Finally. A new release from one of my all-time favorite authors. Francine Rivers is an auto-buy author for me. And if we're being honest, the only other author that has that honor is Robin Jones Gunn. It's an exclusive club. And when one of these two women announces a new release, it's preordered in two shakes and then there's a lot of impatience on the part of yours truly until Release Day. Thankfully, between finding out about The Lady's Mine and when it actually arrived in my mailbox, I had my birthday, Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Years, a blizzard, and a full-time job to occupy my time. So we survived. But y'all. It has been four solid years since Rivers' last book The Masterpiece was published, and the fatalist in me always believes that the last book Francine Rivers or Robin Jones Gunn wrote will be the last book they ever will write again so I had all but given up hope that I'd ever get a new novel from Rivers.
But I was wrong! Hooray!
The Lady's Mine is Francine Rivers' self-described "pandemic book" and for that reason, it is intentionally a lot lighter than the rest of her body of work. Set in the late 1800s, this book chronicles the adventures of Kathryn Walsh as she is disinherited from her posh Bostonian family for being a troublemaking suffragette and sent West to claim a paltry inheritance left her by her recently deceased uncle. She shows up in Calvada, a border mining town in the middle of Nowhere, USA determined to make her own way in the world.
Now, let's not kid ourselves: Francine Rivers is a romance writer and the majority of her books do center around a romantic relationship of one type or another. And don't get me wrong: I'm here for a good love story. But in The Lady's Mine she really leaned into the romance. In most of her other books, there is a Main Issue the plot deals with that the romance is written to serve. However in this newest offering, it definitely felt like we were reading a Romance with a side of women's rights thrown in. And it was good. But it wasn't my favorite book by her for that reason. You could definitely tell that Rivers had fun writing it, and I did appreciate how light it was in comparison with her other books. Like, when I usually sit down with a Francine Rivers novel, I don't move again until I've finished it because I'm literally holding my breath till the end. With The Lady's Mine, I could breathe, you know? According to Goodreads, I took a whole week to read it. That's not to say we never dealt with any tough circumstances or tense situations, but in contrast with the rest of her work, this one was just fun. Rivers has described it as The Taming of the Shrew meets Oklahoma! and it was a rip-roaring good time.
All in all, my favorite author once again delivered a novel I thoroughly enjoyed, and I'd definitely recommend The Lady's Mine if you're looking for a fun romantic romp. But if you've never read anything else by Francine Rivers, for the love of silver start with The Atonement Child or the Mark of the Lion trilogy.
Do you have any auto-buy authors?
I've read "Atonement Child", and was sufficiently engrossed, I think (it was years ago). Her writing isn't something I'm naturally inclined to, though, I would say.
ReplyDeleteFair enough. You're definitely not her target demographic. But if you were ever looking for something to read, I think you'd appreciate her Mark of the Lion books. The first two act as a duology with the third book feeling a bit like a spin-off so you could omit that one, but I think you'd really like the first two. They're gladiator era.
Delete“for the love of silver” haha
ReplyDelete🤣 SPOILER: she inherits a lucrative silver mine in the book.
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