Spanish Heart edition by Rachel Spangler Literature Fiction eBooks
Download As PDF : Spanish Heart edition by Rachel Spangler Literature Fiction eBooks 
What’s the point of finding yourself if you lose your heart in the process?
Ren Molson should be chasing a bright new future. Instead, she’s spent the last two years floundering in a small-town community college. She hates being the only lesbian she knows, and a virgin. She’s tired of watching her friends move forward while her momentum stalls. Most of all, she’s sick of feeling lost and confused about who she is or what she’s supposed to do with her life. Desperate for a change, Ren hopes to use her Spanish class tour through Spain to remake herself.
True to her plan, as Ren travels through Spain, she learns more about herself than the country she’s visiting. What she doesn’t expect is to fall in love with her beautiful young tour guide, Lina Montero. She’ll have to decide if her life can handle any more uncertainty and just how far she’s willing to go in order to become the person she thought she wanted to be.
Spanish Heart edition by Rachel Spangler Literature Fiction eBooks
Great premise, well-crafted characters, and lush description. I truly enjoyed reading, and will likely read this again. I was more than satisfied with this lovely story.Product details
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Tags : Spanish Heart - Kindle edition by Rachel Spangler. Download it once and read it on your Kindle device, PC, phones or tablets. Use features like bookmarks, note taking and highlighting while reading Spanish Heart.,ebook,Rachel Spangler,Spanish Heart,Bold Strokes Books,FICTION Lesbian,FICTION Romance Contemporary
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Spanish Heart edition by Rachel Spangler Literature Fiction eBooks Reviews
I wanted to like it. And there were parts that I did like. I liked the setting and the correct usage of Spanish and Lina. But I just couldn't like Ren, no matter how much I wanted to. I struggled with the first half but felt better about the second half.
The cultural aspects of Spain and art were very well done.
I think if you're a fan of the author's previous works, you'll probably like this one. It just wasn't my cup of tea.
This is a nice solid coming of age romance set in Spain. Esp. Lina, the guide and other main character, is lovely. The book catches well the teenage angst (well, Ren is twenty but still acting like one) to fit in and be - in her case - a proper lesbian. At some point I got fed up a bit with all her mental obsessing, sigh! But in the end girl gets her girl and the pond is bridged. BTW it is interesting to see Spain through US-American eyes ... vbg.
I would have really liked Spanish Heart, but I just could not connect with the main character. I thought that she was very childish and while it was acceptable at the beginning of the book, it started to grate on my nerves to the point that I ended up hating her about halfway through. I also thought that the other characters in the story were very flat and weren't developed enough. The idea of a woman finding herself by going on a trip abroad is an interesting one, but it could have been better executed.
Ren Molson is a small town girl from the Midwestern United States. She just graduated from her local community college, next up is another 2 years in university/college getting her Bachelor of Arts.
Ren is the only lesbian she knows. She has great friends from childhood who are, and have been, supportive of her. Like most 20 year olds she feels at a crossroads and feels her career choice looming as she doesn't have a STRONG calling in one direction.
The novel finds Ren in Spain for two weeks with her two closest friends (BFFs from age five thru High School and college - Caroline & Andi), her Spanish teacher and the teacher's soon to be teenage daughter. Ren has set herself 3 main objectives figure out who she is, stop feeling inept all the time and get laid. You can see this is going to be a story with as many twists, turns, dead-ends, and confusion for Ren as the streets of Toledo (not Ohio) are to a first time visitor. You can see where humor will come into play.
Their tour guide Lina is 24 year old Spanish-American and lives in Barcelona with her mother's family. Lina is simply a super person to be around. She treats Ren as an adult and respects her.
There were many beautiful moments in this story. Getting to see Spain through the eyes of a young woman in all her joy and wonder was terrific. Living with her day to day as she comes to maturity and self awareness through her life experiences was a gift. The writing is so real and fresh it brought me right back to my college days where I made half the mistakes, and right moves, as Ren. The rest of the time I am wanting to ask Ren - what are you thinking?!!
PERFECT ending - real and more than I could have expected - happy for Ren - Happy for Lina. Perfect Coming of Age novel.
Don't skip the author's acknowledgements at the beginning.
This story follows the first love experiences of naive and anxious Midwestern baby dyke Ren Molsen while touring Spain. Twenty year old Ren is a college student from Illinois who comes to Spain with her Spanish class and lucks out when her tour guide is a pretty 24 year old Spanish-American lesbian named Lina Montero. (her father is an American and her mother is Spanish)
Ren is determined to find her lesbian self in Spain. Or really, anything lesbian. She grapples over the mature and pretty tour guide... grapples with entering her first lesbian club and grapples even more with what she experiences inside. And then she grapples about grappling. Most of this kid's conflict is in her own obsessive brain. Icky teenage angst at its worst.
The 222 page book's chapters are divided by the 10 days that Ren stays in Spain, kinda like her tourism itinerary. For each day we get to experience parts of the tour, which I know is a fabulous visual and cultural experience IN PERSON... but never quite translates as well on the page. It's like reading a play; it's meant to be seen. Don't get me wrong, technically, this author writes very well. It just isn't very interesting and the voice and storyline is very young adult. Possibly junior high. Why isn't this shelved as a YA book?!?!?! Or that new label... New Adult, at least. geez. What some publishers choose to do in marketing for the sake of sales really is unethical. (What? You think we don't notice?!)
Ren may be an attractive lead (looks like the author, actually), but there are some limitations to first person when the narrator is so self-hating and obsessive. The reader is likely to hate her as well, especially when personal growth seems so weak. Personally, I found her childish and immature and I got tired of hearing her whine internally.
We follow Ren's self-conscious thoughts which prattle on obsessively and there seems little for us to look forward to because she gives up so easily and is afraid of everything. I don't know much about baby dykes, but I'd like to think they weren't the cowardly lions of the butch kingdom hierarchy. It makes sense that an "older" woman (Lina) should take her on. This baby dyke needs a mommy. External conflicts include getting sick from eating candy all day and being disappointed the McDonald's french fries in Spain taste like fish. Really? z-z-z-zz-z... this would have bored me even at 14.
Maybe I'm too old for this. Admittedly, I've abandoned a previous book by this author after a few pages because the voice was clearly so young. But I insisted on this one due to the Spanish lead... such a rarity in lesfic that I wanted to see what would be done with her. What I learned is it's difficult to screw up an ethnic character when you're white and writing from first person and I didn't notice enough about Lina to comment about her (or care). First person makes the focus all about Ren, at least the way it's done here. The writing here is otherwise clean... it's just an overly simplistic story and too wholesome for my tastes. That, and Ren is just too irritating/unlikable.
The story does pick up after like 100 pages when the two leads begin to connect, but not much. If it gets better it's primarily because Ren is less irritating when she finally gets close to a girl (any girl) she so desperately wants. There is nothing even remotely graphic here and I was actually hoping to get to the end without any sex because these leads are like really young teens (eh...no thanks, lol). What did come up was brief and blurred in poetic obscurity, so no worries there.
A different audience might rate this one higher. Like maybe Amish teenagers. My grannie. Or maybe super sheltered Midwestern teens as is Ren. As for me, I had a flashback of reading some Christian fiction for a book club where nothing happened in the story... a dog died. A 12 yr old girl started her period. This one was just as dull for me. And I'm disappointed... I wanted a lez romance with a pretty Spanish girl to be a good one.
ps... beautiful cover
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UPDATE I originally posted this as two stars. But after the extreme troll attack that I received over this review, I felt this book deserved no stars. It's a shame some feel new releases should be monitored in this genre and that an honest opinion to inform readers is not allowed. It really is a shameful practice.
Great premise, well-crafted characters, and lush description. I truly enjoyed reading, and will likely read this again. I was more than satisfied with this lovely story.
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