Skip to main content

Blog Tour: Battle Hymns by Cara Langston: A Book Review

Battle Hymns
Author: Cara Langston
Publication Date: June 3, 2014
eBook; ISBN: 9781311184443

Source: This book was given to me from Historical Fiction Virtual Book Tours in exchange for an honest review.
Add to GR Button

 Synopsis: A second war. A second chance.

     In December 1941, Charlotte Donahue is engaged to Nick Adler, a handsome, pre-law student at Georgetown University. Despite her studies at a liberal arts college, she expects nothing more than to marry her fiancé and settle into a conventional life as a young American homemaker. But her future is unexpectedly disrupted after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. While Nick trains for the battlefront with the U.S. Army, Charlotte does her part by volunteering as a nurses’ aide with the American Red Cross.

     Assigned to a convalescent ward at Walter Reed’s Army Medical Center, Charlotte discovers her passion lies, not in the home, but in tending to the wounds of injured soldiers, all of whom remind her of Nick. Here she is drawn to a mysterious soldier, Lieutenant William Kendrick, whose jet was shot down in the skies over Germany. As Will’s physical and psychological wounds begin to heal, he and Charlotte develop a friendship that will bind them together in ways they never imagined.

     Battle Hymns is a poignant story of love, survival, and redemption set against the backdrop of the Second World War.

     My Review: Charlotte is a young college student who just recently got engaged to her boyfriend Nick. After the Japanese invaded Pearl Harbor, the United States declared war. The declaration of war changes Charlotte's happiness and hopes for the future because  Nick decides to join the war. While she is waiting for Nick's return, Charlotte volunteers to become a nurse. There she meets a wounded soldier with a mysterious past. The two of them form an unlikely friendship because both of their lives have been affected by the war.

     I found Charlotte's character to be one-dimensional. Her story is told in passive tense. There really wasn't much change in her. I thought of Charlotte as a boring protagonist, and I didn't understand why men would be attracted to her. She is very emotional for she lets her emotions get in the way of her thinking, and she cries a lot. Other than that, I couldn't really understand her character than what the author told me. Her romance with Nick felt a little forced, and really I did not care for him. There wasn't much to his character except he was Charlotte's love, and he went to war. I found the most intriguing character was Will. He was emotionally-damaged in the war, and I liked the interactions between him and Charlotte.

     The author did a great job in portraying life during the Second World War. The setting was very vivid. It was clear that she did extensive research of the WWII strategies. The author spent more time mostly on the setting and historical detail than she did in character development. She made the era come alive and the makes it easier for the reader to capture the heart of a WWII soldier.

     Overall, this book is about loss, sacrifice, renewed love, friendship, hope and redemption. It is about even though your plans didn't happen as you wanted to, there is a second path that is just as good. Charlotte found that her life didn't happen as she hoped and dreamed of, but she found something else that was just as rewarding. The story is very short and fast-paced, and the setting is very vivid. I just wished she focused more on character development. I recommend this novel to anyone interested in WWII, historical fiction, and to anyone interested in finding hope and love again after the loss of a loved one.

Rating: 4 out of 5 stars 


Buy the Book

Apple iBooks
Barnes & Noble (Nook)
Smashwords


About the Author


Cara is a novelist of historical fiction. She has two novels in the works. Battle Hymns is a historical romance set in Washington, D.C. from 1941 to 1943. It will be published on June 3, 2014. The Glassmaker’s Wife is a historical romance set in 1925 Chicago and is still very much in progress.

Cara has been an avid reader – especially of historical fiction, classics, and mystery novels – since she was young. She read all of the American Girl books when she was in 5th grade, even though her parents could not afford to buy her a doll. In middle school, she was obsessed with the only two Ann Rinaldi books in the school library. They taught her about the 1770 Boston Massacre and the Salem Witch Trials before her history classes ever did. And that was when Cara’s love of historical fiction was born. She didn’t begin writing, though, until her senior year at the University of Georgia, where she studied Finance and had already committed to a career in the corporate world. One day she will be able to quit working for The Man and focus on her writing. Until then, it pays the bills.
When she’s not writing or working, Cara enjoys drinking red wine, watching bad television, doing genealogical research, obsessing over the Duchess of Cambridge’s every outfit, and finding the best guacamole in Texas. Cara currently lives in Dallas, Texas with her husband and their dog.

For more information please visit Cara Langston’s website. You can also connect with her on FacebookTwitterGoodreads, and Pinterest.



Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Potiphar's Wife (The Egyptian Chronicles #1) by Mesu Andrews: A Book Review

  Potiphar’s Wife (The Egyptian Chronicles #1) Author: Mesu Andrews Genre: Historical Fiction, Christian, Biblical Fiction Publisher: WaterBrook Release Date: May 24, 2022 Pages: 453 Source: Netgalley/Publisher in exchange for an honest review. Synopsis: One of the Bible’s most notorious women longs for a love she cannot have in this captivating novel from the award-winning author of Isaiah’s Legacy .       Before she is Potiphar’s wife, Zuleika is the daughter of a king and the wife of a prince. She rules the isle of Crete alongside her mother in the absence of their seafaring husbands. But when tragedy nearly destroys Crete, Zuleika must sacrifice her future to save the Minoan people she loves.       Zuleika’s father believes his robust trade with Egypt will ensure Pharaoh’s obligation to marry his daughter, including a bride price hefty enough to save Crete. But Pharaoh refuses and gives her instead to Potiphar, the captain...

The Rose Code by Kate Quinn: A Book Review

The Rose Code Author: Kate Quinn Genre: Historical Fiction Publisher: Harper Collins Release Date: 2021 Pages: 635 Source: Netgalley/Publisher in exchange for an honest review. Synopsis: 1940, Bletchley Park, Buckinghamshire.        Three very different women are recruited to the mysterious Bletchley Park, where the best minds in Britain train to break German military codes.       Vivacious debutante Osla has the dashing Prince Philip of Greece sending her roses – but she burns to prove herself as more than a society girl, working to translate decoded enemy secrets. Self-made Mab masters the legendary codebreaking machines as she conceals old wounds and the poverty of her East-End London upbringing. And shy local girl Beth is the outsider who trains as one of the Park’s few female cryptanalysts.       1947, London.        Seven years after they first meet, on the eve of the roya...

The Life and Times of Hannah Crafts: The True Story of The Bondwoman's Narrative by Gregg Hecimovich: A Book Review

  The Life and Times of Hannah Crafts: The True Story of the Bondwoman’s Narrative Author: Gregg Hecimovich Genre: History, Nonfiction, Biography  Publisher: Ecco Release Date: 2023 Pages: 430 Source: Netgalley/Publisher in exchange for an honest review. Synopsis: A groundbreaking study of the first Black female novelist and her life as an enslaved woman, from the biographer who solved the mystery of her identity, with a foreword by Henry Louis Gates Jr.       In 1857, a woman escaped enslavement on a North Carolina plantation and fled to a farm in New York. In hiding, she worked on a manuscript that would make her famous long after her death. The novel, The Bondwoman’s Narrative, was first published in 2002 to great acclaim, but the author’s identity remained unknown. Over a decade later, Professor Gregg Hecimovich unraveled the mystery of the author’s name and, in The Life and Times of Hannah Crafts, hefinally tells her story.   ...