Personal Rating: 4 Stars Goodreads Rating: 3.77 Content Rating: PG-13 (for violence and a creepy dude) Possible trigger warnings: Rape (nothing actually happens, but the situation is set up). England, 1381: Delia's idyllic life as daughter of an earl is shattered when her father dies and his wife accuses Delia's seven brothers of treason and murder. The youngest is only ten years old, but this doesn't stop the guards from hauling them off to the Tower of London. There they await a grim fate, as child-king Richard II is executing anyone who poses a threat to his throne. Delia is their only hope for pardon and freedom. Sir Geoffrey did not expect his first assignment as captain of the guard to be the arrest of boys so young. He dutifully imprisons the brothers, but he can't ignore the sense, rooted in personal experience, that injustice and treachery are at work. Determined to rescue her brothers, Delia secures a position as a seamstress for the queen. Her quest is all but impossible as the executions continue. Sir Geoffrey offers to be her ally, but should she trust him in a court where everyone has an agenda? (goodreads.com) I won this book in a Goodreads giveaway, so thank you to anyone who made that giveaway possible! As usual, I want to start things off by complimenting whoever was in charge of the cover design. I absolutely love the color palette and, of course, the poofy dress. I’m fairly certain that the dress is not historically accurate—or at least not for the situation that Delia found herself in—but it is a lovely dress nonetheless. I was hesitant to start this book, honestly. While I have read books by Melanie Dickerson before and enjoyed parts of them, as a whole they usually aren’t my jam. Her plots are exciting, but her characters are always kind of bland. The protagonists in each of her books are almost indistinguishable from each other and, though they are nice and pleasant people, they make for very boring book characters. I will say that, though I enjoyed this book about ten times more than I enjoyed my last Melanie Dickerson book, the characters were still pretty blah. Delia was kind and sweet and good and Sir Geoffry was noble and honorable and protective. Which could be said of most of the other lead characters in Melanie Dickerson’s other books. Maybe Sir Geoffry wasn’t as moody as the Margrave of Thornbeck (whose name I cannot remember for the life of me) from The Beautiful Pretender, but that’s about where the differences end as far as personality goes. One thing I did like about Delia, or at least relate to, was that she was struggling to trust God with the lives of her brothers. Typically, I feel, Dickerson’s characters do not have this worry. Delia wasn’t always sure that things were going to be okay, she worried that her brothers would be executed and she struggled with trusting that God had a plan for her if her brothers did die. I could relate to that worry and fear and even the distrust at times. It was nice to have something to relate to with the MC in this book, even if she was otherwise sort of boring. Because of Delia’s fear for her brothers and the discussion over if God would save them from execution or not, the book held more suspense for me. Would all of her brothers actually survive? If they didn’t, what would happen to Delia? If they do survive, how would they escape their impending doom? I liked this suspense, though I was a little disappointed with the ending. I won’t say more on that, because of spoilers, but I was sort of hoping for more excitement. The core message of the book, about trusting God, didn’t really wrap up the way I wanted it to either. I don’t think there was any event in the story to really make the points stick. But I will say that the particular message it was trying to convey is what made the book for me and made me stick around to see what happens. So it does have that going for it. To wrap up, I found this book to be more interesting than any of the other Melanie Dickerson books I’ve read, but I am still not a fan of how she writes her characters and if her characters are going to continue to be as flat as they are then I think there need to be some twists in the plot to keep the readers interest. I loved the coziness of knitting and sewing in this book, but since the characters personalities aren't adding anything interesting, I’d really like to see something unexpected happen. Of course, as always, those are just my thoughts on the book and as a whole, I did really enjoy reading this, I just wish the ending had been more satisfying. Well, I’m off to knit seven sweaters! TTFN! Image source: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/52509575-court-of-swans
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