A cross between Water for Elephants and a gothic suspense, this was a quick read that will draw you in. Good vacation book

While I enjoyed this book and have recommended it to others, I had a difficult time reading the sections involving animal cruelty. Found myself having to skip over them. I'm not an overly sensitive person but felt the author was a little over the top. I don't feel such detail added to the title.

It was 1931 and Lilly Blackwood had spent her entire short life in the attic bedroom of her parent’s house. Never allowed outside or even downstairs in case “someone saw her” - she was told by her Momma that she was an abomination. But things changed the night her Momma took her across the paddock of their land to the lights and tents of a circus which had arrived only a couple of days previously. The sights and sounds, even the smells, were frightening to Lilly – the sky big and vast. She had no idea “outside” would be like that. And when her Momma left her with the horrible man after taking money from him – and walked away, ten-year-old Lilly was devastated…

Over twenty years later, nineteen-year-old Julia Blackwood was living rough – her waitress job only just paid the rent but she had nothing left over for food. Julia had run away from home three years previously, after finally having enough of her cruel and vindictive mother. When she was notified that she had inherited her parent’s estate, she was unsure if she wanted to return. But knowing her mother would no longer be at the house made the decision easier…

Julia’s return to her childhood home brought back distressing memories for her – but when she found evidence of a mystery surrounding a circus and a young girl, Julia’s interest was piqued. What did the deep, dark secrets hide that she felt were right there? Who was this beautiful young woman? And what was hidden in the depths of the old house and its locked rooms?

The Life She Was Given by Ellen Marie Wiseman is an amazing, emotional, heart rending story of two young women and the traumatic and hopeless lives they both lived. It’s a story of evil and hope – of fleeting happiness and dark despair. And it’s a story unlike any I’ve ever read before and I thoroughly enjoyed it! My first by this author, and it won’t be my last. A most highly recommended tale. (The cover is perfect - eye catching and just right!)

With thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for my digital ARC to read and review.

Thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for the free digital copy of this book. I am always excited when I find a 5-star book! I have never read any of Ellen Marie Wiseman's books, but I think I will definitely have to read another.

The book begins with Lilly, who is only allowed to live in the small space of her attic bedroom. Her mother tells her that she is so ugly that she can't go outside or people will be scared of her.

There is also the story of Julia, who the reader meets as a run away working at a diner. Julia frequently speaks of her family. There are many similarities between Lilly and Julia's childhood.

The book switches between both ladies and their lives. I won't say how their lives are connected so as not to give away spoilers.

I was horrified by the treatment of Lilly and her story as it unfolded. Obviously there is a time in her life that involved being in the circus. I thoroughly enjoyed the description of the elephants - I want to ride an elephant now!!

This was an amazing story!

So.... if you liked The Night Circus, you may like this one. I don't say that simply because of the circus connection but also the development of the characters and their situations. There's not really any magical content here, like in The Night Circus but you've got the big top and couple of star-crossed lovers.

I compare it to Night, honestly, in large part because I finished reading this one with the same sense of disappointment that I had when finishing Night. In both, I felt the characters were fairly one-dimensional and that simply setting the plot in a circus environment didn't give it the interest of depth for which the author may have been striving.

Unfortunately, it all just fell quite flat and unemotional for me.

Kensington Books provided an advanced copy for review. The Life She Was Given was released on July 25th.

I received this ARC from netgalley.com in exchange for a review.

Written in dual timelines, Lilly Blackwood (1930) age 10, is sold to the circus by her mother who says she is damaged and an abomination. Current day, Julia Blackwood inherits her family estates after her parents die. Along with the estate is a horse farm and many deep, dark secrets that threaten to consume Julia.

Wow, good book! I've read a couple of the author's books and have greatly enjoyed them. Well written, interesting characters, and simply said, just a plain good story.

4☆

I loved this book! Talk about feeling a wide range of emotions! It was touching, joyful, heartbreaking and at times horrifying. I swear I read one scene with one eye closed! I felt the character Lilly jump from the page, I swore she was real. Reading about the circus was mesmerizing. And my big takeaway from this story: Wow people can be cruel! It's a page turner with all the feels.

have read all of Ellen Marie Wiseman’s novels so when I heard her newest book, The Life She Was Given, was being published I was excited and anxious to get my hands on a copy. I was thrilled to receive an ARC of this book from Netgalley and this is my honest review.
Lilly is a ten year old girl whose mother has kept her prisoner in their attic because she was born “different”. When she is ten years old her horrible mother finally takes her out, only to sell her to the circus. Her life in the circus was difficult but she was finally surrounded by some people who cared about her. There is another character in this book and her name is Julia and she also grew up in the same house, decades after Lilly. She was not a prisoner in the attic but she was unfortunately raised by the same loveless woman who sold Lily to the circus. There are secrets and a mystery that unfold as you read this interesting historical fiction noveI. I was swept up in the story from the beginning and loved every minute of reading. I am giving this book a 5 star rating.

The circus always holds a unique allure for me. I'm not sure if it is the bright colored tent, the beautiful artistry of the trapeze or highwire acts or the daring of the lion tamer, but I'm always drawn in by a novel featuring the timeless circus scene.

In The Life She Was Given, we meet Lilly Blackwood, who must live her life within the confines of her attic room. Her mother tells her that this is for her own safety since her appearance would scare anyone she met. In 1931, Lilly is sold to a traveling circus and suffers a different type of cruelty at the hands of her new owner. Lilly changes and evolves during her years with the circus, while the reader has a front row seat to all the spectacle.

We also meet Julia who has just inherited Blackwood Manor from her mother. Unfortunately, Julia's childhood memories are not happy ones, but full of rules, pain and unhappiness. As she returns to Blackwood Manor, she uncovers family secrets and tries to delve deeper into the mystery surrounding her family.

This was a five star read for me. I was completely immersed in the book and found I was thinking about the characters long after the book was over.

I received this book courtesy of Kensington Publishing Group in exchange for an honest review.

5 stars for making me ugly cry!!
I can not help but cry for Lilly...what a sad, sad life she was given...Did anyone else want to punch her mother in the throat!! Well the dad too!!

This was a gripping page turner for sure! It will haunt you for days or even weeks to come.

My thanks to NetGalley, the author and publisher for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.
Thanks so much for granting my wish to read this.

Excellent read. I love the dual timeline of this book. I thought Lilly and Julia were portrayed well and I enjoyed both women tremendously throughout the story. I was very engaged throughout the entire book and was sad when it came to an end. The trials these women had to go through were almost unbelievable at times, but very accurate to 'real life. I would love to read more by this author!

You can debate the ending with yourself or others but you can't deny that this is a great novel. Wiseman has created two wonderful characters in Lily and Julie; the alternating chapters tell the story. She also clearly spent a lot of time researching circus life in the 30s to 50s- the images are so vivid. The animals become characters in their own right. This is a thought provoking tale about how one can take a bad event and turn it into a good life. Lots of emotion, lots of love- thanks to Netgalley for the ARC. This could be characterized loosely as women's fiction or historical fiction but at root it's just an excellent read.

I would like to thank Kensington Books for granting my wish and allowing me to read an electronic ARC of this book, via Netgalley, in exchange for an open and honest review.

Wow! What a book! I mean, seriously addictive and so full of emotions! As some people know, I’m not usually a fan of Literary Fiction but I sometimes get in the mood to give it another go and hope the book I read is worth it. ‘The Life She Was Given’ was definitely worth it! I want to go on about how certain areas of the book made me feel, but I am concerned mentioning them would be one great big spoiler…

So I will just say some of the full circle moments were heart aching and so well written I needed a tissue! I am not a crier! Well, except for those animal ads, you know the ones. ;-)

But, yes, this was a brilliantly well-written tale told in two halves about the one family. Parts of it set in the 1930’s and parts of it set in the 1950’s and - although I’m not an expert - I do feel some good, solid research went into writing in both eras and in both locations - one a manor house/ horse farm, and the other a travelling circus.

The stories are woven so well together, linking in subtle ways that the story runs seamlessly. Sometimes when you get two different stories running in the same book they are very disjointed and hodge podge. Not in ‘The Life She Was Given’. No - seamless writing!

What can I say about ‘The Life She Was Given’ without giving anything away? Well, it is a very emotional journey through both eras, the characters are well written and I found myself connecting with them to enjoy the ride (even through the sad bits) and boy was it addictive! My kids were told to fend for themselves on Saturday (they are 12, 10 and 8 so can do the basics) as I simply HAD to keep reading!

The only issues I found with this book - and it has absolutely nothing to do with the author, which is why I didn’t mark it down in my score - is that the eBook formatting was blocky and jumbled in places. New paragraphs starting mid-sentence, the title and page number of the book appearing mid page… EBook formatting can be a pain at times and one little glitch and cause a whole series of issues… But as it was an ARC I read I merely assumed that Kensington Books would have it all sorted and that the final version will be perfect.

Would I recommend this book to others?

Yes I would. Lovers of historical fiction and literary fiction, even women’s fiction, are going to enjoy ‘The Life She Was Given’. I was raving over it so much my 12 year old wants to have a read… but I feel - despite her above average levels of maturity and intelligence - that I wouldn’t recommend it to her. Yes teen girls like to adventure into this genre but their raw, developing emotions might get a little too hurt in reading this. It’s not a horror book or a completely sad tale… but there are moments where you may want to just put the book down for a moment and hug the cat or child or something.

Would I buy this book for myself?

Tough call. I mean, I did love it and am still walking off the book hangover it’s given me. But my underlying aversion to literary fiction does make me baulk at going out and buying my own copy. What a miser I am being! It is an amazingly heart felt and emotional roller coaster of a book - wow I can’t believe I was just that corny - but, yeah, some books touch you in such a way they are better as library books than ones you personally own.

As in, they are kept offsite and away from you, but you have access to them when you want to feel the way they make you feel… does that make sense? No, no I don’t think it does! But it’s how I feel. Love the book, not too sure I would want to possess it as it needs to be free. LOL! Ignore me, it’s Monday and my Crio Brü mug is in the wash.

In summary: A brilliant, well-written literary fiction that is going to tug at the heart strings while keeping you wanting more. Highly recommend.

When I saw this book available for review on NetGalley, I immediately requested it and was thrilled to get an copy of the book. I have really enjoyed the other two books I have read by Ms. Wiseman and this one was no different. It is a dual story line. In one, there is an albino girl who is kept locked in the attic because her parents are embarrassed by her condition. She makes her way to the circus and lives most of her life as a performer. The parts about her work with the circus elephants were some of the most sweet and at the same time heart wrenching parts of the book. In the other story line there is a woman who is called back to her parents home to collect her inheritance after they have both passes away. It is a horse farm and she is left to discover what her parent's lives were about and how her past was wrapped up in the farm.

I really enjoyed this book and the characters. It was not one that kept me guessing a lot but it was such a good story. As I have said, I have read two other books by Ellen Marie Wiseman and enjoyed them, particularly What She Left Behind just a bit more, but I would definitely recommend this boo to others.

This multigenerational historical novel gives us a poignant view of the early days of the American circus as well as the cruelty and lack of understanding for anyone who was different in the freak shows. As in "Water For Elephants", performers and circus animals were subjected to a total lack of humane care. The story is told in two parts - one an albino girl who is sold into slavery at a freak show by her family and the other is a modern descendant of that same family who has just inherited the estate house. Julia finds some puzzling documents and pictures hidden in her father's home office and tries to understand not only her troubled relationship with her parents but also secrets that they hid from her and the rest of the world. Julia and Lilly are bound together by their connection to the old house but also by hatred of cruelty to animals and their ability to relate to animals much easier than people. Brilliant and brutal, this is the star attraction under the literary big top.

Thank you NetGalley and Kensington Books for allowing me the privilege to read The Life She Was Given by Ellen Marie Wiseman, and provide an unbiased review.

Ellen Marie Wiseman has a way of writing that evokes such an emotional connection to the characters that you don’t want the story to end. This story is heart-rending but beautifully told.

Lilly is an albino born in the 1930’s, that parallels with the story of Julia decades later. Their intertwining lives are revealed one small bit at a time, which makes following both storylines work exceptionally well. The heartbreaking treatment of Lilly pulls you into her world where she faces what no child should ever have to; being hidden away in an attic for years. Julia is strong-willed, and perseveres throughout in search for answers in her own way. Her return after leaving her childhood home, Blackwood Manor horse farm, to escape her fanatically religious mother is charged with unpleasant memories, along with questions that fuel her determination to piece together a past she never knew.

This story touches on one of the more unpleasant facets of circus life of the time. The realities of the truth are what makes stories like these touch our hearts and feel for the characters that are brought to life in these pages. EMW has an exceptional talent for taking very sensitive issues and presenting them for readers inside a story that draws us into their world between the covers. At the end, we don’t feel we knew them; we did.

3.5-4 stars

The Life She Was Given is one of the saddest books that I have read in a long while. The book is beautifully written, but I had a hard time reading portions of it because the story line is so depressing. The Life She Was Given is written in a dual timeline format. Lilly’s story takes place mainly in the 1930’s, and Julia lives in the 1950’s. Having children of my own, I found it so disheartening to read about the parents that raised Lilly and Julia. With respect to Lilly, I do not want to spoil the story so I will simply say that I had hoped for a different ending for her. She encountered way more than her fair share of cruel people in her lifetime. I liked the story involving Julia a lot better and was pleased with the resolution of her story. I was very glad to read this book because I had heard so many good things about it, but it very much weighed heavy on my heart. Thanks to NetGalley and Kensington Books for the chance to read this ARC in exchange for an honest review.

WOW. What did I just read? This is such a great summer read. Here’s why:

The plot was well written, and the writing just immediately pulls you into a time of circuses and chaos. You can really empathize with the stories and lives that Lily and Julia were dealt, and we see their journey to make the best of the situation (and, in ways, make it better).

Animals are so important to both of their lives, so that was nice to see the connection between Lily and Julia; animals are the central point to the entire story, and it all comes full circle at the end. I love it! No loose ends, no leftover questions. Just a nice, easy story.

But is it?

No, because of the emotional roller coaster! The last time I felt all these emotions was with Small Great Things, by Jodi Picoult, which was a while ago. I just felt like “The Life She Was Given” was written perfectly; there’s nothing wrong about it. It is a book that you need to read if you’re on the lookout for something different, but still want that emotional response, then this is exactly what you need.

I received a free copy in exchange for an honest review. This does not influence my opinion of the book.

Blackwood Manor is the center point of the action for this dual-timeline story: set in both the 1930’’s and the 1950’s, the manor, the attic room and the struggle to find one’s place in the world all combine to build a story that is rich in gothic feel and surprising moments. Alternating points of view come with each chapter: we start with Lily’s story. Born an albino after her mother’s many miscarriages in the 1930’s: she was a prisoner in her own home: shut into a tiny attic room with no visitors save her mother. Purportedly to ‘keep her safe’, Lily’s mother is extreme and prone to words like monster and abomination when speaking with her, but juxtapose that with her fanaticism and religious fervor, and perhaps a touch of guilt or self-recrimination for bringing such a ‘different’ child into the world. To rid herself of the curse and burden, at ten, Lily is sold to a traveling circus to become a headliner in the freak show.

Fast forward twenty-ish years to meet Julia, now 18 and working in a restaurant after having left home years earlier. She’s never quite felt as if she was loved or fit in, and things are tough, including her falling in with an abusive man. She’s living hand to mouth, never certain that food will be on the table, or the rent will be paid when she is handed a chance at a way out. A private investigator found her to deliver some news: her mother is dead and Julia is now the owner of Blackwood Manor, her family home.

The story winds between these two – showing their own struggles with finding a place in the world to feel safe and loved, and their own issues with abusive or neglected pasts. Each new revelation from the girls brings a moment of pause: truly horrible situations yet they survived, and always looked for another day, another moment, a reason to hope. But the story quickly adds a third character, that of the manor house itself. Abandoned and aging, Julia’s discovery of a mystery and secret within its walls, the dank and removed attic room and her need to expose all of the darkness to the light and hopefully move forward keep the story engaging and intriguing, with a series of questions situations and answers that drop like petals from a flower.

There is a feel (and I say feel in the most general sense) that a reader will want to connect this to another title and say it’s like This or That – but those connections are the most basic (circuses, attics) and here is where I think Wiseman excels: her writing is evocative and laden with emotion. The prose flows smoothly, allowing each moment of discovery to stand on its own and be explored: from the character’s viewpoint and as a reader. You want to savor these moments as you are placing the pieces of the puzzle together: never quite certain just how moments will relate until the last pages. As an introduction to Wiseman’s work, this was a great one, and the ending here couldn’t have been more perfect.

I received an eArc copy of the title from the publisher via NetGalley for purpose of honest review. I was not compensated for this review: all conclusions are my own responsibility.

Review first appeared at <a href=” http://wp.me/p3OmRo-9dT/”> <a> I am, Indeed </a>