Review of As Bright as Heaven by Susan Meissner

Hello Readers,

Thank you to Berkley Publishing for generously supplying me with a review copy of As Bright as Heaven by Susan Meissner. I received this book for free in exchange for an honest review. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

This is the first book I have read by Susan Meissner. The covers of her other novels always catch my attention because they are so pretty. This book has been everywhere recently since it was a Book of the Month pick for January and just recently released on February 6. Plus just like all of her previous novels As Bright as Heaven has a beautiful cover. 

This book is multigenerational and puts you into the inner thoughts of a mother and her three young daughters. Meissner did this so well and I loved going from the mothers perspective and then proceeding into the inner thoughts of each of her daughters. The book starts off with a heartbreaking event that leads the Bright family to make the decision to move to Philidephia in the hopes that life will look brighter in a new city. Life isn't always as simple as moving and starting new because the Great War is raging and the Spanish flu is claiming thousands of lives just a few months after the Bright family arrives. This book tore my heart out several times. I had to set it down on different occasions because I was not ready to deal with some of the situations that happened to the characters, but I always came back to the book because the story was so well told that I needed to know what would happen to the Bright family. I knew almost nothing about the Spanish flu and how many lives it took from so many families, and I always appreciate when a ficintinal book teaches me something new about history. 

This book poses many questions. Do war and death change the rules? Would you do anything to save someone who appeared to need saving? Can love cover wounds so deep they cause you do things you never would have thought of?

This book is definitely a read for any historical fiction lovers and for readers who enjoy the works of Kate Morton and Kristin Hannah. 

Overall Rating - 3/5 Stars. The only reason this book did not get a higher rating is because the ending felt a bit too tidy to me. I prefer a bit more of a messy ending or even things left without being resolved. 

Links:
Amazon

Happy Reading,
Rachael