Instruct: Classify Amazon reviews into positive or negative sentiment
Query: It was like listening to my grandmother speak...

My father's family hales from the mountains of Virginia, and I felt Gap Creek did a credible job of portraying the mountain life. That alone would have made the book interesting, but there was more. I found that the heroine, Julie, was someone I genuinely liked and admired. She was a real person who made real mistakes, but she also had a core of integrity that directed a lot of her decisions. It was refreshing to have the main character be someone I'd want to sit down and have a cup of coffee with. Actually, it was my affection for the heroine that leads me to only assign this review four stars. While I enjoyed the author's beautiful prose, I wanted more of Julie's thoughts and feelings to be described, since I found that to be the real strength of the story. So, the portrayal of everday life in the mountains was realistically harsh, but the characters, especially Julie, are worth getting to know.