Finale is a complex, captivating fantasy romance. This is the final book in the Caraval trilogy, and I highly recommend reading the earlier books first. I came into this cold and struggled to keep up for the first few chapters.

The story is a bit too convoluted to summarize succinctly, but basically, it’s about the epic battle between two pairs of siblings (sisters Scarlett and Tella, and brothers Legend and Julian) and the most powerful of the Fates (immortal beings who were previously contained within a deck of cards but are now unleashed on the world). There’s a lot of romance and family drama that come to the fore, and once I managed to grasp who the characters were and how they related to each other, the story was an exciting ride to the finish. 

I especially love the character of Scarlett and her romance with Julian — I think I just personally relate more to Scarlett than to Tella so I loved how kickass her story turned out beyond the romance. Basically, she learns something that makes her question who she really is, and what she’s really capable of, and I thought that storyline was particularly powerful.

Tella’s love triangle with Legend and Jacks was a bit darker, but her happily-ever-after seemed pretty clear from the get-go, so the drawn out push-and-pull just got a bit repetitive after a while. Both sisters’ romances reminded me a bit of the 1990s Charmed where Piper had the sweet and handsome Leo and Phoebe had the hot but demonic Cole, and I kinda wish Tella’s love story did lead to her giving in to her darker side as Phoebe did.

I also really liked the tragic aspect of being a Fate, that their major weakness is love. Basically, Fates are genetically predisposed to just want to possess the objects of their affections, and if they ever actually do fall in love, they give up their immortality and become fully human. This aspect of being a Fate played a huge role in the main storyline about the battle as well as in Tella’s romances, and so

But the best part for me was the focus on the sibling bonds (between Scarlett and Tella AND between Julian and Legend). I love how strong their love for their siblings was, and even though Julian and Legend’s relationship wasn’t as much a focus, there’s a scene where Julian confronts him about his feelings for Tella that made my heart warm.

Garber has created a complex, multilayered mythology with the Caraval trilogy. I very much enjoyed reading Scarlett and Tella’s story, and learning about the world that Garber has created.

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Thank you to Raincoast Books for an advance reading copy in exchange for an honest review.

Finding Hope at Hillside Farm is a sweet and heartwarming story about moving on from past hurts. Ella is an equine therapist, which means she helps her clients deal with their problems by having them work with the horses on her aunt’s farm. The farm also provides her a safe haven from her own trauma — an injury that ended her horse-riding career, and a load of guilt over how she treated her ex-husband. Her quiet life gets overturned, and a second chance at love presents itself, when a young girl Hope and her widower father Harry come into town and Hope falls in love with Ella’s horses.

I had expected this to be more of a romance than it was, so a part of me felt a bit impatient at how long it took for Ella and Harry to finally meet. While the story still did turn out to be romantic, most of the first half focused a lot less on the romance itself and a lot more on the various traumas Ella and Harry have had leading up to their meeting. If you’re looking for a heartwarming romance, you’ll find it here; it’ll just take a while to get moving.

That being said, the story was indeed heartwarming overall. I love the idea of working with horses being therapeutic because their actions basically mirror what they sense from the humans around them. I’ve heard a lot about how therapeutic animals can be for people undergoing stress, but haven’t quite seen it implemented in an actual therapeutic practice as Ella does. So I love the aspects about Ella’s work, and how her love for the farm pushes her to go past her comfort zone. Her discomfort with the things she has to do to save the farm — be interviewed by a reporter, expand her clientele to include children — turn out to be linked to her own past trauma, and I like how tightly Lucas weaves all these seemingly disparate threads together.

Harry was a bit more of an enigmatic character for me — while I felt for his struggles with workaholism and living up to the high parenting standards set by his mother-in-law — his story didn’t quite draw me in as much as Ella’s did until about the halfway mark.

There was a twist that I didn’t expect at Harry and Ella’s first meeting, and to be honest, I initially found it too gimmicky and hated the direction the story was going. However, as the story progressed, this particular plot point grew on me, and I eventually had to admit that it ended up taking the characters further than I expected.

Overall, it’s a lovely and emotional story about moving on and allowing yourself to be happy again. I found it to be more of a family drama than a romance, but I think it still worked, and I liked how Ella’s story arc progressed.

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Thanks to Publisher’s Group Canada for a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

I don’t know much about Mormon history, so it was interesting to learn about this part of their people’s past. Basically, Mormons in 1888 Utah (not sure about now?) believed that if a man had multiple wives, that would add on blessings for their family and ease their way into heaven. But polygamy was against US law, and so lawmen hunted down and arrested Mormon men with multiple wives. The Glovemaker takes place in a small community called Junction, where two out of its seven families have set up somewhat of an underground railroad to help Mormon men on the run escape the law. It’s the first novel (I think?) I’ve ever read with a Mormon protagonist, and it was fascinating to read about this little-known (to me, at least) bit of history.

The Glovemaker takes on a pretty grim and uncertain period in Mormon history, and even alludes to a major historical event where Mormons were (possibly wrongly?) accused of killing a group of travellers (The Massacre of Mountain Meadows, for anyone interested in learning more). The novel could have gone large and sweeping in scope, detailing the breadth of Mormon experiences as many of them hid, or ran from, the law in order to practice their faith in peace.

Instead, the novel goes small, and becomes incredibly more powerful as a result. The story zooms in on Deborah, a woman whose husband went missing on his last business trip, and her neighbour and friend Nels, who help a stranger on the run. This particular stranger’s arrival is unusual because it happens in winter, when most lawmen do their arrests in better weather, and also because the lawman hunting him appears to have followed him from another state. Things don’t go quite as planned, and the residents of Junction must make difficult choices between doing their moral duty and keeping their loved ones safe.

The entire story takes place within two to three days, and while the action overall was fairly slow, I found myself glued to the page. Deborah and Nels both undergo an intensely emotional journey over those few days, and I was completely and utterly hooked. I love the tension between their personal codes of ethics and their more primal need to survive. Even when I knew what the ‘right’ choices were, I still rooted for these characters and wanted them to do whatever was necessary to keep their community safe.

The Glovemaker is a heartfelt, heart-wrenching, and heart-warmingly intimate page turner. Weisgarber takes us right into the hearts of these characters and compels us to ask ourselves: in their shoes, what would we have done?

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Thank you to Publisher’s Group Canada for a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.