Official Review: Destiny Revisited by Eleanor Tremayne
Posted: 30 Aug 2017, 15:20
[Following is an official OnlineBookClub.org review of "Destiny Revisited" by Eleanor Tremayne.]
4 out of 4 stars
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Destiny Revisited by Eleanor Tremayne, is a historical romance fiction, published in 2017 by Scotoma Books Publishing. The book opens up in Boston, February 2001, when fifty-one-year-old Gabriella Girard Blair receives a phone call from Andrew Young; the Lawyer of her now-late first love, Jake Chavelier. He calls to inform her of Jake's death and to tell her that Jake wants her to be at his funeral. It's been thirty fours years since they last spoke. It is one of his last wishes. She does grant this wish and is handed a box, by Jake's wife, labeled "The Death Box", in fulfilment of another of Jake's last wishes. Then the story takes us back to 1963 at Gabby's hometown; Savannah, Georgia. She is a fourteen-year-old High School freshman and a drill team member while Jake is a seventeen-year-old football quarterback. Then the novel recounts events yearly, tracing its way from the past, back to the 2001 and further into the future, to 2010.
The 1960s were the times of the Militant Black Revolutionaries and Dr. Martin Luther King. Jake is supposed to go on a football scholarship to Alabama, but he gets influenced by The Reserved Officers Training Corps (ROTC) that came to campaign in his school and he joins the Marine Corp instead. This he does without informing Gabby, only to inform her after enrolling. That is the moment when everything about their lives, hopes and dreams changes completely. There are the silent wishes, the challenges, the obstacles, the reenlistments, the long distance, the letters, the zeal to succeed, the heartaches, the heartbreaks, the pain, the hopes, the adventures... Even my heart ached.
The novel is in the first person perspective, although every character is given a chance to express themselves. Every Chapter is directed to a particular character, who makes the audience understand their inner thoughts and struggles, and still in the first person point of view. Every line of this novel was worth reading. Every sentence made my heart pound with pleasure and pain. I was so eager to know what happened next. Everything felt perfect; their opposite backgrounds, their first meet, the immediate spark, the deserted barn, the Tybee Island, the fulfilment of decades-long promises...; everything felt perfect. I must admit that I was greatly impressed with the author's style and writing technique. And those additions of extracts from poems of poets like T.S. Eliot, Ralph Waldo Emerson and John Keats, here and there, were simply strawberries on sweet cakes.
The novel seemed to be submitted in a manuscript form and that was really challenging for me because it squeezed in two pages of the manuscript into an actual readable page, thereby compressing the submitted file. This was challenging for me, mainly because, due to the compression, my text-to-speech option could not work at all. This made my reading process longer than usual. The language of the novel is very simple and very few grammatical errors were detected. On page 26, "Liberian" was written instead of "Librarian" and on the same page, "knew" was written instead of "know".
I totally enjoyed the book and besides the few grammatical errors, the storyline is absolutely perfect and for this, I'd rate this novel 4 out of 4 stars, because it was worth reading. It has a good plot with realistic and well developed characters that we can all relate to and the novel is definitely not fit to be demoted to 3 stars. If you are a lover of Dr. Martin Luther King and the revolutionaries, you'll definitely love this one. And also, if you're a lover of adventure and love, do grab yourself a copy.
******
Destiny Revisited
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Like Belynda White's review? Post a comment saying so!
Editor's Note: The review copy submitted was a PDF manuscript for printers. The live version of the ebook on sales sites such as Kindle most likely does not have the formatting issues.
4 out of 4 stars
Share This Review
Destiny Revisited by Eleanor Tremayne, is a historical romance fiction, published in 2017 by Scotoma Books Publishing. The book opens up in Boston, February 2001, when fifty-one-year-old Gabriella Girard Blair receives a phone call from Andrew Young; the Lawyer of her now-late first love, Jake Chavelier. He calls to inform her of Jake's death and to tell her that Jake wants her to be at his funeral. It's been thirty fours years since they last spoke. It is one of his last wishes. She does grant this wish and is handed a box, by Jake's wife, labeled "The Death Box", in fulfilment of another of Jake's last wishes. Then the story takes us back to 1963 at Gabby's hometown; Savannah, Georgia. She is a fourteen-year-old High School freshman and a drill team member while Jake is a seventeen-year-old football quarterback. Then the novel recounts events yearly, tracing its way from the past, back to the 2001 and further into the future, to 2010.
The 1960s were the times of the Militant Black Revolutionaries and Dr. Martin Luther King. Jake is supposed to go on a football scholarship to Alabama, but he gets influenced by The Reserved Officers Training Corps (ROTC) that came to campaign in his school and he joins the Marine Corp instead. This he does without informing Gabby, only to inform her after enrolling. That is the moment when everything about their lives, hopes and dreams changes completely. There are the silent wishes, the challenges, the obstacles, the reenlistments, the long distance, the letters, the zeal to succeed, the heartaches, the heartbreaks, the pain, the hopes, the adventures... Even my heart ached.
The novel is in the first person perspective, although every character is given a chance to express themselves. Every Chapter is directed to a particular character, who makes the audience understand their inner thoughts and struggles, and still in the first person point of view. Every line of this novel was worth reading. Every sentence made my heart pound with pleasure and pain. I was so eager to know what happened next. Everything felt perfect; their opposite backgrounds, their first meet, the immediate spark, the deserted barn, the Tybee Island, the fulfilment of decades-long promises...; everything felt perfect. I must admit that I was greatly impressed with the author's style and writing technique. And those additions of extracts from poems of poets like T.S. Eliot, Ralph Waldo Emerson and John Keats, here and there, were simply strawberries on sweet cakes.
The novel seemed to be submitted in a manuscript form and that was really challenging for me because it squeezed in two pages of the manuscript into an actual readable page, thereby compressing the submitted file. This was challenging for me, mainly because, due to the compression, my text-to-speech option could not work at all. This made my reading process longer than usual. The language of the novel is very simple and very few grammatical errors were detected. On page 26, "Liberian" was written instead of "Librarian" and on the same page, "knew" was written instead of "know".
I totally enjoyed the book and besides the few grammatical errors, the storyline is absolutely perfect and for this, I'd rate this novel 4 out of 4 stars, because it was worth reading. It has a good plot with realistic and well developed characters that we can all relate to and the novel is definitely not fit to be demoted to 3 stars. If you are a lover of Dr. Martin Luther King and the revolutionaries, you'll definitely love this one. And also, if you're a lover of adventure and love, do grab yourself a copy.
******
Destiny Revisited
View: on Bookshelves
Like Belynda White's review? Post a comment saying so!
Editor's Note: The review copy submitted was a PDF manuscript for printers. The live version of the ebook on sales sites such as Kindle most likely does not have the formatting issues.
