DNF Discussions: The Summer Garden by Paullina Simons

The Summer Garden by Paullina Simons
Book 3 in The Bronze Horseman series
e-Book and Paperback; 752 pages
William Morrow Paperbacks
June 21, 2011
DNF

Genre: Historical Fiction

Source: Received from William Morrow for review

Book Blurb:

Through years of war and devastation, Tatiana and Alexander suffered the worst the twentieth century had to offer. Miraculously reunited in America, they now have a beautiful son, Anthony, the gift of a love strong enough to survive the most terrible upheavals. Though they are still young, the ordeals they endured have changed them--and after living apart in a world laid waste, they must now find a way to live together in postwar America.

With the Cold War rising, dark forces at work in their adopted country threaten their lives, their family, and their hard-won peace. To regain the happiness they once knew, to wash away the lingering pain of the past, two lovers grown distant must somehow forge a new life . . .or watch the ghosts of their yesterdays destroy their firstborn son.

The Summer Garden . . . their odyssey is just beginning.

Oh how I wanted to love this story!  I really, really did!  And I gave it such a valiant effort – I’ve been attempting to go back and finish this book four times since I started it in 2014 and I’ve only made it 33% of the way through, which in a book of this length is about 250 pages.  I LOVED the first two books, The Bronze Horseman and Tatiana and Alexander (my reviews are linked).  However, The Summer Garden just didn’t do the same for me.  This book felt SLLLLOOOOWWWW….  Where the other two books zipped along and had a lot of action (both of the battlefield and romance variety), The Summer Garden just plods nowhere.  Alexander is simply brooding and inside himself, Tatiana keeps worrying about him, and at least as far as I made it, nothing else happens.  It is BORING.  I understand that the author is attempting to deal with all the psychological drama that they encountered during the events of the first two books, but I just couldn’t become interested in these characters that I had loved in the first two novels.  While I want to know what the end result is for these two, I can’t push myself through another 500 pages of what I read so far.

Copyright © 2017 by The Maiden’s Court

DNF Discussion: The Shadow Sister by Lucinda Riley

The Shadow Sister by Lucinda Riley
Book 3 in The Seven Sisters series
e-book, hardcover, 512 pages
Atria Books
April 18, 2017
DNF

Genre: Historical Fiction

Source: Received from the publisher for review

Book Blurb:

Travel through the lush English countryside and explore the magnificent estates of the British aristocracy in this next spellbinding love story in The Seven Sisters series by #1 internationally bestselling author Lucinda Riley.

Star D’Aplièse is at a crossroads in her life after the sudden death of her beloved father—the elusive billionaire, affectionately called Pa Salt by his six daughters, all adopted from across the four corners of the world. He has left each of them a clue to her true heritage, and Star nervously decides to follow hers, which leads her to an antiquarian bookshop in London, and the start of a whole new world.

A hundred years earlier, headstrong and independent Flora MacNichol vows she will never marry. She is happy and secure in her home in England’s picturesque Lake District—just a stone’s throw away from the residence of her childhood idol, Beatrix Potter—when machinations lead her to London, and the home of one of Edwardian society’s most notorious society hostesses, Alice Keppel. Flora is torn between passionate love and her duty to her family, but finds herself a pawn in a larger game. That is, until a meeting with a mysterious gentleman unveils the answers that Flora has been searching for her whole life...

As Star learns more of Flora’s incredible journey, she too goes on a voyage of discovery, finally stepping out of the shadow of her sister and opening herself up to the possibility of love.

I want to first start off by saying that this is NOT a complete review because I did not finish the book.  I completed approximately 60% of the book, and that felt like extensive effort. For those of you that have been with me for awhile now you know how rare it is that I DNF a book. Could I have finished reading this one? Yes, but it was taking so long to slog through the pages and I quite honestly was struggling to find interest to pick it back up again.

I like the premise of the series – each book focusing on one of the sisters that were adopted by a man of whom the reader (and the sisters) have little background knowledge of. Each on a quest of discovery of where they come from thus bringing the reader through a contemporary and historical storyline. I have had a lot of success with stories that move between both a history and contemporary timeline in the past, and it worked to some extent here, but I found the historical story line vastly more interesting than that of the contemporary. The reason for this…the main character Star. I found her SO boring. She had no personality and every time she was in a scene I felt like a wet blanket was being thrown over the plot. In that modern storyline I actually enjoyed the two male side characters the most: Mouse and Orlando, they at least had fascinating and quirky personalities. The historical was definitely the stronger storyline of the two. While Flora occasionally frustrated me, I felt it was appropriate to the storyline and she had a lot going on in her life. I felt for her and how her heart was ripped apart as she tried to make the right decisions in life. Basically I was interested in finding out what ultimately happened to Flora, but could have cared less about what happened to Star. Every time we emerged out of the historical storyline the plot came to a screeching halt and I would put down the book and not be interested in picking it back up. I think that this could have been a much stronger book if the contemporary story line was eliminated.

In case anyone suggests that maybe I would have enjoyed the story more if I had read the first 2 books in the series, I don’t think that this at all affected how I felt about the story. There is quite a lot of backstory provided and even information given on what happened to the sisters of the first two books that I was comfortable with the timeline.

Copyright © 2017 by The Maiden’s Court

DNF Discussion: The Valley by Helen Bryan

The Valley by Helen Bryan
Book 1 in The Valley trilogy
e-book, paperback, and audio, 607 pages
Lake Union Publishing
July 19, 2016
DNF

Genre: Historical Fiction

Source: Received from the publisher for review for tour

Book Blurb:

Left suddenly penniless, the Honorable Sophia Grafton, a viscount’s orphaned daughter, sails to the New World to claim the only property left to her name: a tobacco plantation in the remote wilds of colonial Virginia. Enlisting the reluctant assistance of a handsome young French spy—at gunpoint— she gathers an unlikely group of escaped slaves and indentured servants, each seeking their own safe haven in the untamed New World.

What follows will test her courage and that of her companions as they struggle to survive a journey deep into a hostile wilderness and eventually forge a community of homesteads and deep bonds that will unite them for generations.

The first installment in an epic historical trilogy by Helen Bryan, the bestselling author of War Brides and The Sisterhood, The Valley is a sweeping, unforgettable tale of hardship, tenacity, love, and heartache.

I want to first start off by saying that this is NOT a review – I did not read enough of this book to feel comfortable enough to call this a review.  I completed just about 100 pages of this 600 page book before ultimately calling it quits – and for those of you that have been with me for awhile now you know how rare that is.  In fact, it has only happened once before and that was with Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel, which I did ultimately finish with the help of the audio version.  I did not make the decision lightly as I am one of those from the camp that intends to finish every book I begin, but this one was just a mess from the start.  Before ultimately making the decision to put the book down I was conflicted, but talking with several other bloggers who were reading it, were at a further page count than I was, and were still also struggling, I made the decision to quit while I was ahead.  So, I wanted to share some thoughts and encourage you to leave comments on your thoughts on the book if you have read it. 

My first issue was with the writing – it could use a serious editing job – and not just for small grammatical things either.  There were entire sections of the novel (even just within those first 100 pages) that could have been purged and the story would have been better for it.  There were even sentences that appeared almost word for word a couple paragraphs after they first appeared on the page, and this happened over and over.  This book quite likely had no reason to be 600+ pages.  The writing was weighed down and clunky and sentence structures were difficult on the ears, such as:

“Sophia felt herself happily in looks tonight and, observing the other girls and the fashionable ladies, saw that her own dress was much the prettiest.”

There are areas where there is a lot of detail – which would be great if it was something that mattered, rather than just superfluous  comments about how the clothing appeared. 

Quite frankly, those first 100 pages didn’t seem to matter to me at all and made no positive impression on me to keep reading.  Considering that this is a sixth of the book, I would think that by that point there should have been something in the book that mattered to the plot and I should have been made to care about what was happening.  I simply had no drive to pick up the book again.  Additionally, if I hadn’t taken notes on this while reading I would have had no recollection of what happened in these 100 pages, which tells you how much it stood out to me.  From what I gather from other reviewers, the story that was promised in the book blurb, which made me want to pick up the book to begin with, didn’t even begin to get moving for almost another 150 pages after the point in which I stopped!  So that means it was almost a third of the way through the book before it really got anywhere – which makes me glad I put it down when I did.

I still find the premise intriguing and if it went through a much more rigorous editing process I might have had a chance of enjoying it.

 

 

Copyright © 2016 by The Maiden’s Court