Friday, August 14, 2009

Spires of Stone by Annette Lyon

Spires of Stone by Annette Lyon

When the Adam brothers, Ben, Claude, and Philip returned home from their mission the first thing the do is visit their old bishop and his two daughters. Ben is painfully reminded of his catastrophic relationship with the oldest, Bethany. Years apart have not softened the bitterness that they feel towards ones another, nor their verbal sparring. Philip hopes to build his new photography business fast enough to court the younger Hansen sister, Hannah. Yet, he watches as his older brother Claude takes a liking her, and feels that he doesn’t have much of a chance to win her over.

This book is the third in Annette Lyon’s Historical stories based on temples. Spires of Stone focus on the building of the Salt Lake temple and is also loosely based on Shakespeare’s romantic comedy Much Ado about Nothing. I liked this one much better than At Journey’s End, and I couldn’t put it down. Seriously, my husband kept giving me the look, the one that said I should stop reading and start working on school stuff, but I couldn’t. I got so caught up in the story and characters that I just read the whole afternoon away. I really liked Philip and found his goals to set up a photography studio very interesting. I really like that Claude, though he plays the role of villain, gets the chance to redeem himself. Not only once, but several times. In fact, sometimes you just want to hit him upside the head.

Ben and Bethany have the classic Pride and Prejudice sort of romance. They hate one another and get in bitter verbal sparring matches. Then you slowly learn about their past and how things fell out between them, and realize that if they could both put aside their past hurts and pride that they could love one another again.

I really enjoyed this one! I think I’d recommend this one the highest out of the three novels that I’ve read of the series. There is another about the Manti temple called Tower of Strength. You don’t have to read them in any order to understand the plots. The books have characters in common but each novel is stand alone.

Annette Lyon’s Author Website

Visit her blog the Lyon’s Tale

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