Book Review: The Midsummer Wife by Jacqueline Church Simonds

     The goddess has communicated with her High Priestess for over 1500 years that a great travesty would befall Britain and the heirs of King Arthur, Merlin, and Anya would rise up and heal the country. The time has come in the form of a nuclear blast that destroyed parliament, the royal family, and thousands more. It is up to Ava, Harper, and Ron to battle Morganna and her followers to achieve this goal. Are they strong enough or will their insecurities get the best of them? 

    I received a copy of this book from the author in exchange for an honest review. While I don't typically enjoy period pieces I have always made an exception when it comes to King Arthur and the knights of the round table. In this case, however, it is set in the near future so my lack of enjoyment for historical books would not have come into play no matter the subject matter. 

    That being said this book is a bit of a twist. Normally we have King Arthur and his wife Guinevere, who cheated on him with Lancelot, and their back and forth. In this case we have Anya, who was a priestess of one known only as 'The Goddess" that was the lover of both Merlin and King Arthur and bore them both sons. 

    I was a bit hesitant on this book because of the amount of religion. Anyone who has read my reviews or who knows me knows that I am steadfastly not religious and I don't read religious things. They bore me to no end. Especially monotheism. But, I tend to enjoy books that include polytheism, so when the religious deity is referred to as the goddess I had some hope. While there are a lot of religious sections where they pray to this one deity it is not loathsome. Although, if you are delicate of heart you may find issues with many things that take place in this book, such as Ava floating naked and the bit at the end that I won't spoil. 

    Personally, that didn't bother me and I enjoyed the book. It is an indie author book, which are sometimes hit or miss. There are very few typos and issues in the book. One of which I was able to point out to the author. After that I wasn't. I'm not sure if it was Twitter or what the case was, but still. The story does have flashbacks to the time of King Arthur, but they are superimposed over the current time, which is interesting. 

    This is book one of four, although at this time I'm not sure that I want to continue the series. The book was good, and does end on a bit of a cliffhanger. That being said I'm not on the edge of my seat needing to know what happens next. 

    This book is available on Kindle Unlimited or buy it on Amazon for $3.99 by clicking here.