Hurricane Season by Lauren K. Denton (TLC Book Tours)

Two sisters who couldn’t be more different are bound together through one hurricane summer by the two young daughters of one sister.  

Betsy lives on a farm with her husband Ty in Alabama.  They are updating the farm to provide educational opportunities to children and are trying to make it in a world where dairy farms need to grow and change to keep up with the times.  What both Betsy and Ty really want is a child, but after five years, they have faced disappoint through the years as hope turned to sadness as they are unable to conceive.

Betsy’s younger sister Jenna has always been the wild impetuous sister to Betsy’s responsible one.  Jenna is trying to turn her life around with being a single mother to her two daughters Addie and Walsh.  She’s the manager of a coffee house, but dreams of going back to her true passion, photography. When she gets the chance to go to the Halcyon Artist Retreat in Florida with all-expense paid, she is overjoyed. Will this be her chance for a better future?  What will she do with her girls?

Jenna decides to drop her daughters off with Betsy and Ty for what is supposed to be two weeks but turns into a longer visit.  Will Jenna be back for her beloved girls?  How do Betsy and Ty feel having the girls when they so desperately want children of their own?  Has Jenna thought about their feelings?  How do the girls feel?

The story is told through the viewpoints of Betsy, Jenna and Ty.  I liked the revolving narrative and thought it did a great job of telling the complete story.  I like how from Jenna’s perspective, she’s trying to work on a better life for her and her daughters, but from Betsy and Ty’s perspective she is being insensitive to them and not a stable parent to her daughters.  Isn’t that how it is in life?  Every situation looks so different depending on who is looking at it.

I also love how the hurricane is wrapped into the narrative, especially the climax to the story.  I enjoyed Denton’s previous novel, The Hideaway as well.  She does a wonderful job of writing characters and their challenges in a wonderful Southern setting.  I need to read more of her books in the future!

Favorite Quotes:

“I see children.  I hear laughter.  I see a childhood spent outside in the heat and air and light.  I see our future.”

“Part of her wanted to blame it all on her parents, but she was old enough to know that was a weak excuse.  She’d made her own choices.”

“Yet it also left behind unexpected beauty and bursts of new life.  A tiny green shoot pushing through the garden soil.  Hope shining like a beacon in the dark places.”

Overall, Hurricane Season is a riveting southern family drama.

Book Source:  Review Copy for being a part of the TLC Book Tours.  Thank-you!  For more stops on this tour, check out the tour schedule at this link.

The Heart Between Us: Two sisters, One Heart Transplant, and a Bucket List by Lindsay Harrel (TLC Book Tour)

Megan Jacobs has spent most of her life in hospitals waiting for a heart transplant.  She finally received one in her twenties, but is still afraid to venture out beyond her hometown in Minnesota.  She lives with her parents and works at the local library as a library aide.  She dreams of adventure and traveling the world, dreams she used to share with fellow heart patient Caleb.  Caleb received his heart transplant first and now travels the world for his work.  Megan longs to reconnect and to travel as well.

Meeting the parents of the girl whose heart she received jump starts her.  They give her their daughter’s diary and she finds a bucket list inside.  Inspired, Megan decides to complete the bucket list with her savings, a GoFundMe account, and to blog about it on the way.

Megan’s twin sister Crystal is an architect in New York City.  Crystal never had the health problems that Megan experienced and she’s working toward her dream of becoming a senior architect in her firm.  She works long hours and doesn’t get much time with her husband, firefighter Brian.  She also seems to have lost her inspiration and is having health problems.  When Megan’s trip pops up, Brian suggests that Crystal join her to reconnect with her twin and to find her way back to their marriage and to what she wants from life.

The two sisters travel the world fulfilling the bucket list.  Will the two be able to repair their neglected relationship?  Will Megan be able to make the next step forward and live without the fear of illness?  Will Crystal be able to figure out how to balance work and her relationship with her husband?

I loved this novel.  It really connected with me.  Personally, I’ve been in Crystal’s shoes the past few years where work was becoming all-consuming and affecting my health and relationships with my husband and children.  I just switched jobs at the end of 2017 and it’s made a big difference.  Sometimes you get wrapped up in trying to do a good job and work takes advantage of you.  

I enjoyed how the story was a travel story to fantastic locations around the world and I also liked how it was a personal growth story for both sisters in their own lives and loves, and with each other.  I like how they were able to get to know each other better on the trip and I liked that the story was equal between the sisters and didn’t just end with the trip.  The story continued and wrapped up their storylines to see where they are going next after the trip.  I wish I could keep reading about Megan and Crystal.

Favorite Quotes:

“Just because something is in “ruins” doesn’t mean it’s ruined.  It’s just . . . different than before.  It’s weather storms, but it’s still standing.”

“I know it’s not the destination we had in mind, but it’s where we’ve landed.”

“Wouldn’t it be a better use of your time to leave the big stuff like control and worry to God and instead spend it reveling in all the opportunities for great joy he’s given you.?”

“Then Nana turned, ‘Not everything is as easy to fix as that, I’ll admit.  Life isn’t perfect.  It’s messy.  It doesn’t follow a pattern or a plan.  Thankfully, we know the Big Guy is in charge.’ She reached down and squeezed Crystal’s hand. ‘And he is the super-gluer of souls.”

Overall, The Heart Between Us is a great travel and character story.  I really identified with the main characters and their struggles and I greatly enjoyed the book.

Book Source:  Review Copy as part of the TLC Book Tour.  Thank-you!  For more stops on this tour, check out the tour schedule.

Winner of The Man He Never Was

The lucky winner of The Man He Never Was by James L. Rubart is JaneGS from the lovely blog Reading, Writing, Working, Playing.  JaneGS was chosen as a winner using random.org and has been emailed. 

Thank-you to all who entered the giveaway, TLC Book Tours for letting me be on the tour, and James L. Rupart for allowing this giveaway.

Want to learn more about this novel?  Please check out my review at this link.

My Dear Hamilton by Stephanie Dray and Laura Kamoie

Alexander Hamilton’s legacy would have sadly been left by the wayside if not for the work of his wife, Elizabeth Schuyler Hamilton.  A brave woman in her own right, Eliza was the daughter of a Major General, adopted by the Oneida tribe, the mother of eight children, and founder of two orphanages in New York City.  She helped her husband with his work and if anything was his “right hand” woman.  Eliza finally gets her own story told in a splendid new historical fiction novel, My Dear Hamilton.

My Dear Hamilton tells Eliza’s story from her teenage years until her death with the major focus being on her turbulent life with Alexander Hamilton.  Their great love endured even with the first major political sex scandal and the untimely death of their son.  

I love reading historical fiction and it’s always a delight to read historical fiction on America’s past.  I’ve read America’s First Daughter by the same authors and have enjoyed that as well.  I love listening to the music from the musical Hamilton and would love to see it live.  Authors Dray and Kamoie love the musical as well and it was the musical that inspired them to write the book from Eliza’s point of view.  

I really liked how the story was framed with an elderly Eliza receiving a visit from former President James Monroe.  The book gave a history to their story together and why Eliza would not forgive him.

I really enjoyed that the novel included the Oneida people and how they were affiliated with Eliza’s family, America’s struggle for freedom, and with Alexander Hamilton himself as he started a school for the tribe.  It was poignant towards the end of the book when Marquis de Lafayette came to visit and asked about the tribe only to be told they had been driven out.  Part of the tribe is actually not far from me in Green Bay.  They traveled through the Great Lakes and found a new homeland in Wisconsin, but it’s still a struggle today for the tribe to keep their tribal land.

Slavery is also a side story in the book with Eliza’s family owning slaves.  I always forget that people did own slaves in the North at the start of our country.  For example, poet Phyllis Wheatly was a slave in New York City.  Eliza and multiple founding fathers struggle with this issue. The authors discuss at the end of the book in their note that the revolutionary war wasn’t just fought by white men in powdered wigs, there were people of all races involved.  I appreciated that real look at history.

The book really brought the founding fathers alive and how they all struggle and had issues with each other.  One thing I’ve found personally interesting is that in books, movies, and the musical, it’s always framed that Hamilton is a hero and Jefferson a villain or Jefferson is the hero and Hamilton is a villain.  I think it was much greyer than that.  Both men did a lot to create our country and make it what it is today, and both men were far from perfect with great sins of their own to contemplate.

As a wife and mother, I’ll admit, I had a hard time with Eliza’s forgiveness of Hamilton after the affair was discovered before his death.  I don’t know if I could be that forgiving.  I liked that after Hamilton’s death, Eliza struggled a lot after she read through his personal correspondence wondering if he had loved her after all and had a very hard time forgiving him.  It wasn’t until after a candid talk with Lafayette that she could learn to move on and love the man he was even with all of his flaws.

Lafayette’s trip later in life back to America was riveting to read about.  I also was amazed that in her eighties Eliza traveled to the wilds of Wisconsin to visit her son.  I can’t imagine in that time period traveling out to that far and returning when in your eighties!  

I LOVED the extras as the back of the book.  It included a note from the author about the actual history the book was based on, discussion questions, a conversation with the authors, and how the book differs from the musical.

Favorite Quotes:

“Forgetting would lift the weighty cloak of the past from my shoulders and make the present so much easier.  But memory unalterably sets our compass and guides us down paths we might have preferred never to have walked at all.”

“As if the notion that all men were created equal somehow meant that one need not aspire to knowledge and ability – all distinctions of class, breeding, or merit discarded, all notions of civility deserted.”

“I hadn’t married a man.  I’d married a mythic hero who’d driven a carriage of the sun across the sky.  No other husband could ever measure up against my dear Hamilton, and it would be cruel to make any man try.”

“He was not a perfect man.  But he was a great one.  It is only plain justice that his wife should remember him better.  And his country, too.”

“It seems, to me that the only just way to judge a person is by the sum of their deeds, good and bad.”

Overall, My Dear Hamilton was a riveting read about one of our nation’s founding mothers and the start of our country. What makes a person remembered and can they still be a good person even with serious flaws?

Book Source:  Review Copy from William Morrow.  Thank-you!