Mourning Dove by Claire Fullerton – Review & Giveaway

Welcome to the blog tour & giveaway for Mourning Dove by Claire Fullerton, hosted by JustRead Publicity Tours!

ABOUT THE BOOK

Title: Mourning Dove
Author: Claire Fullerton
Publisher: Firefly Southern Fiction
Release Date: June 29, 2018
Genre: Southern Fiction, Family Life

“An accurate and heart-wrenching picture of the sensibilities of the American South.” Kirkus Book Reviews

The heart has a home when it has an ally.

If Millie Crossan doesn’t know anything else, she knows this one truth simply because her brother Finley grew up beside her. Charismatic Finley, eighteen months her senior, becomes Millie’s guide when their mother Posey leaves their father and moves her children from Minnesota to Memphis shortly after Millie’s tenth birthday.

Memphis is a world foreign to Millie and Finley. This is the 1970s Memphis, the genteel world of their mother’s upbringing and vastly different from anything they’ve ever known. Here they are the outsiders. Here, they only have each other. And here, as the years fold over themselves, they mature in a manicured Southern culture where they learn firsthand that much of what glitters isn’t gold. Nuance, tradition, and Southern eccentrics flavor Millie and Finley’s world as they find their way to belonging.

But what hidden variables take their shared history to leave both brother and sister at such disparate ends?

PURCHASE: Goodreads | Amazon | B&N | Book Depository

IN MY OPINION…

You guys, book FOMO (fear of missing out) is a thing! At least it is for me, and books like Mourning Dove by Claire Fullerton only feeds that FOMO. Fullerton is a new-to-me author, but boy, oh boy, did she make a big and lasting impression!

Readers are taken through a tumultuous childhood through Millie Crossan. While things started out almost idyllic for this young lady in Minnesota, times changed. Situations and poor choices from others around her upend young Millie’s sense of security. And when the family trades Minnesota for Memphis, appearances become even more important than nurturing.

Fullerton delves into some of the dangers of burying and hiding emotions, dysfunctional family life, and what happens when the person held as a hero falls from their pedestal. Millie’s unique voice, influenced by southern gentility, often reads like poetry. It’s her inner struggles and questions that drew me to her and her story.

A simple sentence within the first pages of Mourning Dove invested me in the lives of Millie and her family. And it happened multiple times—one sentence that kept me from setting down the book until the very end.

This is not an easy read. It’s real, it’s raw, it’s life. But the emotional journey is well worth the ride.

Disclosure statement:
I receive complimentary books from publishers, publicists, and/or authors, including NetGalley. I am not required to write positive reviews. The opinions I have expressed are my own. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Claire Fullerton grew up in Memphis, TN and now lives in Malibu, CA. She is the author of contemporary fiction, “Dancing to an Irish Reel,” set in Connemara, Ireland, where she once lived. Dancing to an Irish Reel is a finalist in the 2016 Kindle Book Review Awards, and a 2016 Readers’ Favorite. Claire is the author of “A Portal in Time,” a paranormal mystery that unfolds in two time periods, set on California’s hauntingly beautiful Monterey Peninsula, in a village called Carmel-by-the-Sea. Both of those novels are published by Vinspire Publishing. Her third novel, Mourning Dove, is a Southern family saga, published in June 2018 by Firefly Southern Fiction. She is one of four contributors to the book, A Southern Season, with her novella, Through an Autumn Window, to be published in November 2018 by Firefly Southern Fiction.

CONNECT WITH CLAIRE: website | Facebook | Twitter | Pinterest | Instagram

TOUR GIVEAWAY

Claire Fullerton is giving away:

• 1 audiobook of Mourning Dove (US only)

Enter via the Rafflecopter giveaway below. Giveaway will begin at midnight August 21, 2018 and last through 11:59pm August 28, 2018. US only. Winners will be notified within a week of close of the giveaway and given 48 hours to respond or a new winner will be chosen.

Giveaway is subject to the policies found here.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Follow along with the tour at JustRead for a full list of stops!