Susan Meissner – 5/5 Stars
Read this if you:
· enjoy historical fiction but want a change of scenery
· love reading about an MC who takes fate into their own hands
· are a sucker for a happy ending
Synopsis:
Sophie Whalen is an Irish immigrant living in a New York tenement that is so dire, she jumps at the opportunity to marry a man she doesn’t know by answering a newspaper ad. When she arrives in San Francisco to meet her new husband, he is just as handsome as his photo but he is incredibly secretive and all Sophie truly knows is he is a widower with a five year old daughter, Kat, who hasn’t spoken since her mother passed. As Sophie develops a love for Kat and begins to settle into her new life, she also discovers that her husband is not who he seems. This discovery comes to a head on the day of a devastating earthquake, sending her on a journey the will force her to overcome all of her fears.
My thoughts on the book:
Okay wow, this book was like nothing I’ve ever really read before. From the cover it seems like a run of the mill historical fiction but the historical part had way less affect on the plot than I thought. The first half of this book was so fast-paced, I could not put it down. The ending plateaus a bit but by that point I was already so invested in the storyline, I didn’t need much to keep me interested. Sophie is such a dynamic character that was so well developed, I felt like I knew her and her struggles and I was rooting for her the whole book.
There is a bit of a plot twist at the end of the book that I thought would be much more dramatic (because of how crazy the rest of the story was) but since this was overall quite a rollercoaster, I appreciated something more expected happening!