Cate is a runner. She prefers to help her fiancé run his New York senate race, but she finds herself running instead to fix what’s broken between her grandparents before he finds out–her grandmother has moved out of the family home, and her grandfather is accused of a pre-WWII relationship with a woman in Germany.Dietrich is a German journalist with a spotless reputation. He prefers facts, but … but he finds himself lost in a world of fiction instead to prove his novelist grandmother couldn’t possibly have been the lover of a US runner in Berlin’s 1936 Olympics–especially when that runner’s granddaughter is Cate, a stubborn obstacle he should but can’t ignore.Cate runs hard to cover up what Dietrich uncovers, until he shows her how it could have been–and how it could be again–that one can indeed love an enemy.
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Sweet Historical Romance
I spent almost the whole book trying to understand what was going on, and honestly, I’m still not sure I understand it all. It’s a mystery with an underlying romance, but is it the romance of the runner in Hitler’s Olympics, or the romance of the runner in NYC. Hence, part of the mystery! But a writer of the past and a writer of the present, together bring romance to the forefront.
The narration was outstanding, but I don’t have first hand experience of German accents.
Colleen writes such unique stories, blending books and authors from across the world and across different eras! This is my third book by her, and the second with this mystery, romance and book correlation!
They say there are two sides to every story and you can’t always tell a book by its cover. That’s what I concluded in Out of Splinters and Ashes. Colleen Donnelly has a unique way of drawing you with her writing style in this cryptic, with conjuncture, mystery, lies, suspense, innuendo, and a granddaughter that has the passion, love, to find the truth to set an injustice to right. April McIntire Borrow was the perfect narrator to bring this story to light.
Thank you Colleen for gifting me this audible book for a fair and honest review.
I stayed up past my usual bedtime reading Out of Splinters and Ashes by Colleen L. Donnelly. It’s not a novel that is easy to characterize. That’s not a criticism. With many novels, you know everything will come right at the end and all the loose ends will be tied up neatly. There’s nothing wrong with that; such books are like comfort food and reassure us all is right with the world. But sometimes we need something different to give us a new perspective. Dietrich is a German journalist trying to prove a woman’s birth mother is not related to his own family and Cate is a young American woman attempting to fix her family’s relationships. Their instant antagonism blends with secrets buried for decades to make a fascinating read. My one quibble is this: during much of the book, Cate acts more like a sixteen year old than her given age of twenty-six. But given her dysfunctional family, this may not be surprising. I’ll read Out of Splinters and Ashes again, because it’s that kind of book.
Out of Splinters and Ashes was an interesting book. There was a lot of innuendo in the book…you are left hanging with a few clues dropped here and there throughout. This is based on WWII and the present day with a lost love and political mystery. It was a struggle to try to figure out what was going on and how the story was going to be resolved.
I was hoping to enjoy the book more than I did. It was just a little abstract and difficult to follow the characters and where things were going.
Thank you to NetGalley for an ARC in exchange for my honest review.