Tuesday, May 20, 2014

BOOK REVIEW & AUTHOR INTERVIEW: LOVING MR. DANIELS by Brittainy Cherry!

Title: LOVING MR. DANIELS
Author: Brittainy Cherry (Facebook | Twitter)
Publication Date: May 11, 2014
My Rating: 5 out 5 stars


BLURB


To Whom it May Concern, 


It was easy to call us forbidden and harder to call us soulmates. Yet I believed we were both. Forbidden soulmates. 



When I arrived to Edgewood, Wisconsin I didn’t plan to find him. I didn't plan to stumble into Joe's bar and have Daniel's music stir up my emotions. I had no clue that his voice would make my hurts forget their own sorrow. I had no idea that my happiness would remember its own bliss. 



When I started senior year at my new school, I wasn’t prepared to call him Mr. Daniels, but sometimes life happens at the wrong time for all the right reasons. 



Our love story wasn’t only about the physical connection.



It was about family. It was about loss. It was about being alive. It was silly. It was painful. It was mourning. It was laughter.



It was ours. 



And for those reasons alone, I would never apologize for loving Mr. Daniels. 


-Ashlyn Jennings
Amazon US | B&N | Mark this book on Goodreads

Ramblings. I think it was Sunday last week when Loving Mr. Daniels quite flooded my Goodreads feed. I’m following a number of book bloggers/reviewers and they were really showing some deep love towards this book. Several reviews and ratings popped out and it was really consistent. Most of them rated this book around 4.5 or 5 stars. I was like “what’s with the hype?” So, with me being the ever curious-book-blog-stalking-gal, I checked the synopsis of the book. And it started off like this:

“To Whom it May Concern, It was easy to call us forbidden and harder to call us soulmates. Yet I believed we were both. Forbidden soulmates.” O M G OMG It already screams that a FORBIDDEN something something is bound to happen in the story.

Then I saw this part of the synopsis, “When I started senior year at my new school, I wasn’t prepared to call him Mr. Daniels, but sometimes life happens at the wrong time for all the right reasons.” AAAH a STUDENT-TEACHER relationship! 

From that point, I just knew it that I really need to read Loving Mr. Daniels as soon as it goes live.  I was curious how it was able to tear off itself from the boundaries of being just another story with that forbidden relationship involved and how the author will be able to tackle a certain taboo topic such as that. Plus, I’m really curious as to why it received high ratings from those book bloggers. Bring it on!

Immediate thought after reading this book. OH THE TEARS. Yep, I can’t bring myself to create a book review for this book as soon as possible because my ‘Loving Mr. Daniels’ emotions are still coursing through me. My eyes are all puffy and blurry too because of the tears, happy and sad tears combined. My feels are still fresh and raw from the emotional roller coaster ride that I went through while reading this book.

My thoughts. Loving Mr. Daniels is a beautiful, emotionally packed and character driven book.  I tell you, this book is so much more than the forbidden relationship involved in the story. So, don’t be thrown off with that aspect of the book. In actuality this book speaks about life, loss, love and relationships. The book speaks about relationships with parents, sisters, brothers and friends. It was very easy to love and instantly became a part of my ‘favourite books’ list. I’m in love with the way the book was presented and the prose was just perfect for the storyline.

This book is told from both Ashlyn and Daniel’s POV and its always great hearing both of our main characters’ sentiments and take on things. Loving Mr. Daniels will immediately suck you in with its prologue and from that point you’ll totally lose yourself within the story. Everything that happened felt so real with all the angst, raw emotions coming off of our characters and the journey that they’re going through. There are a couple of twists and turns in the story that will pretty much shock the hell out of you. But another thing that I love about this book is the fact that there’s not much drama in it where you’ll feel like strangling yourself already. It only tends to get emotional because of the heartfelt words used and the situation where the characters are in.


With every turn of the page that I did, I got to know more and care deeply for these characters. It feels like that they were even real people and I was hoping to be friends with them. Each smile and every tear that dropped from their eyes affected me too much. With that, I can definitely say that I was always on the verge of tears. There are letters involved in the book and it was definitely a clever move for the author to do. You’ll know the reason why once you read this book. Anyways, once a letter comes up … My tears are freely flowing out of my eyes. The letters were just filled with emotions and it will really hit you hard with every word that it says. Plus, just knowing the purpose of the whole letter concept will make you tear up.

This may or may be the best part about this book. I love the way that the book doesn’t only focus with the two main characters’ story which is very common in books today. It’s wherein authors only narrate the life story and journey of a character or two while the side characters are just mere spectators of everything that’s happening. BUT with Loving Mr. Daniels, it’s different this time around. This book is definitely packed with interesting characters and all of their character stories in it. Every single character that was mentioned in the book was given proper attention. And I’m really amazed on how the author was able to craft and play with those characters. She managed to equally give them such fundamental roles in the story within the limited number of pages the book has. Even Gabby (not spoiling anything here about her character) still plays a big role in the story and in Ashlyn’s life.

All in all, I can definitely say that Loving Mr. Daniels is a gem and absolutely worth the read. I highly recommend this to you, fellow bookworms. It’s a beautiful beautiful read. And I can’t wait what Brittainy Cherry writes and publishes next. Though, she didn’t give me a teaser to share with you when I randomly interviewed her (I MUST ADD, IT WAS DURING THE WEE HOURS OF THE MORNING HERE IN THE PHILIPPINES) for my blog. Yes, I interviewed her and I would include it here in my post. In fact, the interview is coming right up already!!!

“The best things in life aren't easy. They are tough, they are painful, and they are raw. That makes the arrival to the final destination that much sweeter." *sigh*


 INTERVIEW TIME ... 

I may sound like a broken record to you, Ms. Brittainy Cherry, for I have said this a lot of times already through Twitter's Direct Message and email but here I go again ... THANK YOU SO MUCH for doing this very impromptu interview that I did with you. The whole idea of conducting the interview just sprang out of me towards the end part of our Twitter conversation. And it was around 1 or 2AM already here in the Philippines! Ha! It's quite a task to come up with sensible questions to ask around that time, guys! Uhh and I need to stop rambling now and let our dear readers to go on with the said interview ...

I just have to ask this first ... Can I be best friends with Ashlyn? Or even be part of their crew? 
Of course! 

Aha! Forgive for being such a fangirl over your characters but for me it really feels like they’re real people already after reading Loving Mr. Daniels. Plus, I love love them so much! Anyways, for starters. Can you tell us something about yourself, the basics about being Ms. Brittainy Cherry? 
Well, I’m pretty simple haha! I love anything and everything about romances. From movies to books, romance inspires me. I can almost quote any romantic comedy at a drop of a hat haha. When I’m not writing or falling in love with characters, I’m hanging out with my family. They are the best :) 

Who is your favourite author and what is it that really strikes you about his/her works? 
If we are doing my favorite author of all time, I’m going with Jane Austen. Her novels are legends and always make me swoon and fall in love. 

What books have most influenced your life? 
Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen and The Five People You Meet in Heaven by Mitch Albom. 

Do you recall how your interest in writing originated? Is there any person who inspired you in creating your own books? 
My mom is an amazing writer and it seems that creativity has always been in our lives. I was really shy in high school and instead of hanging out with other kids my age in summer, I wrote my first book. I then went to study creative writing and theatre in college, which helped me a lot! 

Thank you so much for cluing us in about yourself and your favorites, Ms. Brittainy. But here we go. Let’s get started and talk about your recently released book, Loving Mr. Daniels, which is creating quite a buzz in the book blogging community. How were you able to come up with the whole idea of the book? The letters, the music and all characters that were involved in it. 
To tell you the truth, this is a tricky question. At times I feel as if it is the characters who are ‘sharing’ their story with me. I start with a road map of where I think the story is going, yet then the characters tell me differently. I was inspired by the idea of life and death and how after you lose someone close to you, it’s as if they are never really gone because they left such an impact on your life. So that drove a lot of the story forward. 

Considering that there’s a forbidden romance in the storyline, was it the hardest part of writing it?  If not, what was it? 
Was it the hardest part? No and yes. I wanted to tell a forbidden story that was only forbidden due to society. I also wanted to tie in different types of forbidden stories from the secondary characters too. But that was the least of my concerns really when writing this novel. Mainly I wanted to tell a love story and showcased the struggles of love and the beauty of love all at the same time. 

What inspired you or made you still push through and write the book? 
Life inspired me. People going through struggles yet finding a way out of the darkness—the world inspired me, I guess. 

Of all the amazing characters that we've met in Loving Mr. Daniels, who do you feel very connected to? and Why? 
Ryan. Because even though I didn’t go through the same thing as him, I knew what it was like to be young and not quite sure where I fit into the world. 

Are some of the experiences/events that had happened in your book based on someone you know, or events in your own life? 
Well, my grandmother passed away from cancer two years ago. She was my best friend, so Gabby has parts of her throughout her letters. 

If you had to write it all over again, would you change anything in your book? 
A few things here and there, but overall, I think I told the characters’ story the way they wanted it told. 

Out of the all the messages included in the book, what’s the single message that you would want the readers to be able to grasp and take away from it?  
Life your life the way you want to. Love the way you want to love. And dream bigger than ever before. 

Do you have any current project/s that you're working on right now? Can you give us a teaser on what we could look forward to from you? 
I have no teasers right now, but I have a few projects going on currently. Sneak peeks coming soon ;) 

Lastly, do you have anything to say to your readers or even to the bloggers? Especially to those who are still weeping because of your beautiful book, Loving Mr. Daniels. *hands over some tissues to the readers* 
THANK YOU! I just want to thank everyone for helping pass the word on Loving Mr. Daniels, but mostly for connecting with it, for opening your hearts and minds to the novel. Thank you for giving me a chance. <3 

Well, that's it for now booknerds and fangirls out there! Babye! :) x


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