We’ve finished the first month of the Unlocking the Past 2022 Reading Challenge: Around the World. This month we traveled to Asia, and my choice of story was Every Word Unsaid by Kimberly Duffy. Once you read my review, don’t forget to comment to be entered for your chance to win a copy.
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Every Word Unsaid
by Kimberly Duffy
This month I had the incredible privilege of listening to Every Word Unsaid by Kimberly Duffy. She’d long been an author on my TBR pile and I was determined to use this reading challenge as an excuse to force me to pick it up. Oh my goodness! I ADORE Gussie and the whole cast of characters. Gussie is a free-spirited woman who struggles with the confines of her parents’ and society’s expectations of what a woman should be and do. She runs from place to place, taking photographs and travel articles for Ladies Weekly as means of trying to satisfy this deep longing for something more.
When scandal forces her out of the country, she escapes to India for experiences, photographs, and articles. What she finds, is a personal growth experience that transforms her into the fullness of her herself and God’s plan for her. She is forced to confront the pain of rejection for others and finds acceptance in a people in place that speaks to her soul. It is an incredibly beautiful story with a swoony hero who is atypical, but rock steady and exactly what Gussie needs in her life. While necessarily a romance story, there is plenty of romance to knock your socks off. But at the core of this story is a woman discovering who she is and accepting the fact that she is enough despite what others say about her.
I highly recommend this story to those seeking to experience other lands, real characters who also seem larger than life, love heroines and heroes who don’t quite fit the mold of expectation, and are looking for stories that go beyond entertaining to speak to your soul.
Genre: Historical, 1897, New York and India
Plot Overview:
Augusta Travers has spent the last three years avoiding the stifling expectations of New York society and her family’s constant disappointment. As the nation’s most fearless–and reviled–columnist, Gussie travels the country with her Kodak camera and spins stories for women unable to leave hearth and home. But when her adventurous nature lands her in the middle of a scandal, an opportunity to leave America offers the perfect escape.
Arriving in India, she expects only a nice visit with childhood friends, siblings Catherine and Gabriel, and escapades that will further her career. Instead, she finds herself facing a plague epidemic, confusion over Gabriel’s sudden appeal, and the realization that what she wants from life is changing. But slowing down means facing all the hurts of her past that she’s long been trying to outrun. And that may be an undertaking too great even for her.
What I loved: Gussie’s whole story just pulled me along on an adventure and eye-opening experience of a world not my own. Her personality, struggles, and experiences just left me desperate to not put the book down. Or in my case, get out of the car.
Favorite Character and Why: This book has a full cast of characters that I love, but Gussie remains firm as my favorite. She is unapologetically who she is on the outside, but inside she struggles and hurts like so many of us in unseen ways. She is beautiful soul, and I loved walking her story with her.
Who would like this? I highly recommend this story to those seeking to experience other lands, real characters who also seem larger than life, love heroines and heroes who don’t quite fit the mold of expectation, and are looking for stories that go beyond entertaining to speak to your soul.
PURCHASE LINKS
Amazon   Baker Bookhouse    Barnes & Noble    Books-a-Million    Book Depository    Bookshop.org    Christianbook.com   Indiebound.org
Giveaway
For your chance to win a print copy, comment with what book YOU read for this month and you will also be entered into the year-end Grand Prize Reader Basket. Use the Rafflecopter below for extra entries and to mark that you left a comment. Entries end on March 7th at midnight EST, and the winner will be drawn sometime that week and notified by email. The winner will be announced don’t the Rafflecopter widget. *Open to all residents of the contiguous USA, legally able to enter, and an e-book format or Amazon Gift Card will be awarded to those outside that range who are legally able to enter.
I read another of Kim’s books: A Tapestry of Light! So very good!
I think I’ll read Keturah by Lisa T. Bergren. About the Caribbean.
Awesome! I’ve got your entries added!
I read A Mosaic of Wings by Kimberly Duffy and A Plum Blooms in Winter by Linda Thompson. I didn’t like Nora from Mosaic at first, but she got better as she matured. I did like the storyline. Plum is a hard book to read, but well worth it.
I read Every Word Unsaid by Kimberly Duffy also 😊 I enjoyed it very much!!
Asweome! I’ve got your entries added.
Awesome! I’ve got your entries added!
Love it!
Like Paula, I read Kimberly Duffy’s A Tapestry of Light, and I’m planning on reading Lisa T. Bergren’s Keturah in March. 🙂
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I read Shadowed in Silk: Twilight of the British Raj in India by Christine Lindsay.
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For the February challenge (Asia), I read “The Samurai’s Heart” by Walt Mussel. It was very good!
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For this month’s challenge I also read a book by Kimberly Duffy entitled A Mosaic of Wings. She was a new author for me and I enjoyed her writing very much.
The book I have chosen for March is by Kathleen Y’Barbo entitled Beloved Castaway.
I read The Year Of The Barbarian by Elizabeth Ann Boyles. It was really great!! Very eye-opening!!
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Awesome! I’ve got your entries added!
I read two of Kimberly Duffy’s books, A Mosaic of Wings and Tapestry of Light. They were wonderful and I found a new author
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I read: Perfectly Arranged by Liana George. It’s a contemporary CF set in China. It’s the first in a series. I normally don’t gravitate towards contemporary, but I am so glad I read this. It was very good.
My March selection is: Mrs. Witherspoon Goes to War by Mary Davis
Awesome! I’ve got your entries added! I’ve never read anything set in China. I’ll have to look into it.
I read A Tapestry of Light by Kimberly Duffy. It was so good! I loved how the author just made everything so real that you felt like you were there.
Awesome! I’ve got your entries added. And I loved her books as well!
I read Kimberly Duffy’s A Tapestry of Light, and I’m planning on reading Lisa T. Bergren’s Keturah in March.
Awesome! I’ve got your entries added!
I read A Mosaic of Wings by Kimberly Duffy. I’m not sure what I’m going to read yet for March.
I read Dawn of a Thousand Nights by Tricia Goyer. I haven’t really narrowed down my March selections. I am currently trying to finish up 3 series of books.
Asweome! I’ve got your entries added.
Awesome! I’ve got your entries added.
I read A Mosaic of Wings by Kimberly Duffy. I loved it. Her other books are now on my TBR list.
For March I will be reading Keturah by Lisa T. Bergren.
Awesome, I’ve got your entries added.