Longing For Home by Sarah M. Eden – Blog Tour

Longing For Home

Author: Sarah M. Eden

Publisher: Shadow Mountain

Published Date: August 2013

Softcover/Kindle/Nook/DB ebook/CD: 432 pages

Genre: Historical Romance

ISBN# 978-1609074616

Reviewed by: Shanda

FTC FYI: free softcover ARC in exchange for an honest review

Summary

Twenty-six-year-old Katie Macauley has placed all her hope in Hope Springs, a small town in the 1870 Wyoming Territory. But if she wants to return home to Ireland to make amends with her estranged family, she’ll need to convince the influential Joseph Archer to hold true to his word and keep her on his payroll as his housekeeper despite her Irish roots. The town is caught in an ongoing feud between the Irish and the “Reds” the frontiersmen who would rather see all the Irish run out of town and the Irish immigrants who are fighting to make a home for themselves in the New World. When Joseph agrees to keep Katie on as his housekeeper, the feud erupts anew, and Katie becomes the reluctant figurehead for the Irish townsfolk. As the violence escalates throughout the town, Katie must choose between the two men who have been vying for her love though only one might be able to restore hope to her heart.

Review

Longing For Home is a well-written and satisfying story with endearing characters and a fascinating glimpse of Irish culture in the Old West at a time when prejudice against them prevailed throughout most of the country.

I thoroughly enjoyed Longing For Home and consider it well worth the wait. It is a deeper, more involved story than Sarah’s other books, proving that she has taken her talent for storytelling to an even higher level. The characters are dimensional and real, with histories full of struggle, survival, love, and loss. They are so well-developed I feel as if they are MY family and friends.

The dialogue is wonderful. I could “hear” Katie’s brogue simply because of the words and phrases she uses with very little, if any, phonetical spelling. I appreciate that more than I can say. The use of traditional Irish phrases is enchanting and adds a wonderful lilt to Katie’s voice in my mind. Tavish and Joseph are remarkable, hard-working men with very different personalities and situations yet with the same capacity for love and desire for peace in the community. I love them both and hope that I will get to read more about them in the future.

Experiencing the story through the point-of-view of all three main characters not only gave me a better understanding of their thoughts and motivations, it also made me care about them even more and kept me guessing about how events would unfold. I truly didn’t know how things would turn out for Katie, or even how I wanted them to turn out because I was as torn about what to do as she was. I was unsure about Katie at first, but her growth throughout her experiences in Hope Springs felt natural and I was glad to see how far she had come by the end.

Longing For Home is a must for fans of Sarah M. Eden. Readers who appreciate clean romance and quality writing will want to add this book to the top of their reading lists. Though I don’t often rate books in my reviews, I don’t hesitate to give Longing For Home an appreciative and enthusiastic five stars.

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