Monday, April 22, 2013

ARC Review: The Enchanted Life of Adam Hope by Rhonda Riley

Publisher: Ecco
Publishing Date: April 23rd, 2013
Genre: Adult
Pages: 432 pgs
ISBN: 9780062099440
Source: received from Harper Collins Canada for an honest review



Summary from Goodreads:
The Enchanted Life of Adam Hope is an unconventional and passionately romantic love story that is as breathtaking and wondrous as The Time Traveler's Wife and The Story of Edgar Sawtelle.

During WWII, teenager Evelyn Roe is sent to manage the family farm in rural North Carolina, where she finds what she takes to be a badly burned soldier on their property. She rescues him, and it quickly becomes clear he is not a man...and not one of us. The rescued body recovers at an unnatural speed, and just as fast, Evelyn and Adam fall deeply in love. In The Enchanted Life of Adam Hope, Rhonda Riley reveals the exhilarating, terrifying mystery inherent in all relationships: No matter how deeply we love someone, and no matter how much we will sacrifice for them, we can only know them so well.

 

My Review: 

I don't even know where to start with this book if I'm being honest.  I read this book pretty quickly and I enjoyed the writing so much.  This book is like nothing that I have read before.  It has been compared to The Time Traveler's Wife and while I can see some similarities I don't think that this is a fair comparison.  This book is not about time travel but it does have some strange elements to it.  This is the story of Evelyn and Adam and their life together.  It is essentially a love story and spans over their whole lifetime together. 
While this is a love story, it is not your average love story.  Adam is not exactly human and while I don't want to give too much away I have to say that Riley's creativity and originality is what drew me into the story.
I have to admit though that somewhere in the middle I found my mind wondering a little bit.  At times I found the perfection of their relationship a little difficult to believe.  That's not to say there were some major challenges in their relationship but I think at some point I almost wanted to say "I get it, you are deeply in love".  It wasn't so much that I hated the book or even disliked it; it was really just a minor annoyance at times. 
I did find myself emotionally invested in this novel and even found myself crying at times.  As I said the writing is beautiful and the characters are memorable.  Overall this is a good read and I think it's going to be a bestseller.  

1 comment:

  1. I think what got me is that after that first emotional and heart breaking thing happened, it was like a floodgate and everything after that was just so sad. I can see why it's compared to The Time Traveler's Wife, I think it's the love story that they are comparing... I definitely loved every minute of this book, I took it slow in the beginning and than I just got to a certain part where I devoured the rest of the story.

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