A Northern Light

Right now I am halfway through the historical fiction novel A Northern Light by Jennifer Donnelly. So far, I'm really liking it. The book is set in the early 1900s, from the point of view of sixteen year old Mattie Gokey, when a body of a girl turns up in the lake near the hotel she works. So far, Donnelly has been weaving two stories from Matties point of view into the book. The first one is the chain of events that leads up to Mattie working at the hotel, while the other is what Mattie is doing after the girl dies. Every chapter or so the view point is switched. I think this is a really unique way to write a story, and so far it's working really well. I want to know what Mattie's doing with the letters that the dead girl gave her, but at the same time I want to know how she got to working at the hotel when her father was so strict about having Mattie take care of the farm since her mom died and with her brother gone she's the next oldest. The author also does a great job of making the historical elements play a part in the story, but not one that's blatantly out there, like the author wrote it straight out of the 1900s with no other thought that culture could be different.
My favorite part of the book has to be Mattie's "word of the day". Mattie is a writer, and each day she flips to a page of her dictionary and points to a word, which she then memorizes the definition of and tries to use it that day. The chapter titles of the days before working at the hotel are written as the words of the day, however when it's the hotel story there is simply no chapter title, which I think is just a really cool way to show that working at the hotel has changed Mattie, or maybe she just doesn't have time for the things she loves anymore.
I'm really excited to read the rest of this book.