My Never Ending List

Ava Lavender narrates this remarkable account beginning in the 1900’s when her family arrived in America.  With great detail you learn about the lives of her great-grandparents and their trials and accomplishments that they encountered.  Where there is love, there is also pain and that pain runs through the veins of the family causing suffering.  Forever wanting and forever searching, the concept of love is an emotion that they can’t grasp. As I read, I felt a deep connection to the characters more so than I worried about the plot of the story. Please don’t misunderstand me, it was just the mannerism of the characters and the situations that they were in, I felt a deep connection to them and I really just wanted the story to end many time before anything else happened.  As the story continues, there was nothing I would do but to read what happened to these individuals that I cared so much about.  They were an emotional family tending to others as they baked their specialties at the shop, listening to the people’s comments and taking in different individuals. Living in a small town, gossip about the girl with the wings circulated and Ava’s family is quite known.  Ava’s mother Viviane tries to keep Ava isolated thinking that was the best solution for a girl born with wings but Ava was curious about the world around her.  It was during the Summer Solstice that Ava’s world changed, I almost cried when I read this section.  Tears of sorrow and yes, tears of joy.

It has to be the connection to the characters that had me so deeply involved with this book. They reminded me so much of older grandparents with their mannerism and their strict doctrine.  The author tells the history of Ava’s family as I believe you have to have that to truly understand why Ava and Henry (her twin brother) are the way they are.  History seems to be repeating itself in its way these individuals are unique from society’s norm. And Jack?  His wife, Laura, hello?!?  Such unique characters in a small town and I can see these small town folks talking into each other’s ears these secrets. This book needs to be for mature ya readers.  Such a great fiction read with some fantasy thrown in.  What bothered me was the issue with capitals letters.  The beginning of sentences and proper nouns were not capitalized yet other words were capitalized that did not need to be. I thought this might be an issue as it was a Kindle version.  The editing issues did not affect my reading; it is a terrific book that should not be looked over.

NetGalley provided a copy of this book in exchange for an honest opinion.