The Giver of Stars, a review

My absolutely wonderful best friend Georgia gifted me The Giver of Stars by Jojo Moyes for my birthday in 2020… I think? Or was it 2019? What is time? (check out her art Instagram here 😍) and I finally got around to it! She picked me it up because of its gorgeous cover (she knows me so well) and to be honest, I was a little nervous about it because it’s not my usual genre.

The Give of Stars by Jojo Moyes

Turns out I really need to start trusting her more with books she recommends because I loved it!!

This is a historical fiction which follows a young English woman who marries an American tycoon and moves to the US to his small town. She immediately feels trapped in this world where they expect her to be a certain type of woman and behave in a certain type of way. She also feels lonely. But one day they’re requesting for people to ride horses around the county and deliver library books, and despite her new husbands protests, she signs up. And her life is forever changed.

This was such a heartfelt book! I teared up at the end!

I did have a few issues here and there with some representation, but I think it was done with good intentions and so it only pulls the book down slightly.

On CAWPILE I rated this:

Characters: 9

Atmosphere: 9

Writing: 8

Plot: 7

Intrigue: 8

Logic: 9

Enjoyment: 9

Giving a grand total of 8.43 which is a 4* rating!

Overall this is a really lovely historical fiction that I enjoyed reading and I’m glad Georgia picked it up for me because I don’t think I would’ve read it otherwise!

Have you read this? Or any of Moyes other works? Let me know what you thought of them!!

Poooosible November TBR

I’m a bit tentative in publishing this, as I don’t want to set a solid TBR in my second month back and one in which I’m starting a new full-time job. But there are a few books that I’d love to get to this month, so let’s get on with it! There is a readathon I’m wanting to take part in this month (comment and guess which one!) so those won’t be shown in this tbr as they’ll get one of their own later on. So that also reduces this tbr. I only actually have 2 books left.

First up is The Priory of the Orange Tree by Samantha Shannon. This is a big boi fantasy read which honestly is kind of intimidating, but I am definitely going to at least make more of a dent in this book in November! I’m not exactly very far through it right now, but from what I can tell we follow various people around this world who all have varying views on dragons, religion and rulers. I already have my favourite person to read from, and I fly through their sections! But I’m also interested in everyone within the story so overall I’m looking forward to reading some more throughout November.

And secondly, another book which I’ve already started but am nowhere near close to finishing is The Fountains of Silence by Ruta Sepetys. A historical fiction set in post-civil war Spain, this is not a time in history which I’m familiar with so I’m finding it really interesting to delve into that aspect of the book and to learn more about this time. There are already, despite me being barely into it, plot lines which are full of secrets and have me intrigued as to how they came to be and what impact they’re going to have on the story overall. This is another really big book, although it’s a smidge smaller than Priory.

Despite the fact that I’m loving them both, I’m not getting through them… as you’ll know if you saw my last post. I think it is, very stupidly, being worried about the pressure. I tend to baulk and not do things when there’s a lot of pressure on me to complete the task until the very last minute of the deadline. And of course there is no real deadline on reading these books. Not my best quality but one I’m working on and either way I’m still looking forward to reading these two books eventually!