Carve Me a Melody

About the book: World War II has ended but the scars of the war have carved deep grooves in Sophie Wright’s heart. Now a widow with two young children, she returns home to Aspen Falls and meets Leland Halverson, a handsome carpenter who appears interested in her, but afraid of a relationship. 

Leland wishes he was worthy of the beautiful Sophie, and he adores her two children, but his past still haunts him. Sophie knows that Leland fell apart after his little girl died and his wife left him, but she doesn’t know the real reason why.

Meanwhile, David Alexander, a decorated bomber pilot has returned to Aspen Falls, and Sophie catches his eye. Confused by the two vastly different choices of men, Sophie searches for answers from a heart that has betrayed her before.

When Sophie discovers a message inside a music box that Leland once owned, the pieces start to fit together. The enchanting melody urges her to share the secrets of her heart so that she can understand his. Leland knows the tune from the music box well and if he can find the courage, he’ll carve a melody for Sophie from the solid wood surrounding his heart.

My review: Wow, I really enjoyed reading this book. I love the historic feel of the book, the author has done an amazing job of making sure that the book doesn't feel like it's an old story set in our current time.

I really liked Sophie. She's a young widowed mother just trying to do her best with her two kids. She is an excellent seamstress and she's able to basically provide for her kids that way. The book is set just after the war and there were still a lot of basics that you still couldn't buy, things like sugar and coffee. But with her family's help, Sophie and her kids are getting by. But Sophie has a huge secret about her life with her husband that no one knows and if she has anything to say about it no one ever will know. There's too much shame for her in someone knowing her secret.

I loved the we get to see in this book, Leland from The Soldier's Bride. He was a character in that book that I really wondered about. We saw him and we saw that he started out a drunken man and changed. What we weren't able to see is just exactly what had happened to him to make him be that way. I felt like I was able to understand why he was the way he was a bit more. I really enjoyed seeing his interaction with Sophie's little family. Maybe because he had already lost so much, he was able to know just what was most important in life and really grab on to those things. 

Then there's David. He's the son of the woman who pays Sophie the most for sewing jobs. His mother is not very nice and she feels like since she has money that everyone needs to listen to her and obey her every whim. She wants nothing to do with Sophie dating David and she tries her very hardest to keep him away from her. I have to say that I didn't like her and my feelings for David may have been influenced some by that, but it didn't seem as though David cared for Sophie or her children the way Leland did.

I really liked the plot of this one. I liked the way there were some really hard things from the time touched on. Things like the way the Japanese American people had been treated, or the way there wasn't a whole lot of money moving through society, or even the way Sophie was treated for being a single mother, even though she was a widow of a soldier. 

I loved the way the music box and it's haunting melody were back in this book, touching the characters hearts and helping them to change and become the best versions of themselves. This is a really great book! I loved all of it! 

I was sent an e-copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Purchase link: Amazon

Labels: , ,