I loved The Legend of Fire Mountain, book three from The Fire Blossom Saga by Sarah Lark. I am giving it five stars and I highly recommend it.

This was an excellent book and I am glad I had the opportunity to read it. I had never read a book on the Maori people before. I learned a lot and my heart feels for these people who land was taken from them.
The characters and plot were well developed. Almost all the characters experienced hardships that helped them grow or destroyed them. It shows that you can turn hardships around for good. I wholeheartedly recommend this book.

3.5 starts. Pretty darn good book, if a bit slow occasionally. It was funny to me that at different times, I had different favorite characters. For a while, March was my favorite. Then I got really into Aroha and Bao's story. And Robin went up and down, sometimes interesting, sometimes mind-numbingly boring. I really wish there was less time spent on Vera and her acting company. That part was the slowest for me. But the book had a good ending and a lot of the storylines were really interesting to me. A good end to the series.

I selected this book because of the gorgeous cover, expecting an enthralling historical fiction story; however, I DNF'd it after chapter 5. This story takes place in New Zealand and there are many words used that are specific to this part of the world and the Maori culture. I appreciated learning about the Maori, but found the frequent usage of native words followed by the English equivalent in the same sentence to break the continuity of my reading. Basically, I just thought there was too much of it and it disrupted my reading.

The main reason I DNF'D it though, was because of the scene of a 14 year old girl (the main character) being fondled by her boyfriend and her reaching into his pants. It's not an extensive scene and it's not super explicit, even so it's not what I want to be reading. I don't care if they are in love or planning to marry, I just don't want to read about a 14 year old engaged in this behavior. I did read a couple of chapters past this point, the writing is nice but it didn't engage me so I DNF'D it.

This is set in 19th century New Zealand so of course I had download and read it immediately. I loved this book a lot and it really felt like I was in 19th century New Zealand. I enjoyed this more than I expected to but it is for sure oh the emotional side. But nonetheless I devoured this and it was an easy 5 out of 5 stars!