Reading Roadtrip: Alabama

Reading takes you to so many places doesn't it? That's one of the main reasons I love reading so much. Opening a new book, feeling the crack of the spine, it's a refreshing feeling. Over the course of my life. I've read a lot of books. Many of which I have loved. A few I haven't. But this summer, I decided to create sort of a "reading challenge" you could say, to help me pick good books. Big thanks to Epic Reads for giving me the idea. I'm calling it the Reading Roadtrip. I'm going to read a book from every state, maybe not by the end of the summer, but at least until I've been to every state. 

Our first stop, Alabama.

For this book I read The Splendor Falls by Rosemary Clement-Moore. Good reads sums up the blog nicely:

Sylvie Davis is a ballerina who can’t dance. A broken leg ended her career, but Sylvie’s pain runs deeper. What broke her heart was her father’s death, and what’s breaking her spirit is her mother’s remarriage—a union that’s only driven an even deeper wedge into their already tenuous relationship. 
Uprooting her from her Manhattan apartment and shipping her to Alabama is her mother’s solution for Sylvie’s unhappiness. Her father’s cousin is restoring a family home in a town rich with her family’s history. And that’s where things start to get shady. As it turns out, her family has a lot more history than Sylvie ever knew. More unnerving, though, are the two guys that she can’t stop thinking about. Shawn Maddox, the resident golden boy, seems to be perfect in every way. But Rhys—a handsome, mysterious foreign guest of her cousin’s—has a hold on her that she doesn’t quite understand. Then she starts seeing things. Sylvie’s lost nearly everything—is she starting to lose her mind as well? 

I'm not going to lie, this book took a little getting into to really like it but when I got about 200 pages in, things got in. Shawn Maddox is the perfect small-town boy and Rhys the best Welsh crush you could ask for.

There were a few laugh out loud moments in the novel, mostly between Sylvie and Addie, but for the most part it was pretty serious. I appreciated Clement-Moore's ability to describe African-American characters without making it a racist thing. It's Alabama for crying out loud, of course there is going to be black people.

What the book lacked, however, was a strong finish. I don't know if Clement-Moore was trying to end the novel quickly or what but the ending of this gorgeously built up plot ended like *that* (snap). I felt very rushed trying to understand the ghosts, the magics, the whole mess of things.

If you are looking for a cheesy almost-teeny romance, with a hint of a ghost story, this is the one. Sylvie's commentary is sarcastic sense of humor carries well throughout the book, and isn't predictable. The chemistry between her and Rhys was however. Predictable that is. I knew from the moment his gorgeous face stepped onto the pages he would be the love interest.

All in all, it was a great read and the perfect start to my Reading Roadtrip.