Reviewed by Danie on Amazon USThis is the second in Brooks’ Intertwined Souls series. The two main characters, Zoe and Eva, are still in this book, but it’s now 1947 and they’ve made it to the Land of Milk and Honey, Australia. As with books set in Massachusetts or Maine, USA, I’m also a sucker for books set in Australia or New Zealand, so I was very excited to read it for that reason as well.
It’s the story of Zoe and Eva getting settled in, finding what they want to do with the rest of their lives when before they didn’t think they had a future, and it’s about them living those lives as best they can in a hard environment (for Greeks, Germans, and Lesbians).
The plot was awesome, with twists, turns, and all sorts of surprises, but it was just the plot. My favorite part of the book were the characters. We got to meet some new ones (like Earl and Elena, I loved their stories, and David, I’m interested to know more about him maybe), and see some familiar faces, like Henry (I literally yelped, saying ‘yay’, when I saw his name), and we also get to see some surprising characters return (won’t spoil it) that I definitely didn’t expect to see.
In a lot of ways I think I liked this book even a little more than the first one. I’m unsure exactly why, but in some ways it resonated just a bit more than In the Blood of the Greeks.
I think what I took out of this novel the most is that Brooks is a good writer (I don’t give five stars easily, all books start at a three for me, if I think it turns out to be amazing then it gets a four, and if it blows my socks off, a five).
I say she’s a good writer for one specific reason regarding this book at least. I kept reading and never put the book down. This was not a short book, and yet I read it through with no interruption. I’ve read many long books in my time, and even when they’re good like Game of Thrones, or Wizard’s First Rule, I still put them down because it’s hard to take in that much fiction and not totally fry your brain. So I’ll read a graphic novel/comic book in between parts or chapters, or a bit of a prose non-fiction book or something. I will say that I considered taking a break with this book too, but, there was some sort of underlying tension or suspense in it that just made it so that I couldn’t put it down. I had to know what was next (and what was next was almost always awesome).