Coulson’s Wife—the first book in my Coulson Series is free. Recently it was featured on BookBub, which means thousands of downloads within a couple days—and it also means some new reviews.

One issue I’ve always had with the Coulson Series—particularly Coulson’s Wife—is that it doesn’t neatly fit into a genre, and when marketing it somewhere like BookBub, it will inevitably get to some wrong readers.

The Coulson Series is a family saga—yet no such genre category is available at BookBub. Over the last few years, Coulson’s Wife has been featured at BookBub under Woman’s Fiction, Historical Fiction, and this last time, Historical Romance. Readers of romance—historical or contemporary—often expect happily ever after, and when a book marketed under romance fails to deliver that happy fix, they feel betrayed and angry. One way to vent is a negative review. I get that—and I understood the risks when going for a romance category.

Of all my books, Coulson’s Wife seems to generate the most varied of reviews. I’ve had readers tell me they loved it—others hated it.

A recent three-star-review wrote, “No happy endings here, I kept waiting for it to happen, and it never did. Thoroughly frustrated. I know there was no promise of such, but still frustrated. I would give it even less stars, but that would be unfair, just because I personally just hated the storyline.”

Contrast that review with this 5-star on the same book, “Amazing, wonderful, moving, all the things that I can say. I laughed and cried. Enjoyed the book, and think everyone would enjoy it as much as I did.”

For readers looking for the happy ending—they’ll find it as the story progresses throughout the series. Why? Because sometimes a story is multi-generational; sometimes the happy ending comes for the children—the grandchildren—because of the sacrifices and lessons of those who came before them.