August 31, 2015

The Night Drummer - Paul Nicholas Mason


Now or Never Publishing, April 15, 2015.





Three Stars


This book is challenging to review, mainly because I’m not clear on how much of it is memoir and how much is fiction. It feels like a memoir, especially when it comes to the authentic flaws of the characters and even the narrator. However, if it is fiction, I feel like some of the characterizations could have been improved, as they often drift into the realm of cliché.

 

The narrator, Peter, is growing up in small-town Ontario in the 1970s, when he meets new student Otis, an Ojibwa boy who is wise beyond his years (this was one of the stereotypes that I felt bordered on racist cliché, but that’s without knowing if he’s based on fact). Through Otis’ eyes, Peter sees his own world from the perspective of an outsider, which changes his outlook on family, school, and life in general. The arrival and friendship of Otis shakes Peter out of his complacency, and allows him to form his own morals and beliefs outside of the influence of his family and peers.

 

Otis has a kindness and respect for the world and everyone in it, regardless of class, race, etc. He had a Christian upbringing with his elderly adoptive parents, but he later drops out of the Western education system in order to focus on the Native traditions of his elders. Otis is more mature than most of the adults around him, taking charge in the midst of some pretty awful high school scenarios, including bullying, rape, and drug use. He reflects that “[t]here is a lot of hate in the world. There are far worse things than loving someone who’s the same sex as you are.” (p. 57) The issues these high school students are forced to deal with really show the grittiness of the new Can Lit, with moments of goodness in between.

 

Although Peter readily admits to his own flaws, his friendship with Otis changes his outlook on life for the better.  He doesn’t drastically change, but he does become more accepting of himself and those around him. The book is really a love letter of friendship between the two boys – Peter greatly admires Otis, and tells us he “marvelled at my friend’s brave decency.” (p. 104)

 

The strongest parts of The Night Drummer were the insights into the adolescent mind, which is what made me feel that it was a direct reflection of Mason’s own teenage years. While the ending didn’t completely ring true for me, it did touch on some meaningful coming-of-age themes: innocence, possibility, and eventually, hope.

 

I received this book for free from Now or Never Publishing and Goodreads First Reads in exchange for an honest review.

August 29, 2015

The Life and Death of Sophie Stark - Anna North


Blue Rider Press, May 19, 2015.






Five Stars


In Anna North’s new novel, Sophie Stark is the creator of critically-acclaimed art films that play on the strong and often uncomfortable emotions of her viewers. She uses the lives of those closest to her – her college crush, her girlfriend, and her husband – as inspiration for her films, often in ways that are incredibly painful to them. Sophie will sacrifice anything for her art, and she proves that with her final decision at the end of the novel, a decision that alters the lives of everyone who ever fell into her sphere of influence.

Sophie’s story is told from the multiple perspectives of her loved ones. They are ostensibly reconstructing Sophie’s life, but it is often more a reflection on how she affected their lives as individuals. Although they have all been hurt by Sophie and her decisions in the name of art, they also owe her a debt for making them who they are today. Because the reader only meets Sophie through the eyes of others, The Life and Death of Sophie Stark is an interesting exercise in character study – there is a fluidity of interpretation that made me wonder how well we can ever know anyone. Sophie seems one-dimensional because she doesn’t speak in the novel (aside from being quoted by others), but that is how we get to know people in real life, with no access to a convenient interior voice. As Sophie’s reviewer says, his opinions are based on his mood or even what he had for breakfast that morning, so no matter how authoritative his views are, they are really just a reflection of his own needs and desires.

Although Sophie comes across as cold and emotionless, she is repeatedly willing to sacrifice everything for those she loves. In fact, her emotions are so deep and dark, that she finds it easier to hide them away, only exposing them in her films where the pursuit of truth in expression comes at the cost of real feelings. The emotional distance of her movies is what made them successful, but it is also what damaged her personal relationships. The pain that she caused was not malicious at all – she genuinely didn’t seem to understand that others might not choose to sacrifice everything for art.

This novel is also a meditation on celebrity culture – the director is elevated to the role of prophet when it comes to interpreting feelings. We accept the created worldview as fact, when in fact it is just as fluid as our own experiences. In her movies, Sophie makes simple observations that can utterly destroy everything you thought you knew about other people. She says she doesn’t understand feelings and uses movies to translate them – although socially inept, Sophie is actually an expert at showing people how they really feel. As she is told by her first love, Daniel, “Other people talk about their feelings, but you actually show them, with your movies. And maybe that’s even better.” (Loc. 1767)

Ultimately, this is a story about the many kinds of love, and the multitude of ways we express it. North’s writing style is clever and compelling, and brings Sophie and her loved ones to life, much like I imagine Sophie’s films would do. I really enjoyed this, so much that I have already tracked down North’s first novel, America Pacifica, and I look forward to reading it.

 

I received this book for free through Blue Rider Press and NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

August 28, 2015

Benbella's Best of Plant-Based Eating

Benbella Publishing, 2015.






Three Stars


Since releasing Dr. T. Colin Campbell’s The China Study in 2005, Benbella Books has been making a name for itself as a vegan resource in publishing. With the increasingly mainstream popularity of veganism, Dr. Campbell’s work has influenced a new generation of food writers who are happy to provide recipes and advice to the aspiring vegan. These include some of my favourites, including Lindsay Nixon, Kim Campbell and Pamela Popper.
The Best of Plant-Based Eating is a collection of the best recipes and articles from Benbella’s vegan series, including previously published books as well as upcoming releases. There is no new material in this book – there are either three selected recipes from the particular author’s cookbook, or an excerpt giving guidance for healthy living. I appreciated seeing these recipes alongside constructive advice for plant-based eating: nutrition is discussed, but there are also reflections on vitamins, disease, and limited diet trends.
With biographical information on each contributor, this book is a great starting point for creating a framework of vegan resources. The experienced vegan won’t find anything new here, but if you are exploring the plant-based lifestyle, this book will help to guide you on your way.
I received this book for free from Benbella Publishing and NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

August 24, 2015

Ophelia's Muse - Rita Cameron


Kensington, September 2015.






Three Stars


Innocent shop girl Lizzie Siddall is destined for a life of making bonnets for wealthier girls until chance offers her a meeting with the celebrated painter Dante Gabriel Rossetti. Rossetti was the artist behind the creation of the “Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood” or PRB – a group of young men educated at the academy yet rebelling against its conventional teachings. Instead of emulating Raphael and his work on darkness and shadow, the PRB were all about embracing light and beauty. Rossetti applied this to not only his professional life but also its personal one, frequently entering into relationships with beautiful young models.


Lizzie, however, was different, and her relationship with Rossetti spanned years of art and love, sadness and addiction. Things were never perfect between the two, and both of them had some major personal flaws, yet they remained together. I found Cameron’s portrayal of Lizzie to be haughty and unlikeable, shockingly innocent yet perfectly willing to manipulate Rossetti in any way possible. In contrast, Rossetti was pretentious and rarely thought about the feelings of others or the consequences of his actions. He lived with Lizzie as his wife, but refused to marry her, even though his decision ruined her reputation and eventually her health. Neither of them were lovers that one should aspire to be, yet together they made incredible artwork that has lasted the test of time.


As described in the novel by the art critic John Ruskin, the PRB wanted to make art that would provoke and offend, and not be simply decorative like a pretty bonnet. As Lizzie was a maker of bonnets in her former life, with ambitions of becoming an artist in her own life, the comment was particularly hurtful. However, she soon gives up all ambition to support Rossetti, losing any self-respect she once had. After her illness, Lizzie becomes increasingly ethereal, which makes her all the more desirable to Rossetti in her weakness.


The romantic language in which Cameron writes certainly fits in with the literary time period; however, I found it a bit flowery and overdone. The setting is described clearly, and the characters seemed real. I would have liked to read more about Lizzie and Rossetti’s interactions with other members of the PRB, though – we see a bit of it, but a little more historical context might have been nice.


Lizzie relies more and more on her prescription of laudanum to get through the day, and she begins to fear she will meet the same fate as Ophelia, whom she posed as in Millais’ famous painting. Her fear was not so much dying as disappearing with no recognition offered for her contributions to the PRB. Unfortunately, her fears have more or less come true – everyone remembers Rossetti, Millais, Ruskin and their male contemporaries, and we all admire the painting of Ophelia, but I at least had never heard of Lizzie Siddall. For that, we can commend Rita Cameron for giving the artist’s muse a voice from the past, and giving readers a female perspective on the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood and their artwork.


I received this book for free from Kensington and NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

August 21, 2015

The Gap of Time - Jeanette Winterson


Hogarth, October 2015.

 

Five Stars


This is the first book in Hogarth’s Shakespeare series – the series allows popular authors to reimagine one of the bard’s plays in their own style. As Jeanette Winterson is one of my all-time favourites, I couldn’t resist trying out her interpretation of Shakespeare’s “The Winter’s Tale,” and I’m so glad I did. The Gap of Time is original and exciting, while still expressing the timelessness of Shakespeare’s themes.

The Gap of Time can be read with our without a background knowledge of “The Winter’s Tale,” but I would suggest at least looking over a synopsis of the play before reading the novel, just so you don’t miss any of the fun parallels between the two. The play is essentially about a king who mistakenly believes that his queen is having an affair with his best friend – this causes political conflict as well as familial tragedy, and results in the queen’s baby being taken from their kingdom and raised elsewhere. In classic Shakespearean fashion, the family is reunited years later with plenty of drama.

Winterson holds on to the universal themes of the play, such as jealousy, revenge, and redemption. However, she puts her own spin on things by adding explorations of class, race, gender and sexuality. The title takes its name from one character’s video game design, which features an angel at risk of destroying the world around him. He designed the game with women in mind – one woman in specific, as we later learn – in an attempt to counteract the gendering of such activities.

Our first narrator, Shep, lives in a poor neighbourhood when he discovers baby Perdita. I immediately enjoyed his voice, it felt like listening to an old friend tell a story, which is the kind of guy that Shep embodies. Later, narration switches to Leo (the jealous king character), who is unlikable yet still draws you in to the madness of his mind. As Leo’s mistrust and jealousy escalate, he targets his wife Mimi and her friendship with his own childhood best friend, Xeno. However, the two men have a complicated past, leading us to wonder which of the two Leo is really jealous about. Leo’s scheming comes to a head when he sends Mimi’s baby away to be discovered by Shep. Through a convoluted series of events – Shakespeare again – the characters are eventually reunited and the truth comes out.

Meanwhile, we have classic Winterson forays into the poetics of the universe – she speaks of the earth and the moon as twins that were once separated, and have inspired humans ever since as “the grand motif of our imagination.” (Loc. 1388) There was also plenty of rumination on religion, philosophy and the nature of time. The best part for me was about half way through as Autolycus and Clo discuss the Oedipus Complex and how it came to be. The description was so original and humorous (Autolycus claims it was all due to the lack of roundabouts – if Oedipus hadn’t met his father at a crossroads, Freud would have had nothing to talk about). It touches upon other Freudian elements in the plot, such as Leo’s lust for Perdita before he realizes she is his long-lost daughter.

I also really enjoyed the meditation on time at Loc. 1629: the point of time is that it ends, and thus we should be using it wisely – unlike Xeno who is lost in his video game, or Leo, who pushes everyone away because he cannot trust them. In her author’s note, Winterson writes that “time is reversible” – forgiveness and the future work in both directions and we can’t have one without the other.

I look forward to more novels from Hogarth’s Shakespeare series, as well as more from Winterson, as always.


I received this book for free from Hogarth and NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

August 17, 2015

South on Highland - Liana Maeby

 

Little A Publishing, 2015.





Four Stars


This novel is filled with raw, heart-wrenching descriptions of drug addiction that don’t hold anything back. The inner world of “Leila Massey” is apparently loosely based on the author’s struggles with her prodigious writing career in Hollywood, all while battling addiction. Some reviewers have taken this “based on a true story” very literally and go as far as worrying about the author’s inevitable slide back into addiction. However, Maeby herself has said that the novel is only about 20% autobiographical – South on Highland was meant to be a satirical memoir, skewering the melodramatic biographies of washed-up Hollywood stars. The book only later morphed into a novel, and I think it works well in this format. The writings is fast paced and cinematic – especially the (mostly fantasy) sections that were written as a screenplay.


The prologue of the novel brings readers right down to the depths of drug use, and we are immediately hooked... The scenes are gritty and unflinching: Maeby doesn’t spare her readers or herself.  In spite of this, she does still find humour in her characters’ circumstances, and some scenes are darkly funny. I especially enjoyed her satirical exploration of teenagers who head out to the desert for a music festival and remain to start their own society. Leila goes there to interview them and ends up getting sucked into the scene before realizing how crazy it all is.


The novel is an exploration of identity – what is left after the drugs take over – yet it also examines the cultural responsibility for addiction. Leila’s agent tries to protect her from Hollywood drug use, yet he does this by flying her to Vegas to party. And again, as Leila works on recovery, her agent and other movie executives tell her that her story lacks drama – it should end in suffering and death. Instead, Leila – and Liana, too – prefer to leave it open to interpretation. Her story is not over yet. The act of telling her story is more important than the end result: as Leila talks about her experiences with her best friend Mari, she says that “sharing a story is one way to make the pain it bears start to disappear.” (Loc. 754). This is an important part of why we write, and why we read.


Maeby has said in interviews that this novel is her way of exploring drug culture without actually killing herself. It is certainly a very realistic and authentic-feeling portrayal of a talented young girl who lets addiction take over. With plenty of in-jokes and topical pop culture references, this novel could easily be made into a movie. In the meantime, I’m looking forward to reading more by Liana Maeby.


I received this book for free from Little A Publishing and NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

August 14, 2015

Dreams Bigger Than the Night - Paul M. Levitt

Taylor Trade Publishing, 2015.



Two Stars


Set during the Great Depression, with fascism becoming increasingly popular, the 1936 Berlin Olympics were a politically contentious event. Many believed we in North America should boycott the Olympics due to anti-Jewish sentiment, while others supported the American Nazi Party and had their own agenda in participating with the Germans. While these decisions were made high up in the political world, it was the athletes who had worked hard to compete who would ultimately suffer – especially the first black athletes hoping to enter the Olympics.


This novel explores parallels between the treatment of Jews in Germany and black people in America in the 1930s, as seen through the eyes of investigator Jay Klug and his friend T-Bone Searle. As they search for a missing woman, their journey takes them from the mobster underbelly of New Jersey to the glamour of Los Angeles, and many places in between. Levitt weaves historical figures in with his fiction ones, including gangsters and German assassins.


While the time and place are intriguing historically, my excitement got side-tracked by the main narrative. I found Jay’s story really difficult to slog through, and I have to admit that I only made it halfway through the novel. As interested as I was in the history, the characters were not compelling to me. And there were so many of them! The intricacies of the plot were lost on me as I struggled just to pay attention. It’s rare that I don’t finish a novel – however much I dislike it – but this was the exception.


Overall, the novel seemed to be well-researched – perhaps too much detail – with authentic historical issues and examination of conflicting socio-political motivations. But without the right characters to draw me in, Dreams Bigger Than the Night was just a surface-level crime novel that I couldn’t get in to.


I received this book for free from Taylor Trade Publishing and NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

August 10, 2015

The Blue - Lucy Clarke


Touchstone, August 2015.





Five Stars


Lana and her best friend Kitty leave home to escape the unhappiness and uncertainty of their former lives – they pick a spot on the globe and end up travelling to the Philippines. While there, they meet up with a group of fellow travellers who are sailing a yacht, The Blue, to New Zealand. Sharing a sense of adventure and wanderlust, the girls join up with the crew for what seems like an idyllic journey, snorkelling, swimming and exploring beautiful islands. It starts out perfect, until one of the crew disappears overboard – and the dark secrets of the others begin to emerge.

 

Lucy Clarke does a fantastic job of setting the scene. The ocean and islands are vivid, colourful and almost dreamlike. The sea plays a major role in the novel: it is almost a character of its own, and as the weather darkens, the storm casts a shadow over The Blue’s tropical paradise. It is responsible not only for the dark mood of the novel but also the unpredictable actions of the crew. While individual beaches and coves are described so clearly that I could taste the salt and feel the sand, they really could have been anywhere. This isn’t a novel about the countries that one travels to, it is simply about travelling. None of the characters seemed to be on the boat to learn about new cultures; instead, they are there to escape from their own reality.

 

The novel is within the genre of psychological thriller, but it is deeper than that. It is character-driven, but every time we feel like we are getting to know a character, they surprise us. The crew are forced into close quarters which deludes them into a sense of closeness – in fact, they really don’t know each other at all. Flashbacks allow us to get to know Kitty and Lana in particular, but even then we aren’t sure what they are capable of doing. Everyone’s motivations are coloured by Lana’s negative experiences on The Blue, and it works because we don’t trust anyone. Clarke is adept at dropping hints so subtle that we don’t realize until much later that they were clues to the darkness that lurks beneath these characters.

 

At first, life on The Blue seems perfect. Great company, fresh fruit and fish, plenty of rum. Everything is democratic, including votes on any issue that arises on the yacht. However, it doesn’t take long to see that there is plenty of manipulation going on amongst the crew, and some members have a dangerous hold on the others. All we have is Lana’s perspective, and her confusion and suspicion as more secrets swirl around the decks of the yacht. With no omniscient view of events, we must piece together the mystery from Lana’s view of “Then” and “Now”, as the chapters are divided into past and present.

 

As secrets are revealed to Lana, our own perspective as reader changes too. From the foreshadowing of the prologue, we know there is a death coming. Clarke, via Lana, leads us slowly down the path to eventually discover what happened. And as soon as you think you have it all figured out, more secrets are revealed, right up to the last page and the shocking epilogue.

 

The non-linear plot is a perfect device to tell the story of The Blue. The mysteries of Lana’s past in England, her time on the yacht, and her present circumstances in New Zealand are all woven together to create intrigue. The thriller aspect of the novel was well-developed and competently explored, building tension and anticipation right up to the final page. It’s hard not to identify with the travellers who were willing to risk everything to maintain their idyll on The Blue – but it couldn’t last. As Lana eventually tells Kitty, “The Blue was never a boat. Not really. The Blue is a mindset. A place within yourself.” (p. 378) I think that mindset, that freedom to find yourself outside of everyday life, is what appeals to us about travelling, and about stories such as this one.

 

I received this book for free from Touchstone/Simon & Schuster in exchange for an honest review.

August 07, 2015

Circling the Sun - Paula McLain

Ballantine Books, July 2015.





Five Stars


Paula McLain is a master at writing portraits of strong, independent women living outside of society’s norms. I loved reading about Hemingway’s first wife, Hadley, in McLain’s novel The Paris Wife, and in her author’s note she writes that Beryl Markham could have been a Hemingway character – if he wrote about women. McLain has done it for him, and this novel about the record-setting female aviator and her tangled love life does not disappoint.

Beryl Markham lived in Kenya in the 1920s. At first I felt like I couldn’t get a foothold in the story because I knew nothing about Beryl and her various accomplishments. However, McLain writes so vividly that I could picture it all clearly. I was inspired to research more about Beryl, which I think is the ideal result for a historical novel.

The novel is framed nicely with a prologue and epilogue that both deal with Beryl’s transatlantic flight from London to North America – she was the first woman to fly non-stop over the Atlantic and the first person to do it in that direction. Even with all of her accomplishments, Beryl is a little known historical figure, and she lived out her old age in poverty until her biography ___ was rediscovered. Although she was close to author Karen Blixen (Isak Dinesen), Beryl’s own writing about life in Africa did not take off in the same way, probably because there were some doubts about its authorship.

Beryl was raised by her father in Kenya, after her mother and brother returned to England and essentially cut off communication. The abandonment by her mother affected all of Beryl’s future relationships: she did not trust women, and her few relationships with them tended to be maternal in nature. She preferred the company of men, all of whom she compares in some way to her father. Her friendships with men caused many scandals and rumours, some of which were true. McLain manages to put a positive spin on Beryl’s various indiscretions, while other sources I have read are much more critical. For her time, Beryl was an incredibly modern woman, creating an independent life for herself in early twentieth century Africa.

Before she received her pilot’s licence, Beryl was the first woman to qualify as a horse trainer in Kenya or anywhere else. Although she had many successes training horses to race for their wealthy owners, her refusal to compromise her ideals led to a tarnished reputation. Beryl was willing to do anything to do what she loved, and to be with the one she loved. Her risks often paid off, while at other times she suffered because of the men she chose. Any accomplishment she made was called into question because she was a woman, and much of it was based on jealousy and rumours.

Beryl Markham was certainly a woman who did not fit society’s standards. Forgoing marriage and motherhood, Beryl’s career choices allowed for huge advancements not only for women but also for the pursuit of knowledge and pushing the boundaries for human capabilities. In McLain’s hands, Beryl is a sympathetic character and a joy to read about.


I received this book for free through Ballantine Books and Net Galley in exchange for an honest review.

August 04, 2015

The Sunken Cathedral - Kate Walbert


Scribner, 2015.






Three Stars


The Sunken Cathedral is a beautiful series of linked character studies, loosely tied together with themes of identity and a vague but impending environmental disaster. A group of people living in modern day New York struggle to find their place in life, while they interact with each other. All of the characters’ lives are painted with an impressionist’s brush, capturing emotions through experience. Debussey’s “Sunken Cathedral” is evoked repeatedly as the musical version of impressionism, while the title of his song also foreshadows the flood that is to come.

While the writing was lovely, I think the exploration of each character would have worked better as separate short stories. Each life had its own interesting details, but it was hard to care about a character who is only introduced at the end of the novel or within a lengthy footnote. They needed to either be given their own story or cut altogether. Rushing through the histories of strong, resourceful women such as Marie, who survived great tragedies, does a disservice to her and to real women like her.

 

The footnotes themselves were frustrating and superfluous – they should have either been woven into the text or left out. Simone and Marie lived long lives; they survived World War II and started new lives in New York. Walbert seems to be saying we should pay more attention to the stories of the past, yet these stories are relegated to long, uninteresting footnotes. Meanwhile, Elizabeth is obsessed with exploring the family histories of her son’s classmates, which makes me feel like there may be some postmodern connection between the footnotes and the class papers – but the connection just doesn’t quite make it.

 

Each character suffers from a disconnect between their interior and exterior worlds – a sort of existential anxiety. It goes hand in hand with the themes of aging and loss, and the reminder that we should be learning from the past to avoid making the same mistakes. It seems the population of this fictional world have not learned, leading to the environmental disaster that casts a shadow over the novel.

 

The best parts of this novel were the impressionistic imagery and language; however, the characters and plot lacked development, which is why I think I would have gotten more from it had they been separated into a series of stories. I felt disconnected as a reader, not drawn into the abstraction of the plot. The themes Walbert has chosen lend themselves well to artistic metaphors and various interpretations. There were no meaningful connections and nothing redeeming from the characters’ lives – but there easily could have been. All of the elements of this novel should have been great, but it just didn’t pull together and eventually it finished flat.

 

I received this book for free through Scribner and Net Galley in exchange for an honest review.

August 01, 2015

The End of Innocence - Allegra Jordan

Sourcebooks/Landmark, 2014.





Two Stars


As World War I begins, Helen Windship Brooks, an intelligent young woman from an upper class Boston family, is accepted into an all-male class at Harvard University. There she meets Wils Brandt, a German student living in America, and his British cousin Riley. Anti-German sentiment is increasing, and Wils and his friends find themselves targeted by their fellow students. Helen and Wils fall awkwardly and predictably in love, until Wils is called back to Germany as a soldier. Meanwhile, Riley signs up to fight for the Allies, putting him in direct conflict with his cousin Wils.

It was interesting to read a WWI story from the perspective of a German citizen living in America – it’s not something I’ve ever read before, and we are not taught to feel sympathy for someone like Wils. It turns our righteousness about the war upside down. Because of this, I was not surprised to read in the afterword that the author had a mission in writing this story. She began this novel with the intention of showing how people deal with devastating loss in situations such as this one. I felt like it was an effort to fit the story into her chosen theme – it comes across as very forced.

Overall, the novel was very sentimental and unbelievable. The classroom scenes did have some dialogue that sounded authentic, but otherwise the conversations were uneven and rushed. The language was very old-fashioned, even more so than it should be in 1914. The relationship between Helen and Wils was very sudden – it was meant to be a sweeping romance, but it just did not ring true.

Many different socio-political issues are dealt with here, often in thoughtful and thought-provoking ways. Everyone is focused on pushing their own agenda, whichever nationality they are. We also get a small peek into the women’s rights movement of the time, as Helen’s mother is jailed for spreading information on family planning and contraceptives. I wish this theme had been explored further, but Helen just finds her mother embarrassing and does all she can to avoid her. She could have been a strong female role model for Helen, and it would have been fun to read more about her misadventures.

Although it was a sentimental historical romance, the first half of the novel could be read and enjoyed as such. However, I felt like there was no continuity into the second half of the story. The boys go off to war, and Helen loses all hope and ambition for herself. I did appreciate that the ending was realistic and not as sentimental, but there were a lot of hints that something more was coming, and the ending just did not follow through. Helen, Wils and their friends and families were secondary to the author’s goals in writing a novel about grief and loss, and because of that, the novel was very anti-climactic.

I received this book for free through Sourcebooks/Landmark and Net Galley in exchange for an honest review.