I'm still catching up on book reviews from my Spring reads, including the 600-page mammoth that took me all of May to read.
I try to sprinkle in books that our outside of my typical easy reads to challenge myself, and my mind, and this set included both a historical fiction and a mystical/fantasy read. So without further ado, let's dive right in!
Beautiful Day by Elin Hilderbrand ⭐️⭐️⭐️
I picked up this book at a second hand shop because it looked like the easy beach read that it is! Not a big, huge, juicy plot but rather escaping into someone else's reality for a summer wedding at the beach and the typical behind-the-scenes chaos of a wedding weekend. An easy read, but a little dull.
Heart Bones by Colleen Hoover ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
It's no secret that I'm a big Colleen Hoover fan! Heart Bones was a loner book from a friend and while it was good, it wasn't my fave CoHo book to date. As in all of her books, she covers sensitive topics that include drug abuse, split families, fake perceptions and loss. But the ending... ah she sure knows how to wrap it up with a nice bow that you can smile about!
The Daring Ladies of Lowell by Kate Alcot ⭐️⭐️⭐️
As my period piece/historical fiction read from the Spring, The Daring Ladies of Lowell follows one bold young lady as she escapes her small farming town to seek a better life for herself by obtaining work in the cotton mills of Lowell, Massachusetts. Respectable work and honest pay (for women) and a chance to save money for her future, she quickly realizes the flaws within the mill that are detrimental to the health and well-being of all who work there. She becomes the volunteered spokeswoman for the mill employees which also jeopardizes her budding relation with the mill owner's son. Can she save herself, her friends and her beau or lose them all? Kate Alcot is also the author of the New York Times bestseller, The Dressmaker.
A Court of Mist And Fury by Sarah J. Maas ⭐️⭐️⭐️
Alas - the 600 page book that took me all of May to read! Mystical fantasy is not my preferred genre but as the second installment to a five-book series, it was next in line after completing the first one, which you can read my review here. I'd been told that the second book was better than the first and while I won't disagree with that, it also wasn't the page turner I was hoping for. So many foreign names and places, it was hard to keep who, what and where straight. And maybe it was the 600 + pages that created a mental block of "Will I ever get through this?!?" But I'm no quitter so I read on and the whole while I kept telling myself this was it, I wouldn't read books 3 through 5... until the end of book 2 where they hook you and I was left wondering, "Can I keep going to find out how this ends?!?" If anyone has read beyond book 2 of this "A Court..." series, I'd love to know your thoughts in the comments below on if they're worth the read!
