Book review: Savage Girl by Jean Zimmerman

Title: Savage Girl by Jean Zimmerman
To be published March 6, 2014; Viking Adult
Objective rating: 4.5/5
Genre: historical romance; mystery

My comments: A combination of Pygmalion/My Fair Lady but with much darker overtones. Nature vs nurture, one of the theories being debated in mid 19th century,  is the main theme of this novel. Suspenseful till the very end.

Publisher description: From the author of The Orphanmaster, a novel about a wild girl from Nevada who lands in Manhattan’s Gilded Age society. An alluring, smart eighteen-year-old girl named Bronwyn, reputedly raised by wolves in the wilds of Nevada, is adopted in 1875 by the Delegates, a wealthy Manhattan couple, and taken back East to be civilized and introduced into high society.

 A series of suitors, both young and old, find her irresistible, but the willful girl’s illicit lovers begin to turn up murdered. Zimmerman’s tale is narrated by the Delegate’s son, a Harvard anatomy student. The tormented, Hugo Delegate speaks from a prison cell where he is prepared to take the fall for his beloved Savage Girl. This narrative—a love story and a mystery with a powerful sense of fable—is his confession.

From the Author's Note:

"Though this book may its head in the clouds of fantasy it has its feet planted firmly in fact. Stories of feral children, private transcontinental train travel and a tigon in the Central Park Zoo all are grounded in historical research, as are details of confectionary Fifth Avenue mansions and outlandish French ballgowns..." 

Thanks to the publisher for a review copy of this book. 

Book Review: The First Phone Call From Heaven by Mitch Albom

Welcome to the Sunday Salon! Also visit The Sunday Post hosted by The Caffeinated Bookreviewer, and It's Monday: What Are You Reading? at Book Journey. Also, Mailbox Monday hosted by Rose City Reader this month.

The First Phone Call From Heaven was published November 12, 2013 by Harper. I won't call this a book review but a commentary on the novel, which I received from the publisher as an uncopyedited manuscript. The manuscript started out as an article of faith, with numerous people from a small town receiving phone calls from their deceased loved ones. The story then becomes a kind of mystery when one member of the town, who is still grieving a lost wife but who has never received a phone call from heaven, decides to look into a rational explanation for the calls. The story then turns into something more sublime. And I won't let on what the ending is, of course.

The manuscript was a quick and easy read but so gripping that it had me wanting to know the final outcome of this strange phenomenon of phone calls from heaven.  I rated it 5 stars on goodreads.

I am now reading a library book, The Girl You Left Behind by Jojo Moyes, a novel of occupied France in the 1910s, when a German commandant tempts a young wife into indescretions to save the life of her imprisoned husband, an artist. This novel is also gripping, and I am anxious to see the outcome.

Books I received for review include Books 1 and 2 in the Beautiful series by Jamie McGuire -
Beautiful Disaster and Walking Disaster, YA novels, and
The Deepest Secret by Carla Buckley, a family drama,
Savage Girl by Jean Zimmerman, an historical romance and mystery
The Caravaggio Conspiracy by Alex Connor, thriller, art mystery

What are you reading these days, and what arrived last week in your mailbox?