3 Books I've Enjoyed So Far This Year
/While I have still been reading regularly this year, it has been much more start-and-stop than last year. (You can see all of the books I read last year here.) However, there have been 3 stand-outs so far this year that I wanted to share with you.
The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart
I don’t recall where I came across The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart by Holly Ringland, but it kept showing up in my recommendations on ebay. One day when I was trying to think of a book to read, I decided to order it. It has been my favorite book of 2021! I will be surprised if something surpasses it. It is quite sad at points, but it is also brilliantly written and a beautiful story of a young woman seeking to find herself. It is set in Australia, which was a really different location than I am familiar with, so that was a fun little surprise. I will leave you with this brief synopsis from Amazon to whet your appetite—”Spanning two decades, set between sugar cane fields by the sea, a native Australian flower farm, and a celestial crater in the central desert, The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart follows Alice’s unforgettable journey, as she learns that the most powerful story she will ever possess is her own.”
The Glittering Hour
I finished The Glittering Hour by Iona Grey a few weeks ago. I found it on a display at the library and ended up really enjoying it. It was one of those books I stayed up late to finish. I am always up for a historical fiction, but this one was set in a time period I don’t have much experience with—1930s & 1940s England. The main character, Selina Lennox, is a Bright Young Thing, but that doesn’t mean she has a perfect or even an easy life. “Spanning two decades and a seismic shift in British history as World War II approaches, Iona Grey's The Glittering Hour is an epic novel of passion, heartache and loss.” I thought it was well written, and I liked how the story unfolded. It was sad at the end but also hopeful and endearing. It would make a great end-of-summer read!
After Alice Fell
After Alice Fell by Kim Taylor Blakemore was such a strange but fascinating book. I read it earlier this year and have periodically thought about it since then. At first, I would have said I didn’t like it, but after finishing it and thinking through some of the discussion questions that were included at the end of the book, I decided that I did like it. At its heart, it is a mystery, but it has elements of a historical fiction based on its setting in New Hampshire after the Civil War. The writing style of it was very different than anything I have read—it was very truncated and although each character is motivated by emotions, they all feel very removed from emotion. It was almost like the main character, Marion, had blinders on. That’s how it felt a bit. Overall, it was an interesting storyline, and it made me think a lot about how we have become disconnected from our dead (and how that’s probably not a good thing, especially in light of the fear mongering surrounding the coronavirus). If you are in the mood for something different as well as a good mystery, you should look into it.
