Read Recently and Recommend (or not), volume 1

I decided to discontinue What’s Next on my Nightstand? because as well-intentioned as I am, I was not getting to a lot of the books I intended to read. So I am going to stick with telling you about what I have read and whether or not I liked those books. After all, a good book is an amazing gift to the world and should be shouted from the mountaintop. Bad books, well, ahmmm, they deserve to be called out so no one wastes their time.

28 Summers by Elin Hilderbrand.   Inspired by the film Same Time, Next Year, 28 Summers tells the tale of Mallory Blessing and Jake McCloud who meet one Labor Day weekend in Nantucket. Their chemistry is instantaneous but each person recognizes they are different places in their lives and agree that each year they will reunite in that last week of August. As each year passes, their love survives amidst all the changes that life brings their way.   Usually I do not enjoy stories about extramarital affairs but I loved this one. I couldn’t help but be pulled into Mallory and Jake’s lives and I wanted them to finally be together. As each year passes and Hilderbrand relates the news events of each of those 28 years, I was willing to suspend disbelief and sink into a juicy, beautiful, complicated love story. Highly recommend.

The Star and the Shamrock by Jean Grainger.  In one more WWII tale, set in Berlin 1939, Ariella Bannon has no choice: she must put her precious children, Liesl and Erich, on the Kindertransport or allow them to become prey for the Nazis.  A thousand miles away in Northern Ireland, Elizabeth Klein has closed herself off from the world after losing her husband on the last day of the Great War, and her child months later. She is hesitant to love again. But Elizabeth and the Bannon children discover that life in the country is anything but tranquil. Danger and intrigue lurk everywhere, and some people are not what they seem.  From the streets of wartime Berlin, to the bombed out city of Liverpool, and finally resting in the lush valleys of the Ards Penisula, is an insightful tale and a rollicking good read! And it explores some themes I had not heard of before, such as the IRA support of the Hitler regime. Highly recommend!

Earthly Joys by Philippa Gregory.  From the award winning “queen of royal fiction” Philippa Gregory brings to life the passionate, turbulent times of seventeenth-century England as seen through the eyes of the country’s most famous royal gardener, John Tradescant.  His fame and skill as a gardener are unsurpassed in seventeenth-century England, but it is his clear-sighted honesty and loyalty that make him an valued servant. As an informal confidant of Sir Robert Cecil, adviser to King James I, he witnesses the making of history, from the Gunpowder Plot to the accession of King Charles I and the growing animosity between Parliament and court.  Tradescant’s talents soon come to the attention of the most powerful man in the country.  Every certainty upon which Tradescant has based his life–his love of his wife and children, his passion for his work, his loyalty to his country–is shattered as he follows his master to court, to war, and to the forbidden territories of human love. It was a very well-written book with his garden and collection of specimens as the focus but with the backdrop of all that is going on politically and how the nation fares under an irresponsible monarch and its court. It sounds like a dry tale but I really enjoyed it! Highly recommend.

Winter in Paradise and What Happens in Paradise, both by Elin Hilderbrand. I enjoyed 28 Summers so much I thought I would read more from this author. I thought both books were just okay but I would not recommend either. Ever read a series of books that should probably be edited into one bigger book and ended up feeling like the author was just dragging you along to sell more covers? Well, they are moderately enjoyable but nothing to get excited about and both are easily forgettable and very cliche. So, I recommend you skip these and save your money for something better.