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Thursday, November 07, 2013

Review of Winter in Full Bloom by Anita Higman

I'm back from a 4 day retreat and on its heels, the birth of a new grandson. Both wonderful events, but I feel like I am still catching up on writerly things like posting on my blog. One of the books I read while in the hospital waiting room was Anita Higman's delightful new novel--Winter in Full Bloom, so I wanted to share this review in hopes you will want to read it too!

Australia is a place my husband would like to explore someday, and after reading this book which begins in Melbourne, I want to go, too! The descriptions of this city and other close-by places in the Down Under are very well done. And I enjoyed learning a little of the Aussie slang for certain words. But, the main attraction of this book is the marvelous story and its unique characters.

The whole story is told in the first person point of view of widow Lily Winters who goes to Melbourne to find her identical twin sister she only recently learned about. What struck me as I leafed through the pages to do this review is how well the author handled the whole story in only Lily's POV, but still made me feel like I knew the other two main characters--the sister, Camille, and Lily's love interest, Marcus Averill--as well as I did Lily. I don't read a lot of first person novels, but would definitely want to read another one by this author. Superb job of writing!

There are also Lily's daughter and Lily's mother and a few other characters. Her mother is so set in her destructive ways, that you know only a miracle can change her, and like many miracles, it is not the way we expect it to happen.

I don't want to give away any of the surprises which bring us to such a satisfying ending, but if you love romance and its happily ever after ending after lots of twists and turns, then I highly recommend this book.

Although it was a gift to review, all opinions are my own.

1 comment:

Cecelia Dowdy said...

This sounds like a good book. I love stories about twins and I'd love to read a book set in Australia! Sounds wonderful. I'll have to keep this novel in mind!