The Company Daughters - Samantha Rajaram

The Company Daughters: A heart-wrenching colonial love story by Samantha Rajaram
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

From the moment I started reading The Company Daughters, I was captivated by this historical tale. Although it does contain a love story, it's not a romance and there is far more going on than that. The book is told from the point of view of Jana. It follows her from her role as a maid in Amsterdam, halfway across the world to Batavia as a 'Company Daughter' with the Dutch East India Company. Batavia was the Danish city where their trade was based, modern-day Jakarta. In an attempt to build a European city in Indonesia, poor women were shipped out to marry the men who had settled and were trading there. These were women who were impoverished and looking for a better life, but in many ways found themselves in just as difficult a position once they arrived.
The book is split into a number of parts, we, first of all, see Jana as a maid in a wealthy household in Amsterdam. When circumstances change we follow her gruelling journey of nearly a year at sea to reach her new home. Finally, we see the life that she has there.
There is love here, but as I said before, it's not a normal romance. Jana finds love where society at the time doesn't approve of. It's this and her own circumstances which make it difficult for her to love.
This was a gripping read and I found myself lost in Jana's world and life. It's a little different to anything that I've read recently and I think that just added to my enjoyment.
I received a complimentary copy of this book through NetGalley. Opinions expressed in this review are completely my own.

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After She Fell - Amber Laura

After She Fell
Amber Laura
Publication date: July 30th 2019
Genres: Adult, Contemporary, Romance

She’s tried for years to convince herself that she isn’t in love with him. If it hasn’t worked, at least she’s managed to convince him of it, anyway.
A tragic love affair from her past had shattered Christina’s illusions of romance—it’d shattered her entire world, left her utterly broken and blamed. She’s fallen once before. She isn’t about to make the same mistake twice!
Jason Gordman is off-limits. Charming, playful, confident—he’s everything dangerous to her defenses. Worse yet, he’s the boss’s son. Hiding behind antagonism and indifference, Christina manages to keep him at a careful distance. That is, until one fateful night when she finds herself snowbound with him in a blizzard and she slips, allows herself one, forbidden kiss…
Struggling to reconcile her feelings, Christina is entirely unprepared for where that one stolen moment will lead her.

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Author Bio:
Amber Laura’s biography, also known as “Five Fun Facts about the Author”:

1. As a writer, Amber Laura does her best daydreaming as a window-gazing passenger on long car rides.
2. If there’s creamer, she’s drinking coffee. When she edits, there’s always creamer.
3. A blogger, she also writes web fiction—(free stories updated chapter-by-chapter, week-by-week). Check it out at www.litliber.com.
4. Psst! Her debut novel, Topaz and Lace, a contemporary romance set in a fictitious Texas town, got its start on that same blog.
5. While she may physically reside in the beautiful country of Northern Minnesota, in her imagination, Amber Laura lives all over the world. She considers it one of the best perks to being a writer: easy, cheap travel. That and the oddball characters she meets along the way….

Website / Goodreads / Facebook / Twitter

My Review

I'm going to start by saying just how much I enjoyed this book. This was possibly, in part at least, because it was a little different to the other things that I've been reading recently. In part, but also just because it is a really good book. 

This book is a love story, but although there is romance in there, it's not really a romance story in the traditional sense. In fact, most of this story is about a number of different love stories. The main character, Christina has been in love with her bosses son, Jason, almost from the moment that she met him. He clearly feels the same, but the antagonistic relationship that they have has stopped anything from happening between them. When she was younger, Christina made a mistake and as a result, her family cut her off completely. This has then defined all of her relationships and friendships since then. 

The book tells the stories of Christina's blossoming relationship with Jason as well as her relationship with surrogate parents Mary and Matthew (her boss and his wife) and the relationship with her parents. All of these elements come together as Christina struggles to come to terms with her past and accept a future.

I loved the characters. Christina was quite prickly and difficult to relate to at the beginning, but as the book developed we see more of why she is how she is and it becomes easier to sympathise with her. The whole story was very well written and I have to admit that I really wasn't sure how it was going to end, it really could have gone a number of ways. In the end, I think that the way that it all worked out was perfect for the book. 

Amber Laura is a new author for me, but I'll certainly be on the lookout for more of her books in the future. 

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