Blog Tour: Come Marching Home

Welcome to the Come Marching Home blog tour! Be sure to check out the giveaway goodies, the live release stream, and all the other blog tour stops! Find the full official post here.

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Cover

 

Review

 Slight spoilers ahead

*******

As always, Hazel has given us epic, gut-wrenchingly difficult brotherly bonds, and an intriguing pseudo-historical fantasy world. This very much has WWII vibes, and does a great job of capturing the disjointedness of returning to the home front after being at the front lines.

One thing that contributed to my enjoyment was the cinematic pacing. All of the beats were in the right place, I had music going on in the back of my head the entire time, and the ending tied everything together. Books that follow this pacing normally annoy me, since I can see where everything is going. In this, however, I spent a majority of my time hurriedly swiping right and biting my nails (I'm surprised I have any left). There were a couple scenes that were reminiscent of the a Hallmark film, but they were well-done rather than...overabundant and...saccharine.

The triggering content, in my opinion, was balanced; enough detail to get a sense of the horrors of war, but not enough to be considered gory or over-descriptive for the average reader. It is likely stressful/detailed enough to turn off sensitive readers, however. So a forewarning there. There are flashbacks to battles, mentions of blood and dead bodies, and broken bones/other wounds are mentioned.

Hazel has a knack for writing stubborn characters. Very very stubborn characters. It made for a delightful clash of interests throughout. Also: no angst in regards to the love life of one of the main characters. Just. I was so happy. Sure there were problems, but they tackled them together and they didn't waste what time they had. Also, only one of the main characters had a love life to deal with, and it was a nice side-arc that didn't overshadow the entire story.

I feel like I have so much more to say...but this review is late in being posted and I WILL keep major spoilers out of my reviews! Though I may stop doing that soon, because everyone views different aspects of the story as spoilers and it is exhausting trying to write about a book without mentioning character-specific things...

Author Bio

Hazel B. West is the author of several novels including historical titles like On a Foreign Field, By Blood or By Bond; Wolfsblood, a book about werewolves in Roman Britain and the Modern Tales of Na Fianna series, which feature modern Irish warriors with swords and fast sports cars and lots of faeries.
Hailing from Purgatory (aka, Florida) Hazel is an indie author, book wyrm, and coffee connoisseur. She typically enjoys writing books with an unconventional flair, probably with a bit of folklore and mythology, most definitely with a lot of siblings or brothers-in-arms. When she’s not writing, she manages an Etsy shop, drinks a lot of coffee, listens to music, haunts conventions, or just holes up like an eldritch horror and binges her favorite shows—for inspiration. If you meet this rare creature on the street, she has been known to respond to the offer of coffee and old bookstores. But it’s probably best you try to contact her online first.

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Come back on Thursday for a character interview! Also, don't forget to check out the pre-order swag pack!