While I was asked to read and review Written in their Stars by Elizabeth St. John, I don't like to start a series in the middle or in this case the last book in the series. So having read the synopsis for all three books, I decided that I needed to read all of them. I'm so glad that I did!!
Book 1, The Lady in the Tower, features Lucy St. John. Her parents have passed, so she and one of her sisters is living with an aunt and uncle. While her uncle dotes on her, he is often away and Lucy is treated poorly by her aunt and sister. While Lucy would much rather continue her life in the country, there comes a time when she must take her place in the court. She falls in love, but gains enemies along the way that separate them. After some time away from court, she is introduced to a widower and starts a life with him.
Book 2, By Love Divided, moves on to the next generation and focuses on Luce and Allen (Lucy's children). As England find itself in a civil war, Lucy finds her children on opposite sides of it. Luce and her husband stand behind Parliament, while Allen and his wife give their support to the king. Will this war tear apart this family like it is the country?
Book 3, Written in their Stars, begins with the execution of King Charles. While the St. John family members hold firm to their believes, they have not let them tear their family apart. This story takes us through Cromwell ruling the country to the return of the Stuarts to the throne.
While these books stray from what I normally read and review for this blog, I throughly enjoyed reading these three books. While there are many couples that do fall in love during the course of the books, I definitely wouldn't call these historical romance. They would definitely fall into the historical fiction category but based on real life people and events. I love the fact that the author had documents that her family had kept all these years to be able to tell the history of the family! I would kill to find something like that in my genealogy search!
The story of the St. John family had me throughly engrossed from the beginning. With so much history weaved throughout the story, I would often get my phone out just to Google and read more about a particular person or event that come up. While I used to teach about European history to my 6th graders, I never covered the English Civil War. These three books gave me so much insight into this time period and I just needed to know more!!
If you are a history fan, you are going to love this series!!
You can get these books at the following retailers:
Oh I am so so happy to read that you loved the series! It's fun to step outside your normal reading to try something new, especially when you end up loving it. Thank you for the great review & for hosting Elizabeth's blog tour!
ReplyDeleteHappy Holidays!
Amy
HF Virtual Book Tours
Thanks for inviting me on the tour and introducing me to a new author!
DeleteI'm so happy you enjoyed meeting the fam! While it was tempting to make this story a "romance" I had to be true to my family history, and write real life. Hopefully their love stories shone through, for they did love passionately. Thank you for such a wonderful review, and I'm glad you had fun reading, as well as learning about these times. (And thank you for reading the other two books, too!).
ReplyDeleteWishing you a wonderful 2020!
I definitely saw the romance in the stories, but since my readers are used to that being the focus of the stories I wanted to make sure that they knew these were different from what I normally review. I loved these stories and am so glad I had the opportunity to read them! I've delved into my genealogy in the last several years and I'm so jealous that you have such rich documentation to get your history from.
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