"A Very Bookish 4th of July" by Kelsey Bryant, Abigayle Claire, Sarah Holman, and Rebekah A. Morris

I enjoyed A Very Bookish Thanksgiving so much that I eagerly bought this next installment in this series of limited-edition anthologies.  It's a little unusual to find stories that revolve around America's Independence Day, so this was a unique delight in that respect.  Each of the four novellas in this collection tell an original story that takes place on or around July 4, but which also involve some classic book as well.  

Rose of Nowhere by Abigayle Claire was my favorite, but I did like all four novellas!  Since my kids enjoyed A Very Bookish Thanksgiving, I'll be handing this off to them for a fun summer read as well.

Prairie Independence Day by Kelsey Bryant is about a young mother who moves to South Dakota when her husband gets a new job.  She's happy to be close to the Laura Ingalls Wilder museums and such in De Smet, but not happy about her pushy new neighbor who keeps trying to rope her into helping with community projects.  But when she makes a new friend who has also recently moved to the area, she comes to realize that involvement in your community can be a blessing, not just one more thing to keep you busy.

Rose of Nowhere by Abigayle Claire centers on a young woman all alone in the world, just on the cusp of World War Two.  Her only friend is her worn copy of Anne of Green Gables by L. M. Montgomery, a last Christmas gift from her father before he died years earlier.  When she finds a new job, she also finds new friends who share her love of words and books, and draw her out of her lonely old life.

Across the Land I Love by Sarah Holman follows two sisters on an impromptu cross-country road trip.  All they want is to reach their family to celebrate July 4th, but various troubles derail their journey.  Plane and care trouble, uncooperative hoteliers, and missed connections give them almost as many problems as Jules Verne gave his protagonist in Around the World in Eighty Days.  

Lessons from Liberty by Rebekah Morris gives us seven girl cousins who welcome a boy cousin they've never met, like a gender-flipped version of Eight Cousins by Louisa May Alcott.  The girl cousins belong to military families, and they have a lot of lingo and customs to teach the newcomer, especially since he's lived overseas and doesn't know much about Independence Day or what it means.  This one did get a little rah-rah here and there, like it was trying to cram every single patriotic American idea into one story, but the characters were fun, so I didn't mind too much.

You can check out the Instagram account dedicated to this series to learn more about the authors and their stories.  This will only be for sale for a few months, so get a copy this summer if you want to read these four fun novellas!

If This was a Movie, I Would Rate It: G.  Wholesome, clean, and uplifting.

This is my 31st book read off my TBR shelves for #TheUnreadShelfProject2021.