This was a wonderful, impossible to put down book! Elle is such a wonderful character from page one and the relationships portrayed in the book are SO real! I laughed and cried as I watched Elle grow. Thank you for the memories inspired by the book!
Okay, Heather Chapman, I have read four of your works now, and this one is my absolute favorite!!!!
Take my word for it, everyone, and READ THIS BOOK! I loved it. I couldn’t put it down the past couple days. Every spare moment I got, I snuck in a chapter or two, and when I couldn’t read, I wished I were reading.
What book, you say? Well, it’s a brand new book by Heather Chapman called Forever Elle.
The main character of Forever Elle is a young, awkward, accident-prone, unladylike young woman named Elle Pratt. She lives on a farm in the early 1900s with her family in the Tetons. She wears her heart on her sleeve, is stubborn, feisty, and is a constant disappointment to her father, who is incredibly hard on her (as well as her brother, Paul).
When one too many incidents happen, her father sends not only her, but her beautiful, ladylike, kind-hearted sister, Clara, to live with their Aunt Nora to attend a boarding school in Virginia. The move will change Clara’s and Elle’s lives in many complex ways, and Elle has to decide who she is and where she belongs in the world as she grows into womanhood.
I don’t want to give too much of the story away, but I will say that the characters are complex and so interesting. I feel like I don’t have much in common with Elle, except maybe her stubbornness and proneness to tears when things are hard, but I just adored her character. Sometimes she made me laugh out loud, and other times, I really felt for her. She felt like a real person to me, and I loved going through her journey of self-discovery with her.
The book made me do two things several times – blush with girlish excitement over the chemistry between Elle and a young man I won’t name (it’s better to find out yourself), and cry unexpectedly at parts that weren’t necessarily supposed to make me cry (like when someone gets thrown in the creek). My emotions surprised me sometimes as I was reading.
I knew what the ending of the book would be pretty early on, but that’s okay, because I eagerly awaited the completely satisfying and heart-pounding exchanges that led to the ending, or shall I say, new beginning?
When I finished the book, I realized that most of the story was just about regular life, and that there weren’t that many adventurous or over-the-top moments, but I was pleasantly surprised to find that this book didn’t need anything like that. It stood perfectly well on its own two feet simply by following the life of dear Elle Pratt. And that is saying something!
Well done, Heather Chapman. Congrats on this masterpiece. I truly loved it.
Loved every minute of reading this book! The aurthor did a very good job at keeping me interested! I have a hard time finishing books due to lack of interest and this book was hard to put down! Great read!
