s a murder on top of multiple mysteries.
But mostly there stasis by the main characters.
And absolutely tons of talking, hashing out stuff ad infinitum , same topics over and over, til I’m flipping pages bored and frustrated. This feels like it could have easily been cut in half.
Not until the very last few chapters does anything resembling the plot picking itself up and starts heading towards a narrative climax and something of a dramatic ending. Not much, but at least something.
I read the author’s notes and realize she’s had a year of losses, deeply felt personal ones. That would make sense here.
This story is not reflective of the past novels and the series to date. It’s meandering, densely paced, and a slog without much of a comparative payoff.
I’m looking to see what the future story holds.
Read it because it’s part of the series.
– Recorder Series so far
Midlife in Gretna Green
Painting the Blues in Gretna Green Ties that Bond in Gretna Green
Seeing Red in Gretna Green
Code Yellow in Gretna Green
Market Forces in Gretna Green
Spilling the Tea in Gretna Green
Half an Orange in Gretna Green Shrieking Violet in Gretna Green
Silver Shadows in Gretna Green
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Blurb
Galicia should be warmth, wine and golden sunsets.
Instead, Niki McKnight finds a realm where every blessing has a price, every sin comes with a fine, and a powerful church has spent centuries collecting anything of value.
Following directly on from the end of Spilling the Tea in Gretna Green, the Recorder is called to arbitrate what appears to be a simple goat dispute. Niki expects to hear both sides, deliver a fair decision, and send everyone home with minimal shouting, sighing, and zero divine intervention.
But simple ends the moment she starts pulling threads.
Behind Galicia’s beauty lies a culture shaped by greed, gold, guilt, and carefully polished lies. Children are controlled. Inhabitants are oppressed. Grief is exploited. And the people responsible are certain the Recorder’s authority does not apply to them.
For the first time, they may be right.
With Dola out of patience, the truth obscured, the Gateway crew struggling, and a god on the missing list, Niki must separate faith from control and truth from propaganda.
Warm, wry, and defiant, Half an Orange in Gretna Greenis the next adventure in the Midlife Recorder world: found family, stubborn hope, dangerous secrets, and one woman discovering that justice is harder to deliver when her usual powers don’t apply.
October 30, 2026
Language
English
Print length
770 pages
Book 7 of 7
