The book pics this month are guaranteed to pull at your emotions. From the latest dual timeline novel from Noelle Salazar, The Lies We Leave Behind, to Alison Espach’s The Wedding People, and finally Echoes of Us by Joy Jordan-Lake. If you need a good book to cozy up with in front of a warm fire (or on the couch in a cozy blanket), then this list, while short, has three wonderful books to enjoy.
The Lies We Leave Behind | Noelle Salazar
The Lies We Leave Behind weaves between the past and present as a brave flight nurse, Kate Campbell, goes back and forth to the front to bring back wounded soldiers. William, one of her charges (who we meet in the present day after he’s recently lost his wife Olivia to cancer), instantly falls for her. While Kate is resistant at first, she eventually falls for him… the only problem is she can’t tell him who she is or what secrets she’s kept buried from, even those she calls her friends
This book will keep you ensnared until the very end (although some of the scenes detailing what Kate endures later in the book I had skim.) While the book was very engaging, and the characters of Kate and William are ones to root for, I found the ending bittersweet.
“Noelle Salazar has an unerring instinct for writing tough women with big hearts . . . The Lies We Leave Behind is a globe-spanning wartime journey filled with pathos and heart!” —Kate Quinn, New York Times bestselling author of The Rose Code
For fans of Kate Quinn and Beatriz Williams, this sweeping story follows a fearless nurse who must leave love behind when duty calls her back to the front.
Somewhere in the Pacific, 1943. Kate Campbell is a nurse who bravely flies back and forth from the front to rescue wounded soldiers, amid long days, harsh conditions, and often dangerous weather. Driven by a deep personal need to help in the war effort, she is conflicted when an injury results in her reassignment to the relative comfort of the English countryside.
Love has never been part of her plan, but despite herself, she falls for an officer with three bullet wounds, startling blue eyes, and a wicked sense of humor. For the first time, Kate sees a future far from the horrors of war and hate. But before she can pursue it, a secret from her past calls her to duty, and she’ll have to travel back into danger one more time to rescue a part of herself she’d left behind. But will she make it back? And will that future still be waiting for her if she does?
Rating: A
The Wedding People | Alison Espach
Review
A propulsive and uncommonly wise novel about one unexpected wedding guest and the surprising people who help her start anew.
It’s a beautiful day in Newport, Rhode Island, when Phoebe Stone arrives at the grand Cornwall Inn wearing a green dress and gold heels, not a bag in sight, alone. She’s immediately mistaken by everyone in the lobby for one of the wedding people, but she’s actually the only guest at the Cornwall who isn’t here for the big event. Phoebe is here because she’s dreamed of coming for years—she hoped to shuck oysters and take sunset sails with her husband, only now she’s here without him, at rock bottom, and determined to have one last decadent splurge on herself. Meanwhile, the bride has accounted for every detail and every possible disaster the weekend might yield except for, well, Phoebe and Phoebe’s plan—which makes it that much more surprising when the two women can’t stop confiding in each other.
In turns absurdly funny and devastatingly tender, Alison Espach’s The Wedding People is ultimately an incredibly nuanced and resonant look at the winding paths we can take to places we never imagined—and the chance encounters it sometimes takes to reroute us.
Rating: A
Echoes of Us | Joy Jordan-Lake
Echoes of Us is a deeply compelling story that weaves together the past and present. Set on St. Simons Island, Georgia, an area that the author spent many a happy summer, we meet three very different men, a Tennessee farm boy, a Jewish student from Cambridge, and a German POW who all have one connection in common, a young woman named Joanie.
In the present day, we meet two sisters, Hadley and Kitzie, who while planning a reunion of the descendants of the three men, and secrets from the past are soon revealed.
This book is a must read for all those who enjoy books centered around WWII with ties to the present day.
In the midst of World War II, a Tennessee farm boy, a Jewish Cambridge student, and a German POW forge a connection that endures—against all odds.
But now everything that Will Dobbins, Dov Silverberg, and Hans Hessler fought for is at risk as their descendants clash for control of the corporation they founded together. In an attempt to remake its tattered corporate image, the firm hires event planner Hadley Jacks and her sister Kitzie to organize a reunion for the families on St. Simons Island, Georgia, the place that changed all three men’s lives forever.
As Hadley and her sister delve into the friends’ past, they uncover the life of the courageous young woman who links them all together…and the old wounds that could tear everything apart.
Told in dual timelines spanning World War II and the present, Echoes of Us follows the ripple effects of war, the bonds that outlast it, and the hope that ultimately carries us forward.
Rating: A
I’ve also added a book that both The Avid Pen (and myself) along with artist Marine Devine was mentioned in. Do check it out.
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