Home of the American Circus ⭐⭐⭐⭐💫

Home of the American Circus by Allison Larken 
G👀dreads

After an emergency leaves her short on rent, thirty-year-old Freya Arnalds bails on her lackluster life as bartender in Maine and returns to her suburban hometown of Somers, New York, to live in the house she inherited from her estranged parents. Despite attempts to lay low, Freya encounters childhood friends, familial enemies, and old flames—as well as her fifteen-year-old niece, Aubrey, who is secretly living in the derelict home. As they reconnect, Freya and Aubrey lean on each other, working to restore the house and come to terms with the devastating events that pulled them apart years ago.

Set in the birthplace of the American circus, this deeply moving novel is an exploration of broken families, the weight of the past, and the complicated journey of finding home.

Genre: Literary Fiction, Contemporary, Family Drama
Dual Timeline: ETA: This is listed as dual timeline but I thought it was more like memory flashbacks. It's not your normal dual where they switch back and forth between alternate timelines. It's more like something is triggering a memory.

This one I saw advertised on Julia Whelan's IG page. I've had it on hold with Libby for almost two months so I grabbed it as soon as became available.
My friend Connie had also mentioned reading it and that she liked it pretty well. 

Day 1 - WOW, this is a bit depressing. I know, real life.

Day 2 - In mists of this downer (around the 20% mark), one thing made me laugh out loud. She's in her parent's old deserted house. She's doing laundry of the tiny bit of clothes she brought and has nothing to wear. She finds an old prom dress and her male BFF's tux in the back of a closet. She puts on the dress. Her male BFF stops by in the morning and she's asleep on the sofa in her prom dress and his tux. He walks in and says "Serious question, did birds dress you?" I'm sure that was funnier because of Julia's expert voice inflections. 
I do enjoy her trying to rebuild the relationship with her niece. 

Side note: One thing I've noticed with audiobooks. Many female narrators are far better impersonating male voices than male narrators. The men just can't seem to get it right. They go high pitched and whiny. Julia has a lot of male voices up her sleeve. 

⭐⭐⭐⭐💫 4.5

🎉 Overall Enjoyment? 🎉🎉🎉🎉🎊

🎣 Did it grab and keep my attention? 🎣🎣🎣🎣🎣

🗣️Would I recommend it to anyone? Yes ➕

🕮 Would I want a sequel? Yes ➕ Sure. I'd be interested to see where and how they settle in after their journey they are about to embark at the end.

📚Would I want to read more books by this author? 🤷Maybe. Someone said they liked The People We Keep better than Home of the American Circus . I looked it up and it's a coming of age story so probably not that one for me. BUT Why Can't I be You sounds interesting enough to add to my TBR for when I'm in the mood for Chick Lit.

💣💥 📢 Trigger Warnings? 💣💥⚠️Drug Abuse. Two others but it would be a spoiler so I'll throw that at the end so you can tune out if you don't want to know. 

🌶Spice ? A little spicy but not too much. Just one  🌶

👟 Pace Kind of slow in more than one spot 

🌪Plot twist? No

💻Tidbits ~ I enjoyed this book once I got past the depression that set the stage in the beginning. I really loved her relationship with her niece and her determination to rebuild her trust. I liked the way her home town friends welcomed her back with open arms and were there to help her. Not so welcomed back by her sister, who is a bȉtcĦ with a capital B. 
I deducted a half star for the pacing. It was a little slow in a few parts and it took me a minute to figure out what was happening when she was reading about the elephant. However Julia held my attention. Not so sure if that would have been the case if I was reading instead of listening. 

🎧Julia Whelan - always a super star


****SPOILER ALERT****
Tune out now if you don't want the trigger warnings that would be spoilers. 

↓
↓
↓
↓
↓
↓
↓
↓
↓
↓
↓
↓
↓
↓
↓
↓
↓
↓
↓
↓
↓
↓
↓
↓
↓

Rąpɇ, BŪllƴinᶃ



Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Weekend Crashers ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

Image
The Weekend Crashers by Jamie Brenner G👀dreads A knitting retreat gets knotty in this humorous and poignant novel about love, second chances, and the unyielding bonds between mothers and daughters. Maggie Hodges and her daughter Piper are looking forward to a restful knitting retreat in the picturesque village of New Hope, Pennsylvania. But instead, they are surprised to find themselves sharing their charming riverside inn with a rowdy bushcraft bachelor party. Undaunted by the clash of interests and personalities, Maggie suggests a lighthearted competition—a battle of crafts—that sparks a rivalry between the two groups, and perhaps something more. But as the weekend unfolds, old mistakes and buried resentments begin to surface, threatening to destroy Maggie and Piper’s cherished connection. In knitting, one can easily fix mistakes by picking apart each stitch and starting anew. But life’s tangles aren’t so easily mended. With tensions rising and the retreat coming to a close, Maggie ...
Read more

The Woman with the Cure ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

Image
The Woman with the Cure   by Lynn Cullen  G👀dreads In 1940s and ’50s America, polio is as dreaded as the atomic bomb. No one’s life is untouched by this disease that kills or paralyzes its victims, particularly children. Outbreaks of the virus across the country regularly put American cities in lockdown. Some of the world’s best minds are engaged in the race to find a vaccine. The man who succeeds will be a God. But Dorothy Horstmann is not focused on beating her colleagues to the vaccine. She just wants the world to have a cure. Applying the same determination that lifted her from a humble background as the daughter of immigrants, to becoming a doctor – often the only woman in the room-she hunts down the monster where it lurks: in the blood. This discovery of hers, and an error by a competitor, catapults her closest colleague to a lead in the race. When his chance to win comes on a worldwide scale, she is asked to sink or validate his vaccine—and to decide what is forgivable...
Read more

The Siren's Cursed Kiss ⭐⭐⭐⭐

Image
The Siren's Cursed Kiss by Kat Kinney  A.R.T. =  Tiffany Vanlandingham's  Audiobook Review Team pick. I received this audiobook as member of her ART in exchange for an honest review. G👀dreads EVERWOOD FALLS… a small supernatural community tucked up in the Colorado Rockies where witches, werewolves and vampires can live without fear of discovery, and those with curses they can’t control are sent to keep the existence of magic from being revealed to Mundanes. Green witch Sage Summers is no stranger to curses. The night her power manifested, the park outside her apartment devoured a strip mall. Classified by the Magic High Council as too dangerous to live in the Mundane world, she’s made a life for herself in Everwood Falls with her organic produce, a weekly stand at the farmer’s market, and the best group of friends a witch could ever hope for. But isolation has also meant the loss of her family, as well as an ex-fiancé who decided to put her and Everwood Falls in his rear...
Read more