A Sky Painted Gold Book Review

“If you live in a sleepy little village, I have found that you have to adept at creating your own drama.”- A Sky Painted Gold, Chapter Two, Page 30.

Louise, ‘Lou’, has always been fascinated by an old Georgian mansion that was set on an island, right outside of her small Cornish village. So fascinated, that she has even snuck there when the tide was low. The house belongs to the Cardew family, they haven’t visited the estate in many years after the father of the family had passed away.

The Cardew siblings, Robert and Caitlin, are often talked about in the London press, and plastered in the magazines. The magazines, that Lou and her sister, Alice, enjoy reading. The Cardews want to get out of the limelight and the stressful city life for the summer. This takes the two siblings and their whole array of friends to the old Cardew estate in Cornwall. Lou comes across one of their parties one night when she is sneaking around the house. She becomes swept away in all the glitz and glam of their party lifestyle in the roaring summer of 1929.

“Then, finally, when I can’t watch any more, I fall asleep underneath a sky painted gold.” -A Sky Painted Gold, Chapter Nine, Page 142.

Laura Wood’s first young adult book is a three-star read for me. This book is a good summer read, and I encourage you to read it this time of the year. We all know that I love an English setting, so this one did it for me in that regard! I don’t think that I have read a book, other than The Great Gatsby, that is set in the 1920s, I think it is an interesting time period and I don’t know much about what was happening in England at this time. The parties in this book were very atmospheric, I wish that I could witness something so grand!

My main complaint about A Sky Painted Gold, is that I felt like nothing really happened until the last three chapters. Yes, the party scenes where fabulous and I do enjoy a good slow burn romance, but I feel like there was no real plot here. I do think Louise was a bit annoying and naïve, but we must remember she is only seventeen and this is her first time getting to see what life is really like outside of her village. Some things about the main character were a bit repetitive, such as Lou constantly worrying about never finding love or comparing herself to Alice. Two plot points I found rather predictable, but they were still entertaining!

“People are just people, Lou. Wherever you go.”- A Sky Painted Gold, Chapter Six, Page 80.

Overall, I do think this was an enjoyable read but don’t go into this thinking you’re going to get a great plot. Towards the end of, A Sky Painted Gold, I felt like it was almost like a 1920s version of the movie Almost Famous, my favorite movie, I won’t get too much into that because I feel like it could be a bit of a spoiler.

Da Vinci’s Tiger Book Review

“It will make you, and all of us, immortal, my dear.”

Da Vinci’s Tiger by L.M. Elliott tells the tale behind an early work of Leonardo Da Vinci. A short and young adult, historical fiction novel that takes us through a time in Renaissance Florence, when the Medici were the most powerful house and one if not the richest family in the world.

Ginevra de’ Benci is a young and beautiful woman in Florentine society. Her family is allies to the Medici and she has married a man, twice her age, for a political gain to her family. She is a pawn in a game like many women of noble blood were at this time. Florence is looking to strength its ties with Venice and Milan, two of the other city-states in Italy. A Venetian ambassador has come to the city at the request of Lorenzo de’ Medici, il magnifico. In Florence, it is common for a man of power to have a platonic lover, like Lorenzo has Lucrezia and Giuliano has Simonetta, the Venetian ambassador, Bernardo Bembo has set his eyes on our main character Ginevra.

He wants to have a piece of art done of her to bring home with him to Venice. This is where Da Vinci comes in. Da Vinci is commissioned to do the painting of young, Ginevra de’ Benci. The discussions that she has with Leonardo really opens Ginevra’s eyes to many of the problems in their medieval world. Her view on life is changed forever.

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Ginevra de’ Benci by Leonardo Da Vinci.

I was excited to dive into this book. If you did not know, I LOVE the Medici family and this time in world history. Sadly, this book let me down. Right off the bat when I saw that it was in first person perspective, I became hesitant, I prefer third person, but I will still read the book. There are some instances where onomatopoeias are used and I am not a huge fan of those, just describe the noisy. Words were drawn out at least every other chapter, one example is on page ninety-six in chapter nine, “Hmmmm.” Good Reads labels this book as a romance, don’t read it if that is what you are looking for. It is barely touched on and one thing that annoyed me would be they would talk about when they went to dinner the Medici villa, I think it would be better if the writer wrote out the dinner than just mentioned it two weeks later.

My main complaint about Da Vinci’s Tiger is the characters!! I feel like there was no character development whatsoever. They just felt rather flat and I would have liked to know them more. I think Leonardo was the most interesting character but then again, is it possible to make Leonardo Da Vinci sound boring. I like Sancha as well, she was one of Ginevra’s maids.

Time for what I liked about this novel. I absolutely loved the Tuscan setting. I wish that more books would take place in Florence and around the families that lived there, the Italian peninsula was just so interesting at this time. Elliott was very descriptive and made this book feel so atmospheric, the way she described the art, the fashion, and architecture of Florence was truly beautiful. The way that she described Venice as well, I want to read a book that is set there now, if you have a suggestion, tell me in the comments!

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It is obvious that L.M. Elliott did her homework for this book. I have three suggestions of nonfiction books that might make for an interesting read if you would like to read them alongside Da Vinci’s Tiger.
1. The Medici by Mary Hollingsworth
2. Leonardo Da Vinci by Walter Isaacson
3. April Blood by Lauro Martines

IT by Stephen King Review

This is the strangest book that I have ever read but what else would I expect from my first Stephen King novel and my first read in the horror genre. I am not going to write a paragraph describing what this 1153-page story is about since it is a well-known story, in this review I will just be giving my thoughts.
IT by Stephen King is a great coming of age story about friendship, in my mind that is our main theme. This story has phenomenal characters and I loved the Losers, the main seven characters. I believe that the characters are what makes this story. I know that some have complained about derogatory terms being used throughout IT, we have to remember that this story takes place in the 1950s and later in the 1980s, the sad truth is that it was common for Americans to be racist and homophobic at these times, but I will say there is a trigger warning for those two things and abuse.

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Movie poster for IT
(This is not my picture. It belongs to Warner Brothers Pictures.)

Now, after my praising of the plot and characters of IT, you are probably wondering why I gave this book a three out of five stars. (Three stars isn’t bad! It’s average.) Firstly, this story is 1153 pages when I think it would be good at 400 pages. It is too long! King gives us too many details at time, which can be good, he does great at getting a picture in the reader’s mind! There are too many lists and unnecessary details. I also did not like the formatting of this novel, how there are about ten subsections in a chapter, not a fan, just give us shorter chapters! However, I have since learned this is common in Stephen King’s works. IT is a great story and I loved it but it needed to be shortened down and possibly better formatting, but I do think the characters really do make up for this. Thank you for reading my review!