Read With Crystal Book Club: October Book Review + November’s Book Pick Announcement

I love that SOO many of you have been joining us for the Read With Crystal Book Club! I received message after message from people saying how much you enjoyed the book and love this idea — and that makes me so happy!

If you didn’t know about the book club or you need a refresher, here are details before I share my review of October’s book and announce November’s book club pick!

How the Book Club Works

Here’s how it works:

1. I announce the book club pick for the month on the blog and on social media. You can buy the book online, from a local book store, get it from the library, or listen to the audiobook. You choose!

2. We read through the book that month. I may mention it here and there on social media or on the blog. I may not. It just depends!

3. At the end of the month, I post a post with my full review and thoughts of the book. I will invite you to share your thoughts in the comments on that blog post or in the post I share on social media.

4. That’s it! We’ll repeat this every month with a new book.

You can join us every month or just on the months that the book looks interesting to you. Whatever works for you — this is a no obligation book club!

What I Thought of October’s Book Club Pick

October’s Book Club pick was Beneath a Scarlet Sky. I have planned to read this book for years and it’s been on my shelf for years and I’ve had every intention to pick it up and read it since so many people had recommended it. This book club was a great way for me to actually get it read.

Unfortunately, I didn’t love it as much as I’d hoped. It is said that it is based on a true story and there are many crazy and wild tales in the book that feel like there’s just no way they could have actually happened.

Well, apparently, in doing some research online, it appears that many people have written articles debunking the possibility of many of the things in the book.

Honestly, that made me disappointed, because I always expect an author to do their due diligence as much as is possible — especially when writing an historical novel claiming to be based on a true story — to make sure that the facts are accurate when it comes to the actual history and geography, etc.

I would have rather just been told it was historical fiction based loosely on some true characters rather than be led to believe that it was as accurate as the author could possibly be with the data and records available.

However, this was not what I didn’t like about the book, though. I felt like it left you feeling confused. Who was Hans Leyers? What was his role in the war? How did he know of Pino’s involvement in the resistance?

I was expecting those questions to be answered somewhere in the book. And they weren’t.

That left me finishing the book feeling like it wasn’t finished. Like you were so close to the finish line and getting some closure on the story and then you were just left on a treadmill that wouldn’t stop and the finish line was taken away.

In addition, I think the thing that bothered me most was how it felt so meaningless without Jesus. There were mentions of God and religion in the book, but it felt like Pino definitely was relying on himself to accomplish what he did. And it felt like he never really full experienced the forgiveness and peace that could come from Jesus. So it felt like his life had unfinished business left, too.

I also wasn’t a fan of the way that marriage was treated like something that didn’t really matter that much. Multiple male characters in the book had mistresses and it felt like the women were just being used and taken advantage of.

Finally, I didn’t feel like the writing was super strong. It felt like it could have been edited and tightened up a bit and probably could have been 50+ pages shorter without losing any of the meaning or storyline. When an author is giving me a lot of details about something, I’m always thinking, “Where are they leading me with this information?” In this book’s case, sometimes it just felt like information that wasn’t necessary and just filled pages and a word count?

Overall, while it isn’t a terrible book, it left me wanting a lot. And I didn’t feel like I had missed that much for not reading it for the past decade!

I guess maybe that’s the lesson here: sometimes you can feel like you are really dropping the ball because you think you “should” be doing something and you just aren’t prioritizing it. Years later, you find out that you didn’t really miss anything and it was okay you didn’t prioritize it earlier.

What Did You Think?

I have a feeling a BUNCH of you are going to really disagree with me on this review — and that is totally okay. If you loved Beneath a Scarlet Sky, I want to hear all about what you loved about it and what you learned from it! Let’s discuss in the comments. Please feel free to totally push back on everything I said above; you will not offend me. In fact, I love it when people can disagree respectfully!

November’s Book Club Pick

Okay, I decided to go with an “easier” read for November since I felt like we’ve had two pretty long and dramatic books the past two months. The book is called After We Fall. This one does deal with deeper issues and real-life stuff, so it’s not fluff, but it’s a shorter read and is based in the present day.

I picked this book because I had read the first book in the series, Even After This, earlier this year and just loved it. It was funny, engaging, and had a lot of depth to it, too.

When I found out the author had a second book coming out, called After We Fall, I immediately wanted to order and read it. And then I found out that it had some foster care themes in it and I’m like, “Sign me up!”

I get to interview the author, Deborah Clack, for my podcast this coming week and that episode will be coming out this month so stay tuned for that!

By the way, I asked if After We Fall can stand alone or if you need to read the first book before reading it. I was told it should be able to stand on its own, though I loved Even After This and think you should go read it, too!

From the Amazon description of After We Fall:

Sometimes the place you least expect to belong is exactly where you were always meant to land.

Self-sufficient Penelope Reid has her life completely mapped out–a necessity after surviving foster care. Now she’s on a mission to prove that she’s capable of managing a halfway house at Twelve Bluebells Ranch. The last thing she needs is hindrance from the charming Luke Granger, who asked her to dance three years ago, then disappeared before the music began.

Luke lives a nomadic lifestyle as a security specialist and has never found a reason to put down roots. So when the ranch neighboring Twelve Bluebells is vandalized, securing the area is just another gig for him before he hits the road–until he’s reunited with the bossy brunette and her generous heart.

As Luke and Penelope work alongside each other to care for the ranch’s halfway house residents, Penelope makes a mistake she might not recover from. Her careful walls begin to crack, and Luke’s restless heart finds reasons to stay. But when tragedy strikes, they must decide if it’s worth the risk to lower their guards for a love that could give them the home they’ve always longed for.

A poignant, emotional, no-spice contemporary romance about all the heartbreaking ways we can fall and what it takes to put us back together again. This clean and wholesome opposites-attract love story with a protective MMC will delight fans of Abby Jimenez, Katherine Center, Annabel Monaghan, and Corinne Michaels.

Get a copy of After We Fall here or ask your library to order a copy!

Any questions? Ask away in the comments! Also, if you have suggestions for future book club books, let me know! I’m compiling a list!

Note: I will do my best to pick books that are clean (no bedroom scenes) and don’t have a lot of cursing in them. However, since I won’t have read the book before I pick it, I am not endorsing a book just by picking it. But I will do my best to research it to try to make sure it’s no more than a PG or PG-13 type book.