Isaiah Coulter is a single veterinarian, successful but a little absentminded. His mother is determined to set him up with someone who will take care of him.
Enter Laura Townsend. She’s a beautiful and PhD smart. But she was in an accident that left her with permanent brain damage, including difficulties speaking and staying focused. When Isaiah and Laura meet, Laura is lonely and working odd jobs, cleaning houses and walking dogs. Her love of animals (along with fearing his mother’s reprisal) convinces Isaiah to give Laura a shot working at the veterinary clinic.
Laura’s time at the clinic is a wonderful adventure. She loves working with the animals, and developing new friendships. However, it’s not without problems. Mistakes occur on Laura’s shift. Is Laura losing her focus or is someone plotting against her? Also, Laura falls hard for Isaiah. But how can it work out? He’s her employer, and besides, why would someone like him fall for someone like her, who has trouble speaking words longer than two syllables. But she’s wrong. Isaiah cares for Laura just as much as she cares for him….
Recommendation: Yes. My Sunshine was a light, sweet story. I liked the characters and felt the story was original. Although it is part of a series following the Coulter family, I read it as a standalone book and wouldn’t have known it was a series except for 1 sentence at the end of the book.
You can find my review of The Bronze Horseman, book 1 in the series, here. The review for book 2, Tatiana and Alexander (aka The Bridge to Holy Cross), is here. This here is the last book – enjoy it!
Again, there are slight spoilers in this review, but I tried to keep them to a minimum.
Book Review:
The Summer Garden
The Tatiana and Alexander Series, Book 3
By Paullina Simons
The Summer Garden is the final book in the Tatiana and Alexander series, and chronicles Tatiana and Alexander Barrington’s life together as adults. The Barrington’s life is broken up into three different periods. Immediately after their return from Europe, they try to figure out life together – adjusting to peacetime and to being together. They struggle with trusting the government under which they now live, with fears of the Soviet Union, communism, and betrayal still so close to the surface.
As some of these fears and anxieties are dealt with, Tatiana and Alexander settle down to build a life together and for their family. Instead of worrying about being deported or thrown in prison, their emotions and anxieties are centered around what we worry about today – where to work and how to pay the bills, what our friends/coworkers are saying/thinking about us, jealousy and protectiveness over their spouse, how our children are raised and are developing…The couple are consumed by these worries, unhappy and fighting. It is probably the most difficult time in their relationship.
Tatiana and Alexander eventually moved past this period in their lives, in a series of tension-building scenes. The Barringtons reach an agreeable and comfortable point in their relationship. They are happy and blissful. They have the family and home they’ve always wanted. It’s not without problems and fears (nope, not going to tell you what they are), but Tatiana and Alexander have reached a more peaceful point in their lives.
Interspersed with the chronological journey through Tatiana and Alexander’s adulthood were interludes of Tatiana’s summers at her dacha* in Luga. These interludes provide additional insight into Tatiana’s personality and her relationships with twin brother Pasha and cousin Marina. In addition, they provide context for some of the references to these time periods throughout this final novel.
* Dacha is Russian for a family’s second house, where the family retreats to in the summer or for vacation. It was (and still is ) common for city-dwelling families to have dachas in the suburbs.
Recommendation:The Summer Garden was a wonderful way to finish this series. Most of the loose ends, holes, and questions were explained in this huge final book in the series. Like the previous books, you, the reader, could feel the characters’ every emotion throughout the book, to the point where some parts were hard for me to read. Everything I enjoyed about the previous books were present in the final book.
I was really interested to find out how the series ended… I’ve become so attached to Tatiana and Alexander but they endured so many struggles and so much heartache, that it wouldn’t have surprised me if the series ended with some sort of catastrophe. I don’t remember when I wanted a happy ending so badly, but I’m really glad Simons delivered on that!
Missed my review of The Bronze Horseman, book 1 in the series? Check it out here.
Book Review:
Tatiana and Alexander
The Tatiana and Alexander Series, Book 2
By Paullina Simons
Tatiana and Alexander (aka The Bridge to Holy Cross) picks up where the first book in the series, The Bronze Horseman, left off, sort of. The book begins in three parts. The reader follows Tatiana as she leaves the Soviet Union and starts a life and a family in New York. On the flip side, Simons shows the reader the life that Alexander lives from the moment he and Tatiana are separated. Finally, the story flashes back to Alexander as a boy, from leaving the U.S. as a boy with his communist parents, to his education and start in the military, ending when Alexander and Tatiana part ways.
Recommendation: Of the trilogy, this was my least favorite. I was already attached to the characters when I started the novel, but I think it can also be a standalone novel, as there are enough flashbacks to fill in any holes in the story. However, because of the switching between storylines, I found the book a little hard to get into. It wasn’t until the first storyline was gone and the second close to it that I truly became engrossed in the story and the story.
I especially enjoyed reading about Alexander’s boyhood and Tatiana’s life in America (struggling with feelings for Alexander and the unknowns about his life), but I did feel a little short changed regarding the former. We have 500+ pages of Tatiana’s childhood and life during the war in The Bronze Horseman, but felt like it was only 100 or so pages about the same timespan in Alexander’s life. I wanted more. The flashbacks didn’t help with this – I ended up feeling like I was rereading parts of The Bronze Horseman, which might have made Tatiana and Alexander stronger as a standalone book, but I don’t think added a whole lot to the book as part of the series. Most of the flashbacks were just too close to Tatiana’s story in The Bronze Horseman to add much to this book.
While the structure of Tatiana and Alexander was very different from The Bronze Horseman, the character’s passion that the reader felt in the first book was still present in the second. Their love for one another was still vibrant, despite the challenges and separation they faced. Their pains and struggles were felt. You, the reader, wanted them to be together as much in this book as in the previous book. You wanted them to be a happy family.
Read this book, so that you can finish the series and find out whether or not Tatiana and Alexander live happily ever after. If you’ve become as attached to the characters as I have, it’s worth it.
I read The Bronze Horseman when it was first released and loved it. The series has been on my list for quite a while but I just never got around to picking it back up, until now. I reread The Bronze Horseman and loved it just as much as the first time I read it. I’ve finished the second book and am halfway done with the third (and last) book in the series. Can’t wait to see how it ends!
I usually like to review book series in a single post because I like the sense of continuity. However the post for this series was getting very long, even without my review of the third book. Therefore, I will be posting about each book in this series individually. Stay tuned for book 2 and book 3 over the next week or two.
Warning: This review contains slight spoilers.
Book Review:
The Bronze Horseman
The Tatiana and Alexander Series, Book 1
By Paullina Simons
On the eve of Russia entering World War II, 16-year old Tatiana meets Alexander, a young officer in the Soviet Union’s Red Army. Unbeknown to the two, Tatiana’s sister had been seeing Alexander for two weeks and had already fallen in love with him. As the Soviet Union enters WWII, an odd sort of love-triangle ensues. Tatiana and Alexander are madly in love but Tatiana refuses to break her sister’s heart.
As Leningrad is blockaded, Tatiana and her family struggle to survive on the increasingly smaller rations and diminishing stockpile of food. On top of that, they must survive through German bombings and street violence unleashed by desperate, starving people. Tatiana has it worst of all. Amidst the hazardous trips to the store to get the family rations, she struggles with feelings of betrayal (that she is betraying her sister) and with hiding her feelings during Alexander’s visits to the family.
Half way through the book, the plot changes a bit to focus on Alexander and Tatiana (and no, I won’t tell you why/how) – their love, their life together and their life apart. There are less scenes set during civilian life and more scenes set amidst the Red Army, as Alexander and the Soviet Union continues fighting Germany and Tatiana becomes a nurse in Leningrad. Their love is so intense that you can’t help wanting the novel to end with Alexander and Tatiana living happily ever after.
Recommendation: Loved loved loved this book. Can’t recommend it enough. I love the historical fiction – the insight into life in the Soviet Union as well as the nation at war – mixed with a passionate romance. The book was well written, and the characters well-developed. I couldn’t put it down.
More than anything, throughout the book, you can feel the characters’s emotion and the passion, something I find rare in many books. It’s one thing to get absorbed in the story, but another to feel the sense of dread in the pit of your stomach or the excitement bubbling over. It’s a huge compliment to Simons as an author that she’s able to make the reader (or at least this reader) feel that way.
If you’ve read The Bronze Horseman, please leave me a comment and let me know what you thought about it. I’d really like to hear if you enjoyed it as much as I did.
In the early 1990s, after three years of letters, medical student Alexa Albert gains access to Mustang Ranch, one of Nevada’s legal brothels. Spurred by allegations that no woman working at the brothels had tested positive for HIV since testing became mandatory in 1986 (and the number that had tested positive for a STD was next to nothing), Albert’s goal was to examine condom use in the brothels.
Albert flew to Nevada and moved into Mustang Ranch for a month to conduct her research. Before long, she was hooked, and her public health study transformed into a long-term study of the brothels – not just the health aspects but the economic and social aspects. What motivated these women to turn to prostitution? How did the women feel about their job? How did the people of Nevada feel about legalized prostitution?
Recommendation: I really enjoyed Brothel. It was well-researched and well-written. It had the perfect balance of personal stories and facts about Nevada’s legal brothels. And while the above questions are very interesting, I was most intrigued with Albert’s personal reflections about prostitution. Her views changed as she got to know the women at the brothel and learned more about the issues. While she remained fundamentally opposed to prostitution throughout her research, she realized that the legal brothels are not a black and white issue. There is merit to prostitution in a legal setting – from the health and safety aspects to the sense of community and family that many of the women gain.
Brothel was a short, quick read but packed with information. I would definitely recommend it!
Book Review:
