The Lost Castle—Kristy Cambron

Ellie's grandmother Vi has Alzheimers, and Ellie is trying to find ways to connect. When Grandma Vi shows a photo of herself taken during World War II to Ellie, Ellie is quite surprised to find Grandma posing with a man who is decidedly NOT Ellie's grandfather. Grandma Vi sends Ellie on a mission to find the man in the photo, and send him a message. This mission takes Ellie to France, where she discovers more about her grandmother than she ever could have imagined, as well as a woman from 1789 who also ties into the story - and maybe finds love along the way.

So, first and foremost, I have GOT to get better about being thorough reading summaries/genres because it's made very clear in the listing that this is a Christian romance, and I completely missed that. I only realized when I went to go look up the author and the very first line of her twitter bio is "JESUS girl." Jesus. In all caps. If that's your cup of tea, this book might be for you.

I did enjoy this for what it was. The split time romance story lines all tied together quite nicely, though the earliest one did seem a bit...thrown in there. But especially the weaving together of Ellie's storyline, with learning about her grandmother's past, was really lovely; Ellie encountered that classic moment where you realize that your parents/grandparents are actually people completely independent of you, and had lives before you existed. (It doesn't feel like it should have taken her quite that long, but...Mostly, though, there wasn't anything terribly remarkable or memorable about the book. It wasn't bad and it wasn't really good. It just kind of was.

It was frustrating to me that Aveline kept speaking a couple of words in French and the rest in English. Like, obviously she's a French girl. Throwing in random French words, especially when they're not grammatically correct with the rest of the sentence, or repetitive articles (for example: "the la noblesse") seemed unnecessary. Just let her speak English. It doesn't make it seem more authentic to throw random words in there.

And one final big point of contention: the author keeps using the word "might" when she means "mite," and that irritated me. For example, "Fan is kind, and self-assured with her knowledge of healing, but a might strict." Or "That makes it a might informal, mind." I'm hoping this will have been fixed by the publishing date, but who is to say.

Overall, though, it was very twee and sweet, so if you're looking for something that might give you some of those butterflies without anything too explicit, this one might be for you. I received an advance egalley from the publisher, but it's official release date is February 6, 2018.