Review: The Ancestor

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Rating: ★★★★★

I received this book for free free as part of an Instagram tour (TLC Book Tours specifically) I did to promote the book.

Wow. This was one of the most fascinating novels I have read in a long time. 

First off, I love that the book description does not give away too much. You get to discover the truth about Bert’s family on your own. 

It’s really hard to describe this book because it is so unique and I don’t want to spoil anything. There’s some gothic suspense, but also some family tragedy. Then underneath that there is the element of genetics. It just makes an intriguing combination. 

The book is also so beautifully written and encapsulates the creepy gothic vibe perfectly. The author is an amazing storyteller. 

Lastly, the book has some wonderful descriptions of books and reading. One of the characters states:

“These books are like living creatures to me. Caring for them takes a great deal of time. I repair damaged spines…No one ever thinks that books need tenderness, but they do, quite a lot, in fact”

pg 117

At another point the main character states:

“Stories became a place of respite, a refuge from the thoughts that swirled through my mind like acid in a stomach. I clung to these books with the same obsessive need that I had felt for the genepy, reading them with an addictive greed…Had it not been for my time in bed, I might never have come to love books as I had, or developed the desire to write about my own tragic life”

pg 226

Overall, this is a book you have to read for yourself. I know there will be some people who read it and won’t like it and that’s totally okay. But others will just devour it. It’s a very different book so the only way to know is to read it for yourself. 

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Review: The Fashion Intruder

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Rating: ★★★★

I received this book for free from the author in exchange for an honest review. 

I was so excited to read this because it was about a transactional lawyer who leaves the legal world for the fashion world. As a law student who loves fashion, this book was right up my alley!

The book started off a bit messy. There were a lot of little one or two paragraphs from other characters’ viewpoints which made the book a little confusing in the beginning since I had no idea who they were. But once the book and the story got going, it all became much clearer.

I loved how the book showcased the intricacies of the fashion world and all the politics that go into it. The fashion world is definitely tough and this book showed that.

I also enjoyed the jet-setting atmosphere. The main character was always traveling somewhere glamorous. As an American, I envy how easy it is to travel from one country to another in Europe. 

There was a reference to Lana Del Rey that I just have to mention because it was just so perfect. The novel states, “Although Sofia could swear she’d put her phone on silent, she suddenly heard the loud sound of Lana Del Rey’s ‘Salvatore’” (156). That song was so perfect for the character since she’s Italian and “Salvatore” is such a dreamy song that makes you wish you were in Italy.

Overall, this was a fun look into the European fashion world. It’s has a The Devil Wears Prada vibe but set in Europe. 

Review: The Echoes of Love

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Rating: ★★★

I received this book for free from the author in exchange for an honest review.

This is an odd book for me to rate because I found the first half of the book to be 2 stars, but the second half was 4 stars. My final rating for this is 3 stars, which is the average of the two.

On an unrelated note, when I first saw that one of the epigraphs was an excerpt from Burnt Norton I was really happy. I love that poem mainly because Lana Del Rey recites it for her interlude on her Honeymoon album and I love Lana Del Rey.

So the first half of the book was 2 things: slow and cringe worthy.

In regards to its slowness, I thought that it took way too long to get to Tuscany. It took nearly 150 pages for our main character, Venetia, to finally get there. I felt like the story didn’t actually start until she arrived. A lot of the first half of the book was Venetia being wishy washy towards Paolo. She would think to herself, I love Paolo. Then the next page she would be like, I don’t love Paolo. That continued regularly until about half way through and made the book go by so slowly. I got pretty annoyed with her because she could not make up her mind. A good portion of the first half could have been removed because it was all really repetitive.

As for the cringe worthy parts, there were two lines in particular that drove me nuts. The first line described Venetia as having “neither racial or social prejudices” (41). Like okay. That’s kind of an odd thing to say in a book. The second line was when Venetia asked the Chinese fortune teller, “How come you speak such perfect English” (98). As someone who is half Asian, I really have an issue with that. It just adds to the perpetual foreigner stereotype that gets attached to Asians. It wasn’t even a necessary question for the story. Another thing that had me cringing was how predatory the males were in the beginning. Count Umberto was so horrible and even Paolo was a bit too much with his constant demands.

But then the book moved to Tuscany and things got a whole lot better. Paolo and Venetia became less annoying. There were conflicts which finally got the story moving (I loved Allegra’s character. She was really interesting). The romance finally heated up. A lot of the time it reminded me of Jane Eyre and Beauty and the Beast, which isn’t surprising considering Beauty and the Beast (the original fairy tale version) is mentioned on page 304 and Jane Eyre is mentioned in the author’s Q and A at the end of the book. I could definitely see the inspiration and since I love both of those I did end up enjoying the second half.

As for the big reveal at the end, I had already figured it out by that point so I wasn’t super surprised by it.

Overall, this wasn’t the best romance due to its overly long beginning but the second half saved this book from becoming a disaster. I’m am curious to read more from Hannah Fielding because out of all her books on Goodreads this one has the lowest average rating of only 3.66. All her other books have an average rating of over 4. I’m hoping that this book was just a fluke and not representation of her writing as a whole.

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