The Story Keeper by Lisa Wingate

The Story Keeper by Lisa Wingate
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Jen Gibbs has recently got a job at Vida House Publishing and everyone knows that the slush-pile in the conference room is strictly forbidden to touch. So Jen is quite surprised when she finds a manuscript on her desk from it one morning. She has no idea who put it there and, at first, all she can think of is putting it back. That is until she starts to read it and get engrossed in the story about Sarra, a young woman in the Appalachia at the turn of the twentieth century, and Rand a young man that tries to save her from some brutal men. Now she just has to find the rest of the manuscript, but that means traveling to the Blue Ridge Mountains to chase a reclusive author. And, that also means that she is going home for the first time in ten years...

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The story keeper is book two in the Carolina series and as I already have read book three gave this book some insights to events and mentions in The Sea keeper's Daughters. Part of me wish that I had read the books in order because that would have made me appreciate part of The Sea keeper's Daughters much more, but I can always reread The Sea keeper's Daughters sometime in the future.

Do you need to read the books in order? No, but there are some threads that go through the books that make the reading experience perhaps more enjoyable if you read the books in order. But, I started with book 3, The Sea keeper's Daughters, and despite the fact that I hadn't read the previous books in the series did I enjoy that books very much. Actually, I came to love the book very much.

This book is good but in my opinion not quite as good as the previous book The Prayer Box or the book that comes after; The Sea keeper's Daughters. For instance, I had a much harder time really warming up the past story that is told in this book parallel to the present story. I for some reason just couldn't bond with Sarra and Rand. I much preferred to read about the present story with Jen trying to meet the author and at the same time confronting her own past when she goes home to meet her sisters and father. There were times I had to put the book down because I got so frustrated with her over religious family where the man's rule is the law. If there is something that makes me angry is men using religion to subdue women.

But despite that, I didn't find the past story as enchanting as Jen did has Lisa Wingate manages once again to write a truly wonderful book and the ending almost made me cry.