The Blossoming Summer; a Review

Hello! 👋🏼 How are you all? 🤗

Our review today is for a book I had had on my TBR from the moment I heard it was coming out. 🤭💕 I was so excited when I found out that I was going to receive an eARC copy! I had adored both of her other books The Star That Always Stays and The Luminous Life of Lucy Landry and predicted correctly that I would adore this one as well! 🥹🥰💕

🦋 The Blossoming Summer by Anna Rose Johnson 🦋

When English thirteen-year-old Rosemary is sent to stay with her American grandmother at the start of World War II, she uncovers the family secret: they are Anishinaabe.

The year is 1940. England is all Rosemary has ever known . . . but as World War II changes the world, her life is altered as well. With France conquered, she, her parents, and her little brothers flee to America to escape the coming Blitz. Her grandmother’s house in Northern Wisconsin is safe, but unfamiliar—and she soon discovers that her parents have kept a tremendous secret.

Rosemary and her family are Anishinaabe . . . and her father is not proud of it.

Grandmother, however, is. A fashionable, independent, and fiery-minded old lady, she begins to teach Rosemary Anishinaabemowin. Far from home, but newly connected to a once-hidden part of her identity, Rosemary develops a warm, close relationship with Grandmother Charlotte—and with a local boy whose love of gardening helps her to see the beauty in her unexpected circumstances. As Rosemary grows into her new life like a flower in bloom, she realizes that maybe she’s not as far from home as she thought.

5!✨

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This was such a sweet story! 😍 Loveliness bursts through it as much as on its gorgeous cover. 💗Rosemarys quest to find paradise is a worthy one, and one we can probably all relate to on some level as we ache for a place that is not yet for us. 

The characters were also endearing. 🤭 I loved Rosemary, and as an older sister I can definitely relate to her-the way she is always watching and trying to help keep things in order, feeling the burden of all her siblings do. The gentle reminder from her father that that is not her job was a sweet touch. 🫶🏼

CWs: Talk of war and hoping people are safe from its threats. Minor spoilers A character takes a fall and is thought to have a concussion. They are unconscious for a while. 

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Thank you to the author for this ARC! 🫶🏼 All thoughts and opinions are my own. So sorry for being a couple of days late. 🙈

So, yeah. I need a fourth Anna Rose Johnson now, please. 🥹🥰

Have any of you read or do you want to read this one? 🥰 What have you all been reading? I always love hearing! 💗💗💗

-Sara Noelle