Blog Tour Review + Giveaway: The Architect of Song by AG Howard

 

The Architect of Song Blog Tour is brought to you by Rock Star Book Tours

The Architect of Song by AG Howard
Series: Haunted Hearts Legacy #1
Published: August 15th, 2016
Publisher: Golden Orb Press
425 pages (eARC)
Genre: New Adult Historic/Paranormal Romance

Acquired this book: From the author in exchange for honest consideration

Warning: May contain spoilers

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A lady imprisoned by deafness, an architect imprisoned by his past, and a ghost imprisoned within the petals of a flower intertwine in this love story that transcends life and death.

For most of her life, nineteen-year-old Juliet Emerline has subsisted – isolated by deafness – making hats in the solitude of her home. Now, she’s at risk to lose her sanctuary to Lord Nicolas Thornton, a twenty-seven-year-old mysterious and eccentric architect with designs on her humble estate. When she secretly witnesses him raging beside a grave, Juliet investigates, finding the name “Hawk” on the headstone and an unusual flower at the base. The moment Juliet touches the petals, a young English nobleman appears in ghostly form, singing a song only her deaf ears can hear. The ghost remembers nothing of his identity or death, other than the one name that haunts his afterlife: Thornton.

To avenge her ghostly companion and save her estate, Juliet pushes aside her fear of society and travels to Lord Thornton’s secluded holiday resort, posing as a hat maker in one of his boutiques. There, she finds herself questioning who to trust: the architect of flesh and bones who can relate to her through romantic gestures, heartfelt notes, and sensual touches…or the specter who serenades her with beautiful songs and ardent words, touching her mind and soul like no other man ever can. As sinister truths behind Lord Thornton’s interest in her estate and his tie to Hawk come to light, Juliet is lured into a web of secrets. But it’s too late for escape, and the tragic love taking seed in her heart will alter her silent world forever.
 

 

I try really hard not to set my expectations too high with books anymore because I feel like I’m often disappointed when I built a book up in my mind. That being said, after reading Splintered and Unhinged by AG Howard, I couldn’t help but get excited and set high hopes when I read the synopsis and saw the gorgeous cover for The Architect of Song. Once I started reading, I knew within a few chapters that I was right to get excited about this book; Howard has a magical way with words and an ability to weave a beautiful story that’s dark, haunting, twisted, unique, and ultimately hopeful.

Part of my initial curiosity about The Architect of Song was the fact the main character, Juliet, was deaf. My brother is deaf, and having grown up surrounded by deaf people, I was interested to see how Howard would tackle the disability, especially in a Victorian setting. As sad as it was, it made sense that in that era, Juliet had to hide her deafness rather than be pitied or seen as ‘less than’ by society. Her feelings of isolation and her aversion to people other than her uncle and her maid, paired with her grief over the death of her mother, came across well and made me sympathize with her immediately.

There were so many elements of this story that kept me enthralled. It was a wonderful combination of mystery, romance, paranormal, and historical fiction. I liked the sense of not quite knowing who to trust, and how even as you pieced together parts of the mystery there was still so much to unravel. The night I started the book I had trouble falling asleep because the ghost element of the book - while probably not scary to most people - freaked me out! Then once I was over the fear, I couldn’t stop thinking about the characters whenever I had to set the book aside. I wanted to know what was going to happen and how things would work out. I also really enjoyed the gypsy lore in the story. I don’t think I’ve ever read anything with Romani characters, and I found the bits of history and customs fascinating. It was just one of the many things that set this book apart and made it sparkle.

The Architect of Song is a story that will stick with me for a long time. I finished reading it a couple weeks ago and still think about it daily. I became so emotionally invested in the characters that they were like real people by the end (so much so that I was a sobbing mess in the last couple chapters). This story has something for everyone, whether you’re looking for something with a paranormal twist, historical fiction, romance, or mystery. 

Captivating, atmospheric, romantic, and beautifully written, The Architect of Song is a must read.

A.G. Howard was inspired to write SPLINTERED while working at a school library. She always wondered what would've happened had the subtle creepiness of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland taken center stage, and she hopes her darker and funkier tribute to Carroll will inspire readers to seek out the stories that won her heart as a child. When she's not writing, A.G.'s pastimes are reading, rollerblading, gardening, and family vacations which often include impromptu side trips to 18th century graveyards or condemned schoolhouses to appease her overactive muse. 

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All tour prizes (INTL): 

 2 - signed The Architect of Song paperbacks 

3 - The Architect of Song e-books 

1 - heart locket necklace 

1 - Architect of Song poster 

1 - faux leather journal 

1 - 5X7 musical print 

3 - The Architect of Song swag packs 
1 - LitCube surprise box

  

13 separate winners

a Rafflecopter giveaway  

Whether you’ve read The Architect of Song or plan to read it, be sure to check out Anita’s Architect of Song Pinterest board. I want to live inside these gorgeous, haunting pictures!

Be sure to check out all the stops on the tour for other reviews, guest posts, and more chances to win cool prizes!

7/25/2016- Dark Faerie Tales- Guest Post-Hybrid Author 

7/25/2016- a GREAT read- Review 

  

7/26/2016- Lisa Loves Literature- Review 

7/26/2016- Bookfever- Review 

  

7/27/2016- Fiktshun- Character Interview 

  

7/28/2016- The Reading Café- Review 

7/28/2016- Adventures of a Book Junkie- Review 

  

7/29/2016- Please Feed the bookworm- Review 

7/29/2016- 21st Century Once Upon A Times- Review 

8/1/2016- Once Upon a Twilight - Exclusive Excerpt 

8/1/2016- Ramblings of a Daydreamer- Review 

  

8/2/2016- My Friends Are Fiction- Guest Post- Fashion 

8/2/2016- Sarcasm & Lemons- Review 

  

8/3/2016- Cornerfolds- Review 

8/3/2016- BookHounds YA- Review 

  

8/4/2016- Bookiemoji- Exclusive Excerpt 

8/4/2016- Owl Always Be Reading- Review 

  

8/5/2016- Mundie Moms- Review 

8/5/2016- Two Chicks on Books- Guest Post- Playlist 

8/5/2016- The Cover Contessa- Review

Have you read The Architect of Song? What did you think? If you haven't read it, do you plan to? Have you read AG's other books?

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*Please note that the Amazon link is an affiliate link; I make a small commission from every sale using that link, which goes into book giveaways

Fantastic Friday #5: Ripper Street

Fantastic Friday is a new feature here on Ramblings of a Daydreamer. Each Friday I'll showcase fantastic things from the past week - could be things I've done, places I've gone, a new song I like, a movie I've seen, books I've read, blog posts from around the blogosphere - anything at all!

What I'm finding fantastic lately: Ripper Street.

I am so obsessed with this show. I was browsing the DVDs at my library weekend before last and these caught my attention. Like many other people, I have a bizarre fascination with Jack the Ripper, so the title piqued my interest and I grabbed both seasons. 

While the show doesn't actually have to do with Jack the Ripper, the first season is set shortly after the Ripper's reign of terror in Whitechapel, and features the police force (division H) who tried to hunt him down. The main characters are Inspector Edmund Reid (Matthew MacFadyen), Sargeant Bennet Drake (Jerome Flynn), and American doctor/ex-Pinkerton Captain Homer Jackson (Adam Rothenberg). These three make a dynamic trio and have such great chemistry on screen. The characters are very different, but they have several core values in common: they're passionate about their jobs, want to help people, and are protective of those they love. Plus they're easy on the eyes, especially Mr. MacFadyen. ;-)

I love historic fiction, and Ripper Street is fascinating to me because it shows the seedier side of London in the late 1800s - dirty streets, poor people, prostitutes, mob mentality regarding several issues. While I've seen plenty of movies and TV shows set during the late Victorian era, part of what's so interesting to me is how this show doesn't hold back. A good portion of the show deals with prostitution - Captain Jackson lives in a brothel, and there are a few regular characters who are prostitutes - and they deal with issues surrounding religion, politics, homosexuality, and infidelity. Another fascinating aspect to me is that they don't just focus on the police work; we see a lot of Captain Jackson at work, examining dead bodies, performing autopsies, and doing a fair bit of scientific work. He's basically a one-man CSI unit using 19th century methods, and the work he does is really interesting. 

There's a lot of violence and quite a bit of gore in Ripper Street, but there's also a mixture of everything else you can imagine - romance, intrigue, drama, humour, heartache. I've been recommending the show to all my friends over the last couple of weeks. I'm almost done the second season and I'll be sad because I know it'll be awhile before I'm able to get my hands on season 3!

  

Do you watch Ripper Street? What shows are you currently obsessed with? Tell  me in the comments below or chat with me on Twitter. Also, feel free to link me to blog posts, articles, pictures, songs, videos, or whatever you thought was fantastic this week that you want to share!

   

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Release Day Launch: The Witch of Painted Sorrows by MJ Rose

  

We are absolutely captivated by THE WITCH OF PAINTED SORROWS and so excited to bring you the Release Day Launch for M.J. Rose's amazing new novel. THE WITCH OF PAINTED SORROWS is a historical gothic romantic suspense published by Atria, an imprint of Simon & Schuster. Check out the excerpt below, buy a copy for yourself (and a friend!), then  check out the giveaway M.J. Rose is holding to celebrate the release!!

 

Amazon ** Barnes and Noble ** iBooks ** IndieBound

~Excerpt~

Four months ago I snuck into Paris on a wet, chilly January night like a criminal, hiding my face in my shawl, taking extra care to be sure I wasn’t followed. 

I stood on the stoop of my grandmother’s house and lifted the hand-shaped bronze door knocker and let it drop. The sound of the metal echoed inside. Her home was on a lane blocked off from rue des Saints-Pères by wide wooden double doors. Maison de la Lune, as it was called, was one of a half dozen four-story mid-eighteenth- century stone houses that shared a courtyard that backed up onto rue du Dragon. 

I let the door knocker fall again. Light from a street lamp glinted off the golden metal. It was a strange object. Usually on these things the bronze hand’s palm faced the door. But this one was palm out, almost warning the visitor to reconsider requesting entrance. 

The knocker had obsessed me ten years before when I’d visited as a fifteen-year-old. The engravings on the finely modeled female palm included etched stars, phases of the moon, planets, and other archaic symbols. When I’d asked about it once, my grandmother had said it was older than the house, but she didn’t know how old exactly or what the ciphers meant. Where was the maid? Grand-mère, one of Paris’s celebrated courtesans, hosted lavish salons on Tuesday, Thursday, and many Saturday evenings, and at this time of day was usually upstairs, preparing her toilette: dusting poudre de riz on her face and décolletage, screwing in her opale de feu earrings, and wrapping her signature rope of the same blazing orange stones around her neck. The strand of opal beads was famous. It had belonged to a Russian empress and was known as Les Incendies. The stones were the same color as my grandmother’s hair and the high- lights in her topaz eyes. She was known by that name—L’Incendie, they called her, The Fire. 

We had the same color eyes, but mine almost never flashed like hers. When I was growing up, I kept checking in the mirror, hoping the opal sparks that I only saw occasionally would intensify. I wanted to be just like her, but my father said it was just as well my eyes weren’t on fire because it wasn’t only her coloring that had inspired her name but also her temper, and that wasn’t a thing to covet. 

It wasn’t until I was fifteen years old and witnessed it myself that I understood what he’d meant. 

I let the hand of fate fall again. Even if Grand-mère was upstairs and couldn’t hear the knocking, the maid would be downstairs, organizing the refreshments for the evening. I’d seen her so many nights, polishing away last smudges on the silver, holding the Baccarat glasses over a pot of steaming water and then wiping them clean to make sure they gleamed. 

Dusk had descended. The air had grown cold, and now it was beginning to rain. Fat, heavy drops dripped onto my hat and into my eyes. And I had no umbrella. That’s when I did what I should have done from the start—I stepped back and looked up at the house. 

The darkened windows set into the limestone facade indicated there were no fires burning and no lamps lit inside. My grandmother was not in residence. And neither, it appeared, was her staff. I almost wished the concierge had needed to open the porte cochère for me; he might have been able to tell me where my grandmother was. 

For days now I had managed to keep my sanity only by thinking of this moment. All I had to do, I kept telling myself, was find my way here, and then together, my grandmother and I could mourn my father and her son, and she would help me figure out what I should do now that I had run away from New York City. 

If she wasn’t here, where was I to go? I had other family in Paris, but I had no idea where they lived. I’d only met them here, at my grandmother’s house, when I’d visited ten years previously. I had no friends in the city. 

The rain was soaking through my clothes. I needed to find shelter. 

But where? A restaurant or café? Was there one nearby? Or should I try and find a hotel? Which way should I go to get a carriage? Was it even safe to walk alone here at night? 

What choice did I have? 

Picking up my suitcase, I turned, but before I could even step into the courtyard, I saw an advancing figure. A bedraggled-looking man, wearing torn and filthy brown pants and an overcoat that had huge, bulging pockets, staggered toward me. Every step he took rang out on the stones. 

He’s just a beggar who intends no harm, I told myself. He’s just look- ing for scraps of food, for a treasure in the garbage he’d be able to sell.  

But what if I was wrong? Alone with him in the darkening court- yard, where could I go? In my skirt and heeled boots, could I even outrun him?

Make sure you visit M.J. Rose's website to enter to win this gorgeous necklace to celebrate her release! 

THE WITCH OF PAINTED SORROWS 

Possession. Power. Passion. New York Times bestselling novelist M. J. Rose creates her most provocative and magical spellbinder yet in this gothic novel set against the lavish spectacle of 1890s Belle Époque Paris. 

Sandrine Salome flees New York for her grandmother's Paris mansion to escape her dangerous husband, but what she finds there is even more menacing. The house, famous for its lavish art collection and elegant salons, is mysteriously closed up. Although her grandmother insists it's dangerous for Sandrine to visit, she defies her and meets Julien Duplessi, a mesmerizing young architect. Together they explore the hidden night world of Paris, the forbidden occult underground and Sandrine's deepest desires. 

Among the bohemians and the demi-monde, Sandrine discovers her erotic nature as a lover and painter. Then darker influences threaten--her cold and cruel husband is tracking her down and something sinister is taking hold, changing Sandrine, altering her. She's become possessed byLa Lune: A witch, a legend, and a sixteenth-century courtesan, who opens up her life to a darkness that may become a gift or a curse 

This is Sandrine's "wild night of the soul," her odyssey in the magnificent city of Paris, of art, love, and witchery.  

 

"Haunting tale of possession." —Publishers Weekly

"Rose's new series offers her specialty, a unique and captivating supernatural angle, set in an intriguing belle epoque Paris — lush descriptions, intricate plot and mesmerizing storytelling. Sensual, evocative, mysterious and haunting." —Kirkus

"Mixes reality and illusion, darkness and light, mystery and romance into an adult fairy tale. [Rose] stirs her readers curiosities and imaginations, opening their eyes to the cultural, intellectual and artistic excitement that marked the Belle Epoque period. Unforgettable, full-bodied characters and richly detailed narrative result in an entrancing read that will be long savored."—Library Journal (Starred Review)

   

 About M.J. Rose: New York Times Bestseller, M.J. Rose grew up in New York City mostly in the labyrinthine galleries of the Metropolitan Museum, the dark tunnels and lush gardens of Central Park and reading her mother's favorite books before she was allowed. She believes mystery and magic are all around us but we are too often too busy to notice... books that exaggerate mystery and magic draw attention to it and remind us to look for it and revel in it. Rose's work has appeared in many magazines including Oprah Magazine and she has been featured in the New York Times, Newsweek, WSJ, Time, USA Today and on the Today Show, and NPR radio. Rose graduated from Syracuse University, spent the '80s in advertising, has a commercial in the Museum of Modern Art in NYC and since 2005 has run the first marketing company for authors - Authorbuzz.com The television series PAST LIFE, was based on Rose's novels in the Reincarnationist series. She is one of the founding board members of International Thriller Writers and currently serves, with Lee Child, as the organization's co-president. Rose lives in CT with her husband the musician and composer, Doug Scofield, and their very spoiled and often photographed dog, Winka.  

Website | Twitter| Facebook | Author Goodreads | Novel Goodreads| Newsletter| Pinterest

The Witch of Painted Sorrows sounds amazing. Plus that cover - holy swoon! I can't wait to read this one.  What do you think? Will you be reading it?

 

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2014 Historic Fiction Reading Challenge December Link-Up + Giveaway

Hi everyone! Can you believe it's December already? This year has absolutely flown by. When I decided to do this challenge a year ago, I had high hopes for it. I was hoping for lots of sponsors and giveaways, and I wanted to read a ton of historic fiction books each month... unfortunately real life sort of got in the way, and the challenge wasn't exactly what I was hoping for, but I'm so grateful to those of you who stuck with it, continued reading, and linked up your reviews each month. You guys are amazing!

I wish I could say that I plan to host this challenge again in 2015, but I know I won't have time. My work load is going to be even heavier, and I won't be able to commit to it fully, which I didn't realize last year. Blogging in general has taken a bit of a back burner in 2014, and while I hope to change that in 2015, I don't want to make promises I'm not sure I can keep. So, with that being said, thank you so much to everyone who participated this year, whether for a month or two, or all twelve. I hope you'll keep visiting Ramblings of a Daydreamer even without the challenge to lead you here. ;-) Even though I didn't read as many historic fiction books as I'd hope, I did read some great ones, and even discovered a few new authors, and some great new bloggers in the process. I hope you did, too!

A huge thank-you goes out to these sponsors: 

CJ Archer (blog, Facebook, Twitter)

Jodi Lamm (website, GoodReads, Twitter) 

Angela Misri (website, Twitter, GoodReads) 

Historic fiction reviews from participants:
January

February 

March 

April  

May 

June 

July 

August/September 

October 

November

If you have reviews for the month of December (or if you have previous reviews you forgot to link up) you can do so in this linky

Giveaway

This giveaway is open to Historic Fiction Reading Challenge participants ONLY, as a thank-you for participating. There's only one mandatory entry, and then the others are optional. One question is to tell me how many historic fiction books you reviewed this year, and that number will be added into the Rafflecopter as extra entries. 

a Rafflecopter giveaway

 

How many historic fiction books did you read in 2014? Which was your favourite? Did you discover any new authors?

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