Tag: Fiction

The Burning

🌟🌟🌟/5

Title: The Burning

Author: Laura Bates

Pub date: April 07, 2020

Genre: YA Fiction

“We are the granddaughters of the witches you could not burn. And we’re not putting up with it anymore.”

Anna and her mother make a new home in Scotland hundreds of miles and a new country away from the home she grew up in. Told from the perspective of Anna Clark as her and her mother navigate a new life together without her father, who has passed away, trying to put her past of online sexual harassment and abuse by her friends and school mates behind her. They hope by erasing all of Anna’s social media, and moving, the problem will go away on it’s own.

They move into an old cottage by the sea, which Anna finds once belonged to a woman accused of witchcraft, and their stories begin weaving together from there, with Anna having troubling, vivid flashbacks of the woman’s life.

While I am not the target audience for this book, as a woman, I connected to it in more than one way. The readers are taken down the paths of two women, while hundreds of years apart, find themselves in similar situations, discovering just how powerful, and detrimental a rumor can be. This book would be beneficial for any woman to read, with a powerful story that is relevant to our day and age, and deals with the many faces of abuses young women have to deal with, Online bullying & Harassment, Slut-shaming, rape, victim blaming, just to name a few. These topics are dealt with in the present day of Anna’s life, and the life of the accused witch that lived hundreds of years ago.

I found the way Bates weaved the women’s stories together quite lovely, and the “visions” not only fit within the book at perfect times, they fit the story so well that both of the narratives had my heart breaking for these girls at the same time.

This book is a slow burn, taking quite some time for the reader to discover just exactly what Anna was running from in her previous life, and while I enjoyed this book, I found it incredibly tedious waiting for the author to unravel the details. I was expecting more of a climax, an AH-HA moment that felt like it never came to fruition, and the story just fizzled out. All in all it was an ok debut that dealt with important subject matter relevant to girls in our day and age, however I felt that it fell flat for me in more ways than one.

**Thank you Netgalley and publishers for my advanced copy of this book in exchange for an honest review**

The Burning will be available on April 07, 2020

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Wild at Heart

🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟/5

“I love seeing this.” I curl my gloved hand around his. “Thank you.” Is this what life with Jonah means? Will he whisk me away to remote places and show me awe-inspiring wonders? Things I had no idea about and things I may have heard about but but never realized how much I would appreciate? Because if that’s the case, I’ll never get enough of this new life with him.

It’s fine. I’m fine. I just have the most head -pounding book hangover of all time….but I’ll be fine.

Wild at Heart was my most anticipated read of 2020, and when you get the ARC of your most anticipated book of the YEAR, you throw everything else away and read it!

Have you ever moved to a new place and felt so lost, amazed, alone, happy, confused, homesick, and every other emotion possible for your heart to feel? That is how I felt reading this book. KA Tucker has done it again. She has captured the pristine beauty of the Alaskan frontier with such poetic ease that it made my mouth water, and consumed my heart with wanderlust.

I was wondering as I started this book if any newly introduced characters could live up to Wren,(who I miss, by the way, because, YES, it IS possible to fall in love with a fictional man!) Agnes and Mabel, but I found myself falling in love, yet again, with them all. The Curmudgeon was my favorite, he captured my heart with his mean, stubborn personality, and found that he was easily my favorite character in the book.

Wild at Heart is a slow burn, with delicious morsels of love, adventure, and new family scattered throughout so perfectly, that it had me wanting more. I finished this book in ONE DAY, I could not put it down, and I have the WORST book hangover of all time, wondering if there will be a novella sequel soon, so we can catch up on Jonah and Calla’s new life they have built together.

It is rare that I find a book that elicits such feelings within my heart, and I found myself laughing, crying, and on edge more than once throughout this book, especially when it came to the BEARS! I love that Calla has found her own voice, strength and purpose within Alaska and her new home!

Wild at Heart is just as amazing as The Simple Wild with complex, fun, lovable characters, a beautiful setting, and a love story that will make your heart swell as you realize you have fallen in love with everyone in the book…..again!

I 100% recommend this book, It will leave a lasting impression on your heart that is not easily shaken.

Wild at Heart will be available on 2-18-20. I hope you pick up this book, and I hope you love it as much as I did! Let me know, I would love to talk about it with you….or ANYONE! Yes, it was that good.

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