#NEW #RELEASE! #NEW #REVIEW ! "Amy Snow, a novel" by Tracy Rees!

Description:

Winner of the UK’s Richard & Judy Search for a Bestseller Competition, this page-turning debut novel follows an orphan whose late, beloved best friend bequeaths her a treasure hunt that leads her all over Victorian England and finally to the one secret her friend never shared.

It is 1831 when eight-year-old Aurelia Vennaway finds a naked baby girl abandoned in the snow on the grounds of her aristocratic family’s magnificent mansion. Her parents are horrified that she has brought a bastard foundling into the house, but Aurelia convinces them to keep the baby, whom she names Amy Snow. Amy is brought up as a second-class citizen, despised by Vennaways, but she and Aurelia are as close as sisters. When Aurelia dies at the age of twenty-three, she leaves Amy ten pounds, and the Vennaways immediately banish Amy from their home.

But Aurelia left her much more. Amy soon receives a packet that contains a rich inheritance and a letter from Aurelia revealing she had kept secrets from Amy, secrets that she wants Amy to know. From the grave she sends Amy on a treasure hunt from one end of England to the other: a treasure hunt that only Amy can follow. Ultimately, a life-changing discovery awaits...if only Amy can unlock the secret. In the end, Amy escapes the Vennaways, finds true love, and learns her dearest friend’s secret, a secret that she will protect for the rest of her life.

An abandoned baby, a treasure hunt, a secret. As Amy sets forth on her quest, readers will be swept away by this engrossing gem of a novel—the wonderful debut by newcomer Tracy Rees.

MY TAKE:
4 STARS

This was quite a hefty book! 551 pages of story! Please don’t allow that to persuade you NOT to read it because this book was very good. It is a debut historical fiction book with a very promising storyline, if you can first get past the horrible circumstances she was born into and lived for a short while until she was old enough to move out of the cold and uncaring home she was raised in. The only person who showed they cared for her was an 8 year old little girl herself! Can you imagine, though, being 8 years old and finding a barely living baby outside in the snow, all blue, barely alive, bringing it indoors and showing it to your parents but having them BANISH THIS CHILD OUT OF THEIR HOME??? Even the SERVANTS refuse to care for this baby! Unbelievable! SHAME on the person putting this LIVE child on the property of this rich home and ASSUMING these people will care for it? HA! If they only knew how badly this backfires and the struggles Amy (Aurelia named her!) she faces on a daily basis. I don’t think I could have managed that when I was 8! (Yes, 8 years old is extremely young, but I believe back in the days when life was so much harder to live in, I believe we were much more mature than we are today. Or at least today it is known we DESERVE a childhood, thankfully. So because of the rejection of this baby, 8 year old Aurelia takes over the care for this infant. Aurelia has a heart, but, that heart is not very strong as she ends up passing away at the mere age of 23! She secretly leaves Amy an inheritance, the only thing is Amy has to follow Aurelia’s letters she intentionally sent to her after she is gone, as this was all planned ahead to a “T” in order to get to her life-changing promises in the end. It is the journey Amy is upon that is so enjoyable to read about that makes this truly a beauty of a book worth the hefty number of pages! I received this book from the publisher, Simon and Schuster and NetGalley in exchange for writing a reviews of my own opinion. My review does not have to be positive or negative, but just how I truly felt about the book.