The Bear and the Nightingale by Katherine Arden

★★★★

"I would rather die tomorrow in the forest than to live a hundred years of the life appointed to me."

This was such a unique book - and an interested take on the fairly tale.  I got a little lost towards the end, but the writing was wonderful and I really enjoyed all of the description of the time period.  The author really brought that characters and the harsh reality of winters in Russia to life!

Anya's Ghost by Vera Brosgol

★★★★

"You may look normal like everyone else, but you're not.  Not on the inside."

Anya is a young immigrant from Russia living in the United States with her family.  She doesn’t seem to fit into anywhere at her private school, is constantly worrying about her appearances, and is in love with a popular boy that barely knows she exists.  While walking to school, Anya falls down a well and meets Emily, a ghost from World War I that fell down the well after her parents were murdered.  Anya is eventually rescued, but several days later Emily appears at her house and starts following her around.  At first, Anya loves having the extra help at school from Emily and finally has a friend she can talk to, but Emily begins to become very controlling and threatens Anya’s family.  Anya learns that Emily killed a couple because she was jealous and finds away to send Emily to the afterlife where she belongs.

I enjoyed reading this book.  Even though it was brief, the author was able to create a fascinating story that incorporated many different thematic elements about identity and friendship.  I thought that the graphic novel format was a very efficient way to tell the story and effectively showed elements that a traditional novel would not have been able to capture.  I really enjoyed the character of Anya and thought she was very easy to relate to.  I loved the she used the experiences of meeting Emily to change her need to conform and be popular.  I would recommend this book to young adults, especially those struggling with personal identity.

The Firebird by Susanna Kearsley

★★★★

"There are times when our victories have a cost that we did not foresee, when winning brings us loss."

Nicola Marter was born with a unique gift that allows her to see a glimpse of the past when she touches an object - a gift that she has tried her whole life to keep a secret.  When she is approached by a women looking to sell an object known as the firebird, Nicola is convinced to jump into the past and find out the truth.  Here, she discovers a young girl named Anna and the mystery takes on a life of it's own.  Nicola travels to Scotland and then to Russia to discover Anna's story and involvement with the Jacobites and the Russian court.  She also finds her self on an adventure of her own that will test the limits of her powers and how far she is willing to go to reveal the truth.

I'm so glad that I discovered Susanna Kearsley a few months ago with The Winter Sea!  This novel continues with many of the similar characters.  It also follows a similar pattern of unique gifts and a sort-of time travel to the past.  I didn't find it quite as compelling as the first, but it was still very enjoyable.  I love Kearsley's writing style and unique storytelling!  She has a wonderful ability to weave together stories that are interlocked together and I can't wait to read more.

Winter Garden by Kristen Hannah (audio)

★★★★★

"Nina stared at the women who had raised her and aw the truth at last.  

 Her mother was a lioness.  A warrior.  A women who'd chosen a life of hell for herself because she wanted to give up and didn't know how. 

And with that small understanding came another, bigger one. Nina suddenly saw her own life in focus.  All these years, she'd been traveling the world over, looking for her own truth in other woman's lives.

But it was here all along, at home with the one woman she'd never even tried to understand.

How could any women know her own story until she knew her mother's?"

"They would always be a family, but if she'd learned anything in the past few weeks it was that a family wasn't a static thing.  There were always changes going on.  Like with continents, sometimes the changes were invisible and underground and sometimes they were explosive and deadly.  The trick was to keep your balance.  You couldn't control the direction of your family any more than you could stop the continental shell from breaking apart.  All you could do was hold on for the ride." 

Goodreads Summary: Meredith and Nina Whitson are as different as sisters can be. One stayed at home to raise her children and manage the family apple orchard: the other followed a dream and traveled the world to become a famous photojournalist. But when their beloved father falls ill, Meredith and Nina find themselves together again, standing alongside their cold, disapproving mother, Anya, who even now, offers no comfort to her daughters. As children, the only connection between them was the Russian fairy tale Anya sometimes told the girls at night. On his deathbed, their father extracts a promise from the women in his life: the fairy tale will be told one last time - and all the way to the end. Thus begins an unexpected journey into the truth of Anya's life in war-torn Leningrad, more than five decades ago. Alternating between the past and present, Meredith and Nina will finally hear the singular, harrowing story of their mother's life, and what they learn is a secret so terrible and terrifying that it will shake the very foundation of their family and change who they believe they are. 

As one reader stated, Winter Garden was a "truly mesmerizing and enchanting novel about survival, enduring love, family, and the choices that can forever haunt you."  I have been a huge fan of Kristen  Hannah (especially with Firefly Lane and Night Road) and was excited that she had ventured in the genre of historical fiction.  I absolutely loved this book!  I am a huge fan of anything World War II and this novel had an unique perspective of the Siege of Leningrad in Russia.  I really enjoyed learning about Anya's story as she told it to her daughters as a fairy tale (which I love) and seeing how it shaped their lives both as children and adults.  Hearing the story told this way made the novel extremely powerful and showed the importance of family and learning to live with the past.  I cried through the entire last hour or so on the way home from work.  This was an amazing book and one that I will remember for a long time!

This book was #3 on my top ten list of 2014.

An Echo Through the Snow by Andrea Thalasions

 

★★★★

"Rosalie and Smokey walked past places in the woods where people had once lived.  Long after sandstone foundations crumbled back into soil, there remained demarcations of flower gardens.  Wives had once stood at the cliffs' edge, watching for the return of fishing vessels after a brutal November storm.  Clumps of daffodils, tell tale spires of purple and white lupines would poke up without fail.  Annual shocks of ruffled orange poppies and borders of electric blue forget-me-nots proclaimed, 'We were here: remember us.'  Pushing up each spring, the flowers held their ground against native grasses and sapling trees.  Stalwart little reminders of those who'd battled to hold on to the promise of spring.  Imprinting the land forever - long after simple graves are shrouded in thickets and everyone who remembers is gone- the flowers continue to bear testament."

I read this book for a workshop I am attending on book discussions in a few weeks.  The author will be joining us and I am very excited to meet her and see what she had to say about her book!

"An Echo Through the Snow" tells the story of two time periods: the native Chukchi people of Siberia in 1929 when Stalin's Red Army takes over and intertwines a modern story of a young girl named Rosalie in the 1990s.  The center of both stories are the Siberian huskies and dogsled racing. 

Even though it took me awhile to get the characters down,  I really enjoyed the parts centering on the Chukchi people.  I don't know much about this period in history and I could have used some more background and explanation on both the historical aspects and on the characters themselves.  I generally liked the character of Rosalie, but something just frustrated me about her.  Maybe there was just too much focus on her "finding herself."  I thought that the story was very original and I liked how the author was able to connect the two stories at the end of the book.  I learned a lot about dogsled racing!  Thalasions's prospective on native people, both in Siberia and in the United States, we really interesting.  She did a great job of showing how people were affected once their land was taken from them without coming right out and saying it.  The book also takes place in my home state of Wisconsin and the author, who teaches at UW-Madison, is also a dogsled racer herself:

The Russian Concubine by Kate Furnivall

★★

"Now she knew that you didn't survive on your own.  Everyone who touched your life sent a ripple effect through you and all the ripples interconnected.  She could sense them inside her, surging and flowing, doubling back and overlapping, all the way back to the beginning."

Passage into Light by Judith Pella

★★★★

"In the meantime, life would continue its never ending flow.  They would do the things they must to.  They must survive."

White Nights, Red Morning by Judith Pella

★★★★

The Dawning of Deliverance by Judith Pella

★★★★

Heirs of the Motherland by Judith Pella

★★★★

Travail and Triumph by Michael Phillips and Judith Petta

★★★★

A House Divided by Michael Phillips and Judith Pella

★★★★

The Crown and the Crucible by Michael Phillips and Judith Pella

★★★★★

"Though most said there was not a word of truth to it, country peasants in Russia were always fond of turning whatever they could into a fairy-tale."

Push Not the River by James Conroyd Martin

★★★

"What is past, one cannot change, so each backward glance is a bit of the present slipping away."

The Red Scarf by Kate Furnivall

★★★★★

"They stood still for a moment, smiling into each others eyes.  She loved him for his laugh in a world where people had forgotten how to make that sound."