After Our Castle (Blog Tour + Review)

Hello friends!

*glances at calendar* it has been a minute. I apologize for dropping off the face of the earth for a brief moment. I have some fun things planned, and will start blogging slightly more often in the near future. And what better way to kick that off than with a blog tour and review?

And they lived … well, happily ever after.

A year into a blissfully happy marriage, Violet Angel admits to a dose of skepticism. She’s not married, granted—but as the closest friend of the bride and groom, she feels she has a perspective no one but the people directly involved could have. There’s no such thing as a happy ending, and it’s only a matter of time before the castle in the sky plummets to earth.

If only Violet were always wrong instead of just mostly wrong. Ivy McAllen doesn’t believe she and her new husband are out of the honeymoon period—if they are, she isn’t going to admit it to herself—but there are certainly areas of adjustment that she hadn’t expected.

Changes at the village of Keefmore and in Ivy’s life lead to complications, and Violet spirals further and further from reality. When a castle in the sky turns out to be more cloud than stronghold, finding a foothold proves more than a little difficult.

***

After I finished Kellyn’s previous Alice and Ivy book, A Prayer Unanswered, I felt like I needed a hug. Then, after finishing After Our Castle, I felt like I’d been given a hug.

One of the best things about this book was that we were able to return to the ✨ aesthetic✨ village of Keefmore and watch the new shenanigans that our infamous Trio Of Drama got into. Only now, this trio is dealing with different issues than Beyond Her Calling.

This book deals with topics about marriage and having children, and while I have absolutely no experience in any of those areas, the way Kell portrayed these ideas felt so raw and real. I think that’s what I enjoy most about the Alice and Ivy books. Kellyn portrays the different situations Alice and Ivy go through so realistically and she makes those tough themes more digestible.

While Ivy and Jordy dealt with their own problems, Violet was off getting into her own mischief. In the past books, I never really knew what to think about Violet, but I really liked her in After Our Castle. We began to really see some of her struggles, and while I absolutely cannot condone what Violet says and does, I really liked seeing her portrayed this way. Plus, the slight cliffhanger we were left on made me very curious and worried… Kell, Violet needs her own book!

This book did have a lot of time jumps, which took me a while to really get into. I don’t know why I have such a hard time adjusting to time jumps, but I do. *shrugs* Jordy also really angered me in this book, but by the end he was much better. Just be warned. I could never not like Jordy, and yet here we are. But it did make Jordy seem very real.

This book also had a bunch of really great quotes, which I shall share with you now:

Spring had come back to Keefmore, and the ladies were plotting their gardens, though how many were doing so willingly and how many were being forced by Aunt Daphne was unclear.

Oh yeah. There was lots of gardening content in this book. Aunt Daphne has me convinced I could grow a garden without killing everything.

“Don’t tell anyone in Keefmore that there’s anything British here, or they’ll return to their savage ways.”

… that could make an interesting spin off.

Violet once again stepped through the gate—oh, lovely, now there is a useless gate—at her aunt Daphne’s house.

These quotes are all great, but I promise, they become ten times better with context. A Prayer Unanswered is such a sweet, but also moving story. It’s a wonderful combination of aesthetic Scottish villages, daydreams, a dramatic Violet, a sweet and loving Ivy and Jordy, and thought provoking themes.

Check it out on Amazon and Goodreads

And don’t forget to follow along on the the rest of the tour!

I hope you have a great rest of your day 🙂

-Hannah

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