A reviewer in the Providence _Journal_ says: "We welcome it as an olive branch in the truest and best sense of the word. * * * There is not an attempt at fine writing in the book, and yet it is full of painting from life. There is excellent comedy and at least one scene of the deepest tragedy. Here and there we are reminded of Miss Austen, the common scenes of life are drawn with so much fidelity, but our American Miss Austen excels her English sister in imaginative delineation of character, and becomes the true poetess in the presence of nature." Paul H. Hayne thus speaks of the work: "Regarded purely as a literary performance, this work, as I have before intimated, is exceedingly clever; in certain particulars even brilliantly able. The descriptions of scenery, which in most novels bore one unspeakably, are here vivid, picturesque and truthful, with occasional displays of bright, poetic enthusiasm: and of the _dramatis personae_, some are portrayed with quiet but significant humor, some with keen, ironic shrewdness, and one at least (the 'Grandmother of Blythe Herndon') with a degree of tragic force decidedly impressive." The concluding extract is taken from a review of "Like unto Like" that appeared in _The Boston Courier_: "Sherwood Bonner's new novel in Harper's Library of American Fiction is a book so original, so charming, so complete in itself, that to write a review of it must be one of the most disheartening tasks possible. Not for many years has there been produced a novel so broadly American, so un-provincial while yet retaining the peculiar atmosphere of locality, and at the same time utterly unassuming as to its representation of 'phase.' Its art is so good and so fresh that it hardly impresses us as art; it is more nearly nature. And yet the story abounds in traces of dainty skill, and delightful appreciation of the shades and angles of character, and perfect and easy adaptation of words to the transmission of meaning, without that over-solicitude as to style which has become so fatiguing in our recent New England school of fiction writers. * * * The main thing to observe is that Sherwood Bonner has seized the transition period of the feeling between South and North so perfectly that her book will probably stand in the future as the best representative of this episode in the national life; and she has done this within the compass of a simple tale which commends itself to our affections quite independently of that special illustrative interest." In _Harper's Monthly_, _Lippincott's Magazine_ and _The Atlantic Monthly_, the book was favorably reviewed. Sherwood Bonner spoke of it as "a part of her training."