Book Review - The Song of the Jade Lily by Kirsty Manning

 

 

The Song of the Jade Lily by Kirsty Manning is about a young woman, Alexandra, who is trying to find out the truth about her family’s past. In 1939, a young Jewish European refugee named Romy escaped to Shanghai with her family to escape from the growing Nazi influence. While Romy and her family try to acclimate to their new surroundings, Romy befriends her neighbor’s daughter, Li. The pair and their families become close friends and inseparable. However, Shanghai isn’t invisible to the terrors of World War II and its destruction comes to their little corner of the world.  After a devastating act of violence, Li and Romy find their friendship violently torn apart.

In 2016, Alexandra decided to leave her home in London to Australia after experiencing a bad breakup. She decides that spending time with her grandparents, Romy and Wilhelm, would be good for her soul and to help mend her broken heart. Alexandra wants to spend time with her grandparents as her grandfather wasn’t doing too well over the past week. Her grandmother fears that his death might be imminent.

While going in and out of consciousness, Wilhelm lets a secret drop from his past. Alexandra is desperate to learn how it fits into her own past and history. She knows that her mother had struggled in life because she didn’t know her own history of her adoption. Alexandra is determined to find out the truth about her family’s past, so she decides to fly to Shanghai and try to trace her grandparents' past.

I was surprised at how much I enjoyed the novel. The book was a long read but I enjoyed most parts of the book. I did wish at times that the story would pick up pacing wise. The book did go into a lot of details that I thought could have been cut down a bit.  It was told from alternating timelines and narrators. I loved reading about Romy and her time in Shanghai. I felt that those were the best part of the book. I was disappointed that it took Romy so long before she told Alex the truth. I felt that this could have been done earlier instead of drawing it out. I would be open to reading more books by this author.

 

Book Review - The Woman in the Castello by Kelsey James

 

The Woman in the Castello by Kelsey James is about a young woman, Silvia Whitford, who reconnects with her estranged aunt, Gabriella Conti. In 1965, Silvia left behind Los Angeles and traveled to Rome’s famed Cinecittà Studios for a supporting role in a movie. Silvia hopes that this would be her big break and she would be able to save enough money to support her young daughter, Lulu, and her ailing mother.

She is disappointed to learn that production of the movie that she was casted in was canceled. Silvia is desperate for money and doesn’t have much left before she and her family are put out of the hotel they’re staying in. Silvia is ashamed to tell her mother the news and how dire their situation is. She decides that she will reach out to her estranged Italian Aunt Gabriella and ask for help. Silvia is nervous because she has never met her aunt and she knows that her mother and aunt do not get along. When Silvia brings up her aunt, her mother clams up and never explains what drove them apart.

Gabriella Conti lives in a crumbling massive castello near the edge of a volcanic lake. Silvia is hesitant to reach out because of the feud between the two sisters but she finds herself entranced by her aunt. Gabriella was once a charismatic and famous actress. However, Silvia finds it curious that her aunt never leaves the castle, and that the townspeople do not get along with her nor do they ever see Gabriella.  Gabrielle is a woman shrouded in an air of mystery.

As Silvia tours the castle, she is both fascinated with it and terrified of the castle. Especially when Gabriella mentions that there is a ghost haunting the grounds. However, when Silvia gets a second chance to star in a new movie called The Revenge of the Lake Witch, she will need to convince  Gabriella to allow the movie crew to use her castle to film the movie.

Silvia is the main lead in the movie. She is playing an ingenue that is tormented and haunted by the ghost of her beautiful and seductive ancestor. Silvia thought she would be able to reconnect with her aunt when she wasn’t filming. However, Gabriella vanishes and Silvia believes that someone or something is the cause of her aunt’s disappearance. To make matters worse, Silvia is seeing signs that something is amiss and things are happening that makes her believe that person won’t stop at nothing to prevent Silvia from finding her aunt. When Silvia tries to get help to search for her aunt, no one believes her. Even Silvia starts to question her own judgment. Will she be able to figure out what happened to her before it’s too late?

The novel was a cozy read. It felt boring at times because nothing much was happening. I found the ending and the twists to be predictable. I thought the book was going to have a lot more mysterious and spooky elements. There were a few plot points in the book that could be perceived to add excitement to the book but they turned out to be nothing. For example, it was unclear why Silvia thought for certain another female actor was out to get rid of Silvia but there was no evidence of that. It was a bit annoying that Silvia did this several times throughout the story. I didn’t care for any of the main characters because they felt boring and one - dimensional.  Silvia was selfish and unlikeable as a character because of her penchant to overreact and assume the worst without any evidence.  The book is billed as a thriller but it was more of a cozy mystery. I would be open to reading more books by the author but I wouldn’t go out of my way to find her books.       

Book Review - The Last Camellia by Sarah Jio

Photo Credit - Amazon

During World War II, the rare and last surviving camellia specimen of the Middlebury Pink has been hidden away on an  English estate. Flora is an American baker at her struggling family bakery. Someone from an international ring of flower thieves promises Flora a solution for all her problems. All she has to do is pretend to be a nanny for a family and find out where the Middlebury Pink is hidden on the estate. 

Half a century later, a garden designer Addison and her husband, Rex live in the manor owned by Rex's family. Addison immediately falls for the manor's gardens. However, when they come across an old gardener's notebook, they realize they have a mystery on their hands. The notebook chronicles a string of women who have gone missing. Will Flora be able to find the flower and rescue her family? Will Addison be able to solve the mystery behind the missing women?

A few pages into this novel and I couldn't wait to read more. I wanted to know more about the missing women. However, about a third into the novel, I realized the novel kept dragging without any new details to keep me hooked. While the novel solved a few mysteries in the end, I felt like it was too perfect that characters coincidentally just run into ran into each other. I felt like there were too many subplots and none of them were defined enough to be enjoyable.

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