Tag: book review

Posted in Bookish and Bingeable

The Lost Ones

Posted on by Vikki Lynn Sorensen

By Anita Frank

Some houses are never at peace.

England, 1917

Reeling from the death of her fiancé, Stella Marcham welcomes the opportunity to stay with her pregnant sister, Madeleine, at her imposing country mansion, Greyswick – but she arrives to discover a house of unease and her sister gripped by fear and suspicion.

Before long, strange incidents begin to trouble Stella – sobbing in the night, little footsteps on the stairs – and as events escalate, she finds herself drawn to the tragic history of the house.

Aided by a wounded war veteran, Stella sets about uncovering Greyswick’s dark and terrible secrets – secrets the dead whisper from the other side…

I loved this book!!! Gothic, ghostly, horrific, mystery….all the pieces were there for me. 

Stella is a grieving woman who goes to stay with her sister at Greyswick, a house full of terrible secrets. She finds her sister terrified. Her maid, Annie, talks with ghosts in the house and soon, it’s apparent that the house is harboring a deadly past and is looking for revenge. 

The main character of Stella is stubborn and strong. Still suffering from the loss of her fiance, she fights against the doctors and her parents who want to hospitalize her for “hysteria”. Upon arriving at Greyswick, she finds her bright, jolly sister frightened of every shadow. Stella delves into the mystery of the house, much to the dislike of the lady of the manor, her companion and the house manager. 

I absolutely loved her. I also loved little Annie, Stella’s maid with a gift for seeing and communicating with ghosts. She’s spunky, truthful and endearing. 

There were times when I, eager to get to the meat of the story, thought the story lagged. However, I actually discovered an appreciation for the author who took her time telling the story. It’s not really a who-dun-it as much as a what-happened. I found myself tumbling head-first into this story and didn’t let go until it was done. 

The ending was well done and again, not rushed through. Anita Frank does a great job of leading us through each and every step of the climax of the story, giving the reader time to recover before introducing the next twist. 

For a gothic ghost story lover, this book had all the goods. Creepy mansion. Weird housekeeper. Crabby old lady. Nice but mysterious companion. Babies crying in the night. Walls that whisper secrets. 

Absolutely brilliant. 

My rating: :star: :star: :star: :star: :star: 

Posted in Bookish and Bingeable

The Lost Girls of Ireland

Posted on by Vikki Lynn Sorensen

By Susanne O’Leary

The picturesque beach of Wild Rose Bay is the last place Lydia Butler thought she’d be. But having just lost everything, the run-down cottage she inherited from her Great Aunt Nellie is the only place she can take her daughter, Sunny. Hidden away in a tiny Irish village, she can protect Sunny from the gossip in Dublin, and the real reason they have nowhere else to live…

The cottage is part of the old coastguard station and other eccentric residents are quick to introduce themselves when Lydia arrives. Lydia instantly feels less alone, fascinated by the stories they have about Nellie, and she’s charmed by American artist, Jason O’Callaghan, the mysterious man who lives next door.

But the longer Lydia relaxes under the moonlit sky, the more the secret she’s keeping from Sunny threatens to come out. And as she finds herself running into Jason’s arms, she knows she must be honest and face up to the past she has tried to forget. Has she finally found people who will truly accept her, or will the truth force her to leave the cottage for good?

I love Ireland! I love everything about Ireland and cannot wait to go back there someday. It may seem weird to pick a book to read based on the setting. Yet, I did. Well, that and the synopsis. I was attracted to the story of a woman who’s lost everything and how she healed. I wanted to meet the residents of Wild Rose Bay. 

I didn’t hate it. I didn’t love it either. It was….ok. 

Lydia inherits a house from her great aunt and moves there with her daughter after her husband dies. There’s a tiny bit of a mystery surrounding the life her great aunt lived. I had hoped for more in that storyline but honestly, it wasn’t much. She simply fell in love with a German soldier whose plane crashed on the island. That was it. 

We meet our main character, Lydia, whose life has been full of fundraisers, dinner parties, designer clothes, opulent restaurants and an all-around higher class of living. She finds herself penniless after finding out her recently deceased husband was involved in several illegal business deals. Forced to sell all she has, she finds out she’s inherited a house in a small village. 

I really didn’t like Lydia at all. While we know she’s gone through a lot, there’s just no character growth. Her daughter solves most of their problems and what Sunny isn’t able to solve, everyone else in the village does. So, Lydia really doesn’t need to do much to adjust to this new life outside of working jobs she once thought were beneath her. She even inherits more money halfway through the story. There really isn’t a sense of struggling. 

There’s a love interest which seems really out of place and suddenly, really intense at the time when Lydia isn’t even sure she’s staying at the cottage. Jason seems odd and out of place and just as two dimensional as Lydia. 

I did like the setting. I love Irish cottages and have always dreamt of living in one. The seaside was atmospheric and chilly and altogether lovely. I also really liked the town and the people. I was more interested in their lives than Lydia’s. 

All in all, this was just ok. Not terrible. Not overly enjoyable. 

My rating: :star: :star: :star:

Posted in Bookish and Bingeable

The Woman with the Blue Star

Posted on by Vikki Lynn Sorensen

By: Pam Jenoff

1942. Sadie Gault is eighteen and living with her parents amid the horrors of the Kraków Ghetto during World War II. When the Nazis liquidate the ghetto, Sadie and her pregnant mother are forced to seek refuge in the perilous sewers beneath the city. One day Sadie looks up through a grate and sees a girl about her own age buying flowers.

Ella Stepanek is an affluent Polish girl living a life of relative ease with her stepmother, who has developed close alliances with the occupying Germans. Scorned by her friends and longing for her fiancé, who has gone off to war, Ella wanders Kraków restlessly. While on an errand in the market, she catches a glimpse of something moving beneath a grate in the street. Upon closer inspection, she realizes it’s a girl hiding.

Ella begins to aid Sadie and the two become close, but as the dangers of the war worsen, their lives are set on a collision course that will test them in the face of overwhelming odds. Inspired by harrowing true stories, The Woman with the Blue Star is an emotional testament to the power of friendship and the extraordinary strength of the human will to survive.

“The triumph of the human spirit”

I’ve fallen in love with historical fiction stories. I’m not sure why but there’s a certain vibrancy of human spirit on display in these stories. Pam Jenoff doesn’t miss a beat telling this story based on real life history of holocaust survivors. There’s something about these stories that fascinate me and break me. I know my own cowardice enough to know had I lived back then, I would have been neither brave nor selfless so it always astounds me to read about what folks survived and how they managed. 

Sadie and her family are forced to live in the sewer at the beginning at the story and that’s pretty much where she stays the whole time. While her surroundings don’t change, her circumstances so and it all changes her from a young girl to a brave young woman. She loses people she loves and does her best to stay alive as well as find a way of escape for her family and others with her. 

Elsa is a Polish girl. She has a warm bed, water and enough food but living in a home her late father shared with her stepmother brings its own challenges. For one, her stepmother has an affinity for German soldiers and entertains them frequently. She is abusive and degrading and often reminds Elsa she is not wanted. 

Elsa sees Sadie through the sewer grate and the two become entwined in each other’s lives. Elsa risks much to bring Sadie and those living with her food while Sadie does her best to try to figure out what their next move is going to be. 

As deplorable as Sadie’s conditions are, I love the growth we see in her. I don’t find her to be a spoiled character in the beginning but losing her father early on and taking on the strength of her mother, we see a beautiful woman emerging. She doesn’t take anything for granted (how could she) and yet, is willing to risk much to free them all from living in the sewer. 

Elsa also is another unspoiled character and yet we see her world grow from just herself and her harsh existence with a stepmother who hates her to a much bigger world, helping Sadie and coming to terms with her “lavish” lifestyle. She uses her blessings to be a blessing and that made me completely love her. 

The strength of the human spirit cannot be denied here. By the end of the book, when we discover what happened with both women and how they both fared, I was truly touched. This is a very moving story full of heart and hope. 

My rating: :star: :star: :star: :star: :star: 

Posted in Bookish and Bingeable

Ice Out

Posted on by Vikki Lynn Sorensen

By: Susan Speranza

Francesca Bodin has a near-perfect life as an accomplished music teacher and professional flutist living in the Vermont countryside with her husband Ben, and their four-year old daughter, Addie. This ends suddenly when a snowmobiling accident traps the three of them in a frozen lake. Ben, after escaping onto the ice, leaves her and Addie to die.

Francesca believes she sees their dog pull Addie from the lake and drag her into the nearby woods. Desperate to help her daughter, she crawls from the icy waters and follows them. Once she enters the forest, however, she finds herself trapped in a sinister, dream-like world where night never ends, where Addie’s whereabouts remain hidden from her, and where she encounters a group of women who, like Francesca, have been left to die and now seek to unleash their revenge on those who have harmed them. When they have Ben in their sights, Francesca realizes that if she is ever to escape this nightmare and save her daughter, she must first save the husband who abandoned them. 

If I had to sum up my initial reaction to this book, it would be one phrase – What the…..? And not in a good way!

I must have missed the point of this. Francesca falls through the ice at the beginning of the book. Then it takes most of the book for her to get out of the ice all the while reliving her life in flashbacks. A very normal, ordinary life. This takes so long by the time I got to the end of her part, I was a little muffed to discover that we now had to read Ben’s side of the story. 

Thankfully, Ben’s side doesn’t take as long. 

But then, it goes into this weird fantasy world that makes no sense about this group of women led by a  White Witch who encourages this group of women to some sort of strange afterlife torturing and “killing” of the men who killed them. 

Or something like it. 

Then the story comes into read time where we learn Ben left her on the ice just because he was scared (what a guy!) and the book ends not really on a great note? 

I really didn’t understand the point of this book. What story was being told? I couldn’t really grasp a theme or reason and couldn’t really relate to any of it. 

My rating: :star:

Posted in Bookish and Bingeable

Dunmoor

Posted on by Vikki Lynn Sorensen

By: London Clarke

England, 1818. Lady Helena Winters hasn’t seen her husband in over a year—not since he disappeared without a trace. Torn between seeking a new purpose for her life and longing for her husband to return, Helena travels with her father to Dunmoor House for a fundraising ball. Although the estate was once her husband’s ancestral home, it has recently been purchased by Luke Lennox, a gentleman planning to establish a foundling hospital.

Helena quickly finds herself battling memories of life with her husband and searching for answers to what might have happened to him. Even so, she is drawn to Luke Lennox and his dream of saving and educating children—a passion she shares.

Within Dunmoor’s decaying walls lies a long and sordid history, a legacy of evildoers perpetrating unspeakable acts of wickedness. Now, the corridors echo with voices. Vines grow inside the house, and shadowy figures plague the children at night.

But in the dark forest on the edge of the property, a terrible secret awaits, and what Luke and Helena uncover there will endanger both their lives.

NOTE: Thanks to NetGalley for an eARC in exchange for an honest review.

Read with the lights ON!

Last night, I sat up reading this book, doing the “just one more chapter” thing until it was well past midnight. I’m a huge fan of gothic horror/suspense/ghost stories and this one was right up my alley. 

I was drawn quickly into this story, into every character and their lives. I love Helena’s strength, charisma, intelligence and compassion. I totally fell for Luke and his wanting to save the world attitude. His friend, Alex, provided comic relief as well as that reckless hero figure. The backstory was wonderful, filled with curses and folklore. I love when folklore is written in such a way that it gives life to inanimate objects. I never look at a tree the same way again!

The settings were very well written. I love when a scene in a story’s setting is cold, damn and chilly and I find myself reaching for a cup of tea and a blanket. It’s the perfect marriage between setting and suspense that leaves me wondering if the chill running down my spine is from terror or from the cold. 

Some potentially triggering moments…I understood the folklore to be very dark, very tragic, and very sinister. However, some of the human suffering factors, especially where the children were concerned, was a bit much. It’s not a hidden fact that orphans in the 1800’s were treated horribly.  That being said, I understand the author is also trying to bring attention to the very real modern day problem of sex trafficking. Kudos to her for doing that so well with this story. 

And that ending!! Woah! I’m already there for the next book and new adventures with Helena and Luke. 

My rating – :star: :star: :star: :star: