The Painted Castle by Kristy Cambron

The year is 1843, the year is 1944, the year is present-day, the lady is Elizabeth or Amelia or Keira, the man is Keaton or Wyatt or Emory. Take your pick on which characters you want to root for or if you want to root for all of them. Yes, this book jumps back and forth between three different timeframes and, of course, three different sets of people. Because of this, I think, it took me a while before the story pulled me in. You have to read a lot more of the book before you get a handle on each character and what is happening, but when the story pulled me in, I was hooked.

Often in these kinds of books that flip back and forth between time periods, I really am interested in only one story and endure the others. And I thought this would be the case again: what interest was I really going to have in 1843, but I was so very wrong. By the time, the book was done, I was interested in all three time periods and really, really wanted to know what happened to each character. And the endings were so deeply satisfying. I like a happy ending as much as the next person, but when the happy endings come on the heels of pain and personal loss, there is so much more satisfaction to be found in them. The joy just seems to be greater and deeper, the characters more developed and mature, and the endings just so much more realistic as well.

A few quotes I liked from the book. The first one is from the 1944 time period. "Books are a completely personal kind of journey. On the first page they ask us not only to be willing but to be moved, changed, persuaded, even made new by the time we reach the end. Everyone's walk through is different. It has to be. What if I choose the wrong sort of journey for you?" I love this quote because of my own love of books and because I recognize that a book I love someone else may hate.

And this quote is from the present-day time period: "Life can sometimes be that, yes, but it can have a bring-you-to-your-knees beauty too. Grief isn't always a loss of any one person or thing. I think it's the loss of who we might have become had life not taken an unexpected turn. That needs some time to work out."

I really enjoyed this book. This was the third in her lost castle series featuring the Foley family. You can read them as stand-alone books, I have only read two out of the three, but I do think they would make more sense if read in order.

I received this book from Thomas Nelson via NetGalley and was not required to write a positive review. All opinions expressed are my own.