As I’ve become more involved with the booktok community (slang for the bookish people on TikTok,) I’ve been intrigued with the different reasons people give high ratings. Naturally, we all want high quality writing, but that is very subjective. Sometimes we love a certain plot, sometimes we connect with the characters, sometimes we identify with an event because it mirrors something in our own lives. And sometimes it is all of those things.
Which brings me to A Storm of Infinite Beauty, by Julianne MacLean. I went into this book with high hopes because the previous book I’d read by this author was also excellent. She did not disappoint. Aside from the things I love to see featured in a book, she also touched upon another favorite: a story that is much overdue to be told. (Think Radium Girls and The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks.) This book is fiction, but it reminds one of the fact that 1. Every person has amazing things that happened to them, 2. Every person has life chapters unknown to many, and 3. Sometimes it takes the right person (or people) to put all the pieces together to create a cohesive biography.
A Storm of Infinite Beauty focuses on the niece (Gwen) of fictional famous actress, Scarlet Fontaine, who is approached by a writer (Peter) about providing information and filling in some holes in his research. He hopes to set the record straight about the enigmatic movie and style icon, who died years ago, and to explore a period in her life that has never been written about before. We are taken back and forth between the present day and the past, meeting pre-fame Scarlet and learning about how her life decisions and a cataclysmic natural disaster created ripple effects that lasted for decades.
I listened to 60% of this book through Kindle Unlimited and read the last 40%. The author has a talented way of putting you right in the story, keeping your attention, and giving you characters who feel like real people. This was a good one. Add it to your reading list. I was very impressed.
9/10 Stars
Readwithkristie.com 