THE LOST ORPHAN BY STACEY HALLS [ARC REVIEW]

I received a copy of this book via Netgalley in exchange for my honest thoughts and review. All thoughts and opinions expressed in this review are solely my own.

A mother’s love knows no bounds…

London, 1754. Six years after leaving her newborn, Clara, at London’s Foundling Hospital, young Bess Bright returns to reclaim the illegitimate daughter she has never really known. Dreading the worst—that Clara has died in care—the last thing she expects to hear is that her daughter has already been reclaimed. Her life is turned upside down as she tries to find out who has taken her little girl—and why.

Less than a mile from Bess’s lodgings in a quiet town house, a wealthy widow barely ventures outside. When her close friend—an ambitious doctor at the Foundling Hospital—persuades her to hire a nursemaid for her young daughter, she is hesitant to welcome someone new into her home and her life. But her past is threatening to catch up with her—and will soon tear her carefully constructed world apart.

Set against the vibrant backdrop of Georgian London, The Lost Orphan explores families and secrets, class and power, and how the pull of motherhood cuts across them all.

 

My Rating:

This book was an intriguing story and overall was a book I quite enjoyed! It was a beautiful tale of motherhood and shows a fascinating and more in-depth look at London and the Foundling Hospital in the 1750’s. The whole premise of someone having claimed another woman’s child as their own and then searching for that child. Only to then find out you know the woman who has claimed your child as their own! But from there it fell flat for me as it’s then just a story of a child torn between two women! Which is totally fine but I found that I wasn’t expecting more and kept waiting for a bit more than that.  But overall this is a enjoyable historical fiction novel.

 

 

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FAITH TAKING FLIGHT BY JULIE MURPHY [ARC REVIEW]

Hello Lovelies! It’s time for a book review!

First up I’m just going to let you all know that I received a Digital ARC of this book from Edelweiss from the publisher in exchange for my honest review. Everything I share here are my own thoughts and opinions on the book I’ve read.

PLEASE NOTE THIS REVIEW CONTAINS SOME SMALL SPOILERS FROM THE PROLOGUE OF THE BOOK

SYNOPSIS:

Faith Herbert is a pretty regular teen. When she’s not hanging out with her two best friends, Matt and Ches, she’s volunteering at the local animal shelter or obsessing over the long-running teen drama The Grove.

So far, her senior year has been spent trying to sort out her feelings for her maybe-crush Johnny and making plans to stay close to Grandma Lou after graduation. Of course, there’s also that small matter of recently discovering she can fly….

When the fictional world of The Grove crashes into Faith’s reality as the show relocates to her town, she can’t believe it when TV heroine Dakota Ash takes a romantic interest in her.

But her fandom-fueled daydreams aren’t enough to distract Faith from the fact that first animals, then people, have begun to vanish from the town. Only Faith seems able to connect the dots to a new designer drug infiltrating her high school.

But when her investigation puts the people she loves in danger, she will have to confront her hidden past and use her newfound gifts—risking everything to save her friends and beloved town.

 

MY REVIEW

I was so excited when I saw this book was available as an ARC. I really have come to like Julie Murphy’s writing and I really appreciate the normalcy Murphy brings with fat/plus size characters in her books! As a curvy plus size person myself books like hers were something I wish I had when I was a little younger because yes, you see that slight discomfort and such with their bodies (like every human has once in a while) in her stories but most of all its acceptance and loving who they are and not changing that for anyone. Its just normal and I love it. Because everyone has different bodies and thats ok!

RATING: 3 Stars

That being said my overall rating for this book is only 3 stars and here is why.

I really enjoyed the book but I’m not sure it’s something I would read again. The characters were great (I LOVE Faith so much) and the world setup was well done and believable! The book also had its fair share of intense and even creepy, heart racing scenes (no spoilers on that here). But my biggest issue with the book unfortunately was the superhero plot element in itself. The Prologue drew me in like a mouse to cheese. It  was a case of insta-love with Faith and her adorable, nerdy self. We go from an intense prologue where Faith believes she is being recruited to learn more about her superpowers but in all reality it turns into this scenario where she is stripped of her name and hidden from the rest of the world and is now an experiment! Crazy right? It made me so excited for the rest of the book and excited for what would happen but then it just stopped? The next thing that happens is almost like a genre switch. We get crazy strong superpower beginning then it goes to Faith living her life as a pretty much normal teenager. Which normally yes, cause she doesn’t want people to know about her powers. But that element didn’t just come across right and the plot fell flat because of it. It just unfortunately felt like two stories meshed together and they ALMOST work but it doesn’t quite fit. For the most part the novel is a super cute coming of age story about a bisexual, plus size, nerdy girl in her senior year of high school who meets her celebrity crush and they fall in love. Which is GREAT and super cute but it felt like the superhero element was an afterthought where it was this beautiful coming of age story but then at random points it was like ‘Oh and I can fly but I can’t tell anyone’ and thats it and its not until the last 8 or so chapters that we begin to see a lot of that superhero plot line. We do have some parts throughout filling in gaps about what happened between Chapter 1 and the Prologue but I just wish there was more to it.

So OVERALL. Super cute coming of age story with a plus size, bisexual high school senior who is trying to figure out her life but it just fell flat when it came to the superpowers.