Book Review: When We Believed in Mermaids by Barbara O'Neal @barbaraoneal

 

When We Believed in Mermaids

By Barbara O'Neal 

Her sister has been dead for fifteen years when she sees her on the TV news…

Josie Bianci was killed years ago on a train during a terrorist attack. Gone forever. It’s what her sister, Kit, an ER doctor in Santa Cruz, has always believed. Yet all it takes is a few heart-wrenching seconds to upend Kit’s world. Live coverage of a club fire in Auckland has captured the image of a woman stumbling through the smoke and debris. Her resemblance to Josie is unbelievable. And unmistakable. With it comes a flood of emotions—grief, loss, and anger—that Kit finally has a chance to put to rest: by finding the sister who’s been living a lie.

After arriving in New Zealand, Kit begins her journey with the memories of the past: of days spent on the beach with Josie. Of a lost teenage boy who’d become part of their family. And of a trauma that has haunted Kit and Josie their entire lives.

Now, if two sisters are to reunite, it can only be by unearthing long-buried secrets and facing a devastating truth that has kept them apart far too long. To regain their relationship, they may have to lose everything.

 Book Rating:

📚📚📚📚📚 = I could not put this book down. I Highly Recommend.

📚📚📚📚 = A really great read.

📚📚📚 = It was enjoyable.

📚📚 = It was okay.

📚 = Um...! 😕

My Review

When We Believed in Mermaids 

📚📚📚📚📚

It isn't often that a book leaves me truly speechless, but in the case of When We Believed in Mermaids, I am finding it terribly difficult to find the right words that would explain how utterly amazing this novel is. It is a voyage of discover, and yet it is also one that will change all of the characters lives forever. 

I really don't know what else to say without giving away massive spoilers, it is perhaps suffice to say that this novel is one in a million and it is deserving of all the recognition it has received.

A truly great book.

You can find it over on Amazon 

Barbara O'Neal is the author of eleven novels of women's fiction, including How to Bake a Perfect Life and The Lost Recipe for Happiness. Her award-winning books have been published in more than a dozen countries, including France, England, Poland, Australia, Turkey, Italy, Germany, and Brazil. She lives in the beautiful city of Colorado Springs with her beloved, a British endurance athlete who vows he'll never lose his accent.

Book Review: The Horse Whisperer by Nicholas Evans

 

The Horse Whisperer

By Nicholas Evans

• Publisher : Dell Publishing Company; later printing edition (1 Nov. 1996)
• 
  

A forty-ton truck hurtles out of control on a snowy country road, a teenage girl on horseback in its path. In a few terrible seconds the life of a family is shattered. And a mother's quest begins -- to save her maimed daughter and a horse driven mad by pain. It is an odyssey that will bring her to...

The Horse Whisperer

He is the stuff of legend. His voice can calm wild horses and his touch heal broken spirits. For secrets uttered softly into pricked and troubled ears, such men were once called Whisperers. Now Tom Booker, the inheritor of this ancient gift, is to meet his greatest challenge.

Annie Graves has traveled across a continent with her daughter, Grace, and their wounded horse, Pilgrim, to the Booker ranch in Montana. Annie has risked everything -- her career, her marriage, her comfortable life--in her desperate belief that the Whisperer can help them. The accident has turned Pilgrim savage. He is now so demented and dangerous that everyone says he should be destroyed. But Annie won't give up on him, for she feels his fate is inextricably entwined with that of her daughter, who has retreated into a heartrending, hostile silence. Annie knows that if the horse dies, something in Grace will die too.

In the weeks to come, under the massive sky of the Rocky Mountain Front, all their lives--including Tom Booker's--will be transformed forever in a way none could have foretold. At once an epic love story and a gripping adventure, The Horse Whisperer weaves an extraordinary tale of healing and redemption--a magnificent emotional journey that explores our ancient bonds with earth and sky and hearts untamed. It is a stirring elegy to the power of belief and self-discovery, to hopes lost and found again.

 Book Rating:

📚📚📚📚📚 = I could not put this book down. I Highly Recommend.

📚📚📚📚 = A really great read.

📚📚📚 = It was enjoyable.

📚📚 = It was okay.

📚 = Um...! 😕

My Review 

The Horse Whisperer

 📚📚📚📚📚

I first read this book a long, long time ago. In fact I think I might have the first edition hidden somewhere in my overflowing bookcases. Nevertheless, I felt compelled to read it again and I bought a copy for my kindle. I had not forgotten how emotional this story is, but I had forgotten the sense of realism, the deep connection that I had with all of the characters. From Grace, to Tom, their stories, and the story of Pilgrim are all entwined.

This is a real tear jerker so be ready with a box of tissues because you are really going to need them. 

If you enjoy equine novels (where the author clearly knows what he is talking about) a tragic love affair and an unforgettable story then you must read this book. You life with be the richer for it.

You can find it over on Amazon

Nicholas Evans is one of Britain's best-loved authors. His previous four novels, The Horse Whisperer, The Loop, The Smoke Jumper and The Divide, have been acclaimed international bestsellers, translated into 36 languages. The Horse Whisperer alone has sold 14 million copies worldwide, and was made into a celebrated movie directed by Robert Redford.

Nicholas Evans studied at Oxford University and worked as a newspaper reporter and television screenwriter before turning to fiction. He is married to singer/songwriter Charlotte Gordon Cumming.