The Year of Necessary Lies
One amazing year in a remarkable woman¹s life journey becomes the inspiration for generations when she takes a huge risk, follows her heart, embraces forbidden love, and unwittingly becomes the champion of a winged world that is on the brink of extinction. It’s 1903, the world is poised for drastic change, and Julia Briton is a naive, beautiful Boston socialite who suffers a series of devastating losses and discovers that her beloved husband is involved in the plume trade—the massive slaughter of birds for use in the fashion industry. When Julia is secretly ushered into the early 20th century by a group of brazen female activists, she boldly risks everything and embarks on a perilous journey to the wilds of untamed Florida, a place of great danger where men will stop at nothing to get what they want and where one man, and a faithful friend, force her to make yet more life-changing decisions. Years later, when Julia’s great-granddaughter, Kelly, discovers some hidden tape recordings in her famous great-grandmother¹s dresser and learns the real truth about Julia’s year, a year that changed the course of history, she must decide what to do with her grandmother¹s incredible legacy. Will she keep the real “secret of the year”, or will she be brave enough to follow her own heart?
My Review
When I spotted this book I was drawn to it by both the lovely book cover and the premise of the storyline. So I was really looking forward to reading this book. It was something different from my typical reading.
Ok, so this is a book where the past and present did not merge so well together. I enjoyed the past way more than the present. So it is easy to say that I found Julia and her campaign to save exotic birds way more exciting than her granddaughter, Kelly's voice. So after a while I found myself quickly skipping over the present to get back to the past. I would have been fine staying in the past. However as much as I liked the past, I found I was not as over the top thrilled with this time period as I have been drawn reading other time periods.
So this brings me to the other reason why I gave this book such a low rating. It is because I found most of the other characters not up to par with Julia and the story so drawn out. If the other characters had been more lively and the story just as lively than this would have been another story and I would have given this book a higher rating.
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