What Reviewers Say About 
Make or Break Spring

 
"This book boasts a number of wonders...a fast moving plot, a tender love story, sly humour, and honest, generous, fully-drawn characters. How delightful. How refreshing. McNaughton is an author who takes telling stories seriously."
Kathryn Welbourn, [St. John's] Express
 
 
"...McNaughton plots her course to the book's conclusion with apparent effortless ease. Just one of her strengths is characterization..."
Susan Perren, The Globe & Mail
 
"One difference between a well and a poorly written book is the quality of the life that goes on around the main action. McNaughton's creativity and skill make the whole fabric of the book delightful."
Alison Sutherland, Books in Canada
 
 
"It is almost axiomatic that sequels in the area of realistic fiction rarely have the freshness of the first book... However, Make or Break Spring is marked by a vigorous quality due to the emotional tension inherent in Ev's problems. The St. John's background is as vital as in the first book...The writing is clear and straightforward."
Sheila A. Egoff, Quill & Quire
 
 
 "Despite her stubbornness, Ev is extremely sympathetic. In fact, one of McNaughton's most attractive qualities as a writer is in how real her characters become through the course of the novel, and how attached we get to them as a result."
Margaret Poole, [Halifax] Chronicle Herald
 
"McNaughton's evocation of wartime St. John's...is funny, poignant, and sharply accurate...Ev is as remarkable as that other Maritime orphan, Anne Shirley, and McNaughton's use of language is as delightful as Lucy Maud Montgomery's, with the added bonus of Newfoundland's rich outport speech."  
John Burns, The Georgia Straight
 
"Make or Break Spring reawakens memories of a first heartbreak, and the ways we learn to by happy again after suffering a loss."
Virginia Beaton, Atlantic Books Today

"Not only are [McNaughton's] plots intriguing and many-layered, but she has an incredible gift for making distant eras come alive. Her stories are shaded and defined with unobtrusive historical detail...McNaughton's characters are always robust and very definitley flesh and blood."
Cathy MacDonald, [Halifax] Daily News
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