Happy SATURDAY, friends!
It’s the 22nd of the month which means it’s BOOK CLUB DAY!
Who doesn’t love chatting books over the weekend?!
Grab your coffee, cozy blanket, and settle in.
Today is BOOK CLUB #30!
If you would like to read the “rules” of Shay’s Book Club and see a complete list of every book we’ve read as a group along with my personal “star” ratings, they are all RIGHT HERE.
In this blog post and in the comment section, WE WILL BE DISCUSSING SPOILERS. If you are interested in reading this book, you might not want to read below this line. In AUGUST’S BOOK REVIEW later this month, I will give a quick recap and let you know if I recommend the book or not, so if you haven’t read it, you might want to wait until that official BOOK REVIEW because there will be no spoilers and based on that, you can decide whether or not to read the book.
Anything below this though will include spoilers as everyone commenting here has already read the book.
Ready, set, here we go!
This month’s book was…
…When You Loved Me by Beatriz Williams.
Eh, boo.
You guys know this already, but it’s worth repeating…I LOVE BEATRIZ WILLIAMS’ BOOKS! In fact, in 2016, A Hundred Summers was my third favorite book of the year, and then in 2017, The Secret Life of Violet Grant was also my third favorite book of the year. In 2020, her novel Her Last Flight very nearly made the top three, and in 2021, her novel, Our Woman in Moscow was MY FAVORITE BOOK OF THE YEAR (out of 59 books!).
This book didn’t even feel like a Beatriz Williams book to me.
I haven’t love, loved all of her books, but they’ve all at least felt like “her” to me. This one was a big miss. I thought the plot was forced, I thought some of the storylines didn’t complement each other, and I thought it was pretty anticlimactic in the end. I didn’t hate it, it was just “eh” to me.
Here are a few thoughts, and then, I’m really curious to read yours!
#1: I was very intrigued just by the opening scene. Beginning the book with an NFL game is very un-Beatriz Williams to me, so that quickly got my attention. Was that storyline though really relevant/necessary/pertinent/valuable to the plot? I don’t know? At first I was intrigued by this storyline, then I kind of forgot about it, and then, at the end, I realized the author just needed some reason to “pin it” on Ben. It felt forced to me.
#2: Call me crazy, but I enjoyed the “excerpts” from The Great Snow. I could have actually had more of that content. When the book was over, I was sitting on my back steps (it was early in the morning…so not yet 163 degrees outside), and I started thinking about how perhaps I would have enjoyed an entire book just about Ramsay and Hephzibah. I don’t even love books set in the 1700s, but I was invested in their story.
#3: I liked Lucy and thought her daughter was sweet (though I could have gone without calling her Punkin), but she was very very unaware of all the things clearly going wrong in her dad’s home. Between the water, and the fire, and the man watching her from afar…she should have been a tad more guarded, no?
#4: I don’t know how else to put this, but I thought the whole Laura subplot was weird. I didn’t love her as a teenage girl, and I thought it was all strange for her to come back AFTER her brother’s wedding as a dying woman and Lucy and Ben were “her people” as she died. I just didn’t buy it and thought the whole thing was too unrealistic/odd/clunky.
#5: Was the part where she goes back to London necessary? Was any of the storyline with her mom really relevant? Again, clunky to me. I just never felt like the story was cohesive.
In the end, I was underwhelmed by the anticlimactic discovery of her dad’s body, the way they figured out that Stephen Nye was the “bad guy”. It felt rushed and honestly, not that interesting.
Sigh.
I am giving this book THREE STARS and not fewer because I was mildly entertained and if I’m being honest…because of the author. I can’t decide if I would have enjoyed it more had I not already LOVED her other books or if I would have given it an even lower rating had it been an author whose work I was unfamiliar with. I can’t decide.
Am I being too harsh?
Do you agree or disagree?
I cannot wait to read the comment section below!
Okay, so what are we going to read as we head into fall?
Next month, we are going to read…
…The Story Keeper by Kelly Rimmer.
I absolutely adore this author! Her book The Things We Cannot Say was MY FAVORITE BOOK OF 2019, A-N-D her book, The Paris Agent, was my FAVORITE BOOK OF 2023! She’s the only author that has ever received my #1 spot multiple times. I hope you’ll read her newest book with me, and we’ll discuss it on September 22nd.
Before you head off to enjoy your weekend, I’d love to know what you think about this month’s book! Please comment and share.
Have the best, best weekend, friends! Thank you for stopping by! xx
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