This book was okay, but I can't recommend it as it reads more like a draft. It needs some direction and a bit more paid to the history of the era. I will give it three stars for effort.

Exciting story of a pregnant Princess who escaped the castle after the death of her husband. She had intended to go to her brother, but never completed the journey. She was married to the Lord of a poor, small estate. He thought the child was his, and hoped for a son. This is the story of this girl whose birth resulted in the death of her mother.
Her childhood was spent learning to fight like a boy/man, housed in the dungeons. With the support of a loving peasant couple and caring captain of the guard, she developed a strong sense of self worth, and determination to live. These attitudes allowed her to face capture by the Vikings, wars between the Vikings and the loss of her first child. In the course of the story, she falls in love, marries, then is separated from her husband due to wars. Years pass (8 - 9) and finally he finds her.
I found the book riveting, as her life circumstances pulled at my heart. The life of an ordinary woman during this age was accurately portrayed as hard, brutal and often short due to death from childbirth. The author had done her research to portray a typical Viking life. I will look for the other books this author has written.

This particular book had ebbs and valleys on the characters. As much as I wanted to like it - it deals with Vikings and I adore these books, I just could not get around some glaring issues. One, the writing is stilted. It is like reading a Wikipedia passage. Please, please show us, don't tell us. The ships are often called vessels. Nothing describing them. A first kiss, but no passion talked about. Lots of raids, but nothing in real detail to bring us there and let us see it in our minds.

When it comes to history, there's quite a bit in the book. Not in a good way. It's great that you did the research, but you don't have to bludgeon the reader over the head with "Vikings were not as bad as the English thought and were nice and kind, too." Got it on one. Bringing up the various history over and over made me believe there was a quiz at the end of the book.
The lead character acts stupid as if she didn't know what was going on or that no one would talk to her after months. Because the author points out in the bibliography that she was writing about real life people, some pieces felt contrived to make them work. The time line was out of wack and at times I didn't know what period of their lives we were in.

The number of times this woman is captured, wants to die, over and over again. It was just too much. She's also told to us to be very smart, yet she does so many silly things that I guess we have to be told.

There were some good points. Jilliand's love for people and her goodness for the people around her. Even that point got a bit old. Almost like Snow White calling all the people around her to shower good blessings on all. The best and most evenly thought out sections were in Rurik's village. It seemed to flow better there than in the rest o the book.

I wanted to really like this book but in the end I could not. This is almost a first draft that will need quite a bit of editing to polish it.

This book is a love story but not of the conventional kind. Jilliand's existence goes from despair to the instinct of survival and she suffered many losses along the way, consequently is the kind of book that you can’t put down because you want to find out if it has a happy ending.

The author gives only the necessary clues through the book about the mystery that surrounds Jilliand's identity in order to keep the reader interested and curious. The book is enjoyable and a fast-paced read.

Jilliand is a strong female character, somehow too modern for my taste. I don’t understand why many historical fiction heroines are written according to our modern standards of what a strong woman must be. I believe IX Century strong women weren’t quite like her, it’s impossible to know for sure, but doesn’t feel plausible in relation to the story.

The depiction of the Norse and the way of living of the Vikings it's a great plus for the book. I found fascinating many of the facts of everyday life, the cleaningness, the clans and how family oriented they were.

Jilliand: A story of Love and Freedom is a good, rich Viking novel. What sets it apart is not just the adventures, the kidnappings, the battle scenes, the raids, or the slow and sweet developing romance. Truly, what author Clare Gutierrez excels at is in the description of how the Vikings lived. These scenes are where she really shows the reader what it is like living as part of a Viking community rather than telling the reader. Her villages will captivate your heart as you come to like the Vikings and cheer Jilliand on. Before the village scenes, I felt like this was a normal romance novel of dozens I have read over the year (More like hundreds). Instead, my eyes were opened by the creativity and imagination that Gutierrez displays in this historical romance. There were times where I felt like I was there and part of life in this Viking world that the author had created.

Jilliand is an adventure into a time where Vikings raided settlements and the English fought back. The heroine (Jilliand) is resilient (goodness is she related to Wonder Woman?) She does seem to attract more than her fair share of disasters and misadventures. Abused and neglected by her father, Jilliand is encouraged to run away on the night before her arranged wedding to an elderly neighbor. On the run from her father and his men, Jilliand learns what it is like to be a vulnerable woman outside of her father's village. Possessing sword skills that are unusual for woman in her time, her grace and athletic ability save her more than once and come in handy along her adventures. These remarkable skills fail to save her from being captured by the Viking Sea King Rurik. Taken far from her home, Jilliand embarks on a voyage that will open her eyes to what freedom means and open her heart to love.

There are several topics that really stand out in this book. The way religion is interwoven throughout this novel is very interesting as the two lovers come from different belief system but manage to coexist within their love. Politics and religion have a nice clash, revealing the hierarchy later in the novel with the King and The Bishop of the church. Showing the reader the power of the church but also the power of the throne at the same time. works so well in this novel. Issues like religion and politics play an important role in history, and Gutierrez handles these seamlessly by intertwining them in everyday life. Death, violence, and the treatment of women across cultures are portrayed realistically to show what society was like in that time. There were a few times where I thought the violence was a bit much- but that just balanced out the softer times.

I really enjoyed reading this book- it was realistic at times and fanciful at times. The writing is good, but the editing needs to be cleaner. More defined transitions from different scenes and different times would be beneficial or better headings. Fine tuning the point of view from first to third person and the shifts between them would also really help with character development and smoothing out the writing.

I couldn't put the book down. I just had to see how it ended. I had no trouble following the book and even though Rurik disappointed me only once, I loved to see the love that was between Jilliand and Rurik. Julliand, because of her caring nature, was thought highly by all that got to know her.

This is like a saga. You have to be prepared for that thought or you will hate this book. It does drag, but the story is very good. It did take me some time to get into it, but once I did I wanted to keep reading. I would have given five stars, but I was dissatisfied with the ending.

Jillian goes through so much. Her story at one time just made me cry and it seemed like everyone who claimed to love her just ended up abandoning her. Just so sad and I just wanted so much more for her.

A good read, but lots of history and fighting.

Received a copy from the publisher through NetGalley.

Lots of heartbreak, lots of passive voice

I would like to thank Clare Gutierrez, River Grove Books, and NetGalley for allowing me to read a free copy in exchange for an honest review.

Major Spoilers

I kind of had a minor breakdown while reading this. This is what I wrote at the time:

This was a different kind of romance, and not the kind I like. I’m sorry, I didn’t finish it. My heart couldn’t take it. I managed to crawl past the devastating day Jilliand lost nearly everything, hanging onto hope that Rurik would find her soon. But he didn’t, and when several years passed and he married again and started a new family—while Jilliand was alive, just waiting for him to come to her—I couldn’t stand it anymore. I stopped, literally shaking my head and mumbling, “No. No. No.” I closed the program on my computer in an effort to get the heartbreaking story away from me. Maybe—probably—Jilliand and Rurik will find each other again in the future and still have their HEA, but in my personal opinion of romantic narratives, I consider that too little too late. I’m sure there are people who don’t mind these stories that ask the reader to endure hardship after hardship, but I am not one of them. I stopped reading the Outlander series for the same reason. I don’t mind stakes, I don’t mind dark, but at the end of the day, I still want it to be fiction. I’m looking to escape reality; I want it to be too good to be true.

So those are my thoughts on the romance aspect. I stand by them, though I did walk away, calm down, and come back to skim the rest of the story; I was curious to see how it ended. It wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be—Rurik’s “new” life wasn’t a very happy or fulfilling one for him, which he deserved—but I’m afraid I’m still not a fan of this book for many reasons.

First, inconsequential nitpicks:

If the lord was determined to make Jilliand look like a boy, he would have cut her hair. Even when he couldn’t deny she was female, he would’ve enjoyed shaming her by keeping her hair hacked off.

“…continued [Jilliand’s] education beyond what most girls not of noble birth would receive.” That’s not saying much; noblewomen weren’t any more educated than lower class women. A select few might have received a small bit of education, the basics, perhaps, but not nearly to the extent boys did.

The king used a fork, but forks weren’t commonly used in England for several hundred years yet. They were popular in Italy and France long before the English stopped being snobby about it.

There are other nitpicks, like lines that didn’t make sense, but we’ll move this along. Second, my problems with the narrative:

This book seemed to go on and on and on, felt as if it were several stories smashed together, and in large part it’s because many of the events and plot threads in this book were random and unconnected. In storytelling, setup and payoff are very, very important, and there’s the rule of three. Everything introduced needs to come back around and have an important role in the end. Quite literally, everything needs to happen for a reason. So like the guy at the beginning who sees Jilliand in the tree and helps her out? Cut it. The friend of the lord who mysteriously appears at the Viking village and gives her a hard time? Pointless. I don’t think he was ever even named. Helgi and the other survivors? Touching, but also a waste of time. Jilliand’s beautiful singing? Disappeared as suddenly as it appeared. Rurik seemed so intent on England, then he just suddenly decides to go the opposite direction, and an entire slew of characters were introduced that didn’t ultimately matter a lick.

In the same vein, there was no central antagonist; it switched to whoever happened to be around–the lord, those dudes chasing after her, the Vikings, Gouldon, Greida, Phillippe, and several others. The narrative followed Jillaind’s journey and the obstacles she came up against, and that’s fine, but if you just glance at antagonists and discard them, the reader isn’t going to care. The protagonist is only as strong as his or her foil. For example, Jamie and Claire in Outlander meet challenge after challenge, but it all comes back to the initial conflicts—she’s a woman out of time, and he’s an outlaw, both haunted—and hunted—by sadist Jack Randall.

But not every thread was left dangling; Jilliand’s secret royal heritage came back around, as did her relationship with Rurik. Gouldon’s backstory came to play, though I have my issues with that. There were recurring themes, such as faith, violence, and survival, as well as love and freedom. I think a much more accurate subtitle would have been: A Story of Faith, Violence, and Survival; those elements were featured more prominently. Jilliand found herself in a state of captivity time and again, and she was also blamed for others’ misfortune when she was the true victim, but she never committed suicide like she often thought she should; so there was some strength to her, though she often seemed annoyingly helpless and ignorant. Whether her ignorance was in character or not is an argument of book smarts versus street smarts.

Yet so much was blatantly contrived for the plot. What made me angriest was Rurik going to fricken Russia. It was so out of left field, and the way it unfolded was so nonsensical. Again, there was no setup, no mention of conflict there, no mention of his interest in the area, nothing to prelude that decision. Why did he take half the village? He told Jilliand—and therefore the audience—nothing about anything. Why, I don’t know. I can only figure he considered himself above being accountable to this woman he declared was his life. We were told he led raids to provide for his people, and I think that was about the only explanation for his actions we were privy to. I’m not even entirely sure why he was partial to Jilliand. And a lot of things he didn’t bother to tell her were things she should have asked about or naturally been told, such as the fact that Olga was his mother, or that he meant to marry Jilliand. Like not mentioning Jilliand’s name in the first chapter, I think Gutierrez was trying to manufacture intrigue, and I didn’t appreciate it. It made Rurik seem self-centered and Jilliand seem pathetically ignorant. And another thing—what the hell was he waiting for? I have no idea why Rurik waited so long to get with Jilliand. There was no reason not to!

Furthermore, it chafes me that Rurik didn’t bother confirming her death and moved on to beget an all-precious son while Jilliand waited and waited and waited for him. She had more far faith in him than he deserved. I’d like to think that if he loved her so completely, he wouldn’t have given up hope that she lived until he had proof of her death, or until he’d looked everywhere, asked everyone, and not found her. Maybe that’s an unrealistic expectation, considering he was responsible for a people and couldn’t afford to do something selfish and time-consuming like that, but at the end he himself said he’d give up a kingdom for her. If that were true, he’d have helped conquer Rus, handed over the reins to someone he trusted, and gone to find her. Also, the two of them had something of a sixth sense in regards to each other’s presence—except, of course, when Rurik was told Jilliand was dead and desperately wanted to believe she wasn’t. When the sense would actually have been useful, it abandoned him.

I don’t understand how Jilliand handled that situation, either. I have no idea what made her think that it would be easier for Rurik to find her in England when she was supposed to be in Denmark, burned village or no. When he killed her father, he himself said she had nothing tying her to England anymore, so why would he think she’d go there? There was nothing for her there—that she knew of. But then, once she was established as the king’s sister and had a bit of weight to throw around, why did she not send messengers to find Rurik? The king wanted the alliance and her happiness, so I can’t imagine he’d have said no. Why was notifying Rurik no one’s priority? Year after year, how could Jilliand have been content to hope he would come for her when she knew he no doubt thought she was dead? See what I mean? Blatantly contrived.

When you find an interesting piece of information while researching, such as that the name you chose for your hero may or may not have been the name of the man who founded Russia, think about whether or not it would serve the plot and the characters, if it would make sense, before you get too excited and decide to manipulate your story to fit in the new information. Tell one story at a time.

Lastly, style:

This read rather like a fairytale, not like modern fiction.

I wasn’t shown this story, it was told to me. An overwhelming portion of it was written in passive voice—linking verbs abounded—and it kept me at arm’s length. That’s a problem. Passive voice is instructional, and indeed there were parts that read like a personable history book. Example: “The community was much like most of those scattered around England in the 800s.” There’s a difference between a narrator and an instructor.

Gutierrez also had an odd way of constructing paragraphs. They tended to be quite long, sometimes the length of an entire page, and in one paragraph she would mash viewpoints together and give dialogue from more than one character. Her sentences were also a bit choppy at times. It came across as messy and could be confusing. Example: “Jilliand was led to the great hall reserved for men. Jilland had never been inside the hall before and hesitated now. The slave opened the door and stood expectantly. Jilliand stepped through the doorway. A quick survey proved Jilliand was the only woman inside, and there were visitors. She stood still, not sure what was expected of her. Greida watched Jilliand walk into the men’s building with jealousy near the erupting point.”

The author also doesn’t seem very skilled in dialogue. It was often stiff and unnatural, and some lines would have been better expressed as thought. Example: “‘What do I do now? I’ve lost my horse and haven’t found people or water. What will happen to me?’ she asked desperately of the growing darkness.” It makes me imagine a self-aware melodrama in which the damsel collapses weakly against something, lays the back of her hand against her forehead, and cries, “Oh, whatever shall I do?”

On top of all that, and building on my comments regarding setup and antagonists, much of the story felt superficial. The only character of consequence was Jilliand—everyone else was a plot device, ranging from useless to shallow; planets revolving around her sun. We didn’t know anything about Rurik except that he was a Viking sea king. How could he speak English so well? What happened to his father? Two or three times we were told that he and Jilliand talked about a range of subjects, but the reader never learned any of it. Gouldon’s purpose was to provide unnecessary conflict. Greida could have been an amazing character who hated Jilliand at first and then became her friend, but no, she was just a jealous hag with no rhyme or reason. Why was she so greedy for power? What was her backstory? We were teased a noble and fascinating backstory for Avila, then watched him accomplish nothing and die. You can’t use and discard characters like tissues. Something needs to matter.

Finally, time. I couldn’t draw up a timeline if I tried. At times it would sound as if weeks had passed, but really it was only a few days. Other times weeks would pass but it seemed like only a few days. Gutierrez would stick with one POV for a length of time, then back up and switch to the other POV and catch up. The timeline should have been straightforward linear—there were no flashbacks or time traveling—but with all the stopping and reversing, it became very disorienting.

Overall, this read like a rough draft of amateur work—but with great potential. I do believe Gutierrez has talent, but she’s not going to find wide acclaim like this. Also, the editor should be fired.

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This was a really enjoyable book, set in a different time to what I normally read. I did find the heartache and trials that Jilliand and then Rurik had to go through very sad, I really empathised with the characters. Whilst the destruction the Vikings caused to many many villages, I wonder as the author points out, how different they really were to the way the English was back then. I recommend as something different, a true love story.

Thanks to NetGalley and Greenleaf Book Group

I enjoyed this historical story about Jilliand, an English princess who rises above an abusive childhood to become the author of her own fate. However, the pacing of the story was extremely slow, with a lot of action and backstory being told rather shown. There was a lot of skipping around time and places without explanation that made it confusing. However, I think with some more editing, this could be a really gripping historical epic.

A romance story without glamorizing the love affair; only realistic depiction of mid-9th century and how its people viewed life and death in general, depended on strong support system, lived life at sea, treated women—noble or otherwise—and lived through the tremulous times of violence and Viking raids. It has been a while since I last read a good Viking story, and boy, am I glad I’ve come across this one. Jilliand is worth spending my time on.

I requested this book on NetGalley after seeing the cover. I'm a sucker for historical fiction, especially if it features Vikings and their adventures of raiding the coast of England. I binge-watched The Last Kingdom recently, and as I am eagerly awaiting the next season, I thought this book would be a welcome read to draw me back into that world.
We follow Jilliand from her beginning as a neglected and abused child at the hands of her miserable father through her capture by a Viking sea king and her life beyond. The book is split into three parts and I thoroughly enjoyed Part I. In it we meet Rurik, Jilliand's captor and eventual mate. The chemistry between them is slow-building and very well written. Claire Gutierrez does a wonderful job in painting a beautiful setting of the divided country of England, the vast seas, and Rurik's homeland of Denmark. Parts II and III follow both Jilliand and Rurik as their lives take separate paths, eventually leading to a highly awaited happy ending.
Although well written, I found issues with the changing POV within the story. It was confusing at times, switching between characters without context or purpose. Not much was made of dramatic scenes or turn of events, keeping the feeling of the book rather steady and anticlimactic. Several years are skipped in Parts II and III, and it seemed, at least to me, that more time was accounted for in the passing of Rurik's life than Jilliand's. It did not seem as though over a decade had passed once she returned to England. Also, the secondary characters are not very well-developed. They are used solely to progress the story of Jilliand and Rurik, and little background or additional information outside their interactions with the two main characters is included.
Even with these flaws, I did enjoy the story. Jilliand was a strong female protagonist who carried on through every twist and turn of her life, never relying on anyone but herself. The author took the time to research the era and adopt the beliefs and mannerisms of the cultures into her characters. Although fictional, the author pulled heavily from true events of the past and real people of the time.
Overall, my true rating is a 3.75/5; highly recommended for readers of historical fiction, Vikings fans, or those who love a romance story of fate intervening.

*I received and ARC from the publisher in exchange for my honest review.

style that felt a bit distant and made it harder to connect to the story. Also, I felt there were sudden changes between scenes and POV that either didn’t feel natural or simply didn’t connect with each other. More than once I found myself wondering suddenly what was happening, where they were or who the story was talking about… Not a good sign. This also happened more than once with sudden changes between a first and third person POV, although those might be solved in the final version. Still, these incoherences made it hard to concentrate on the story and slowed down the pace. I also felt the characters lacked some dept, and I was kept wanting for more when it comes to background and general character information. That said, it does show the author has investigated the time period and I realize it is hard to get solid information of a period there isn't all that much 'neutral' information available of in the first place. The story follows two main characters in particular over a large span of time. While it was interesting to see the changes in both character and environment, I also thought there were almost too many things happening in the amount of pages available. This is probably why I felt a lack of dept as a consequence; long periods were sometimes skipped and other scenes were not as detailed as I would have liked. Still, Jilliand is quite an interesting read set in a time period that hasn't been written about that frequently. It's a story of survival, (forbidden) love, vikings, war and plundering... And although the ending came a bit sudden, I bet most will be able to appreciate it.