The New Diary Blog Tour: Book Review

I am participating in Hanna Kraft’s blog tour, hosted by Kellyn Roth, for her newly published book, The New Diary! A big congratulations to Hanna for publishing this book! It is a fantastic book, and I’m happy to be a part of the tour!

I will be posting a book review and an author interview. Read the author interview here. And now, let’s get to the book review!

 The New Diary

One Summer Sunday in 1930, Carol Ayers decides to keep a diary. She records many life changes over the days, weeks, and months. Can Carol and her family accept, and even like the changes, and at the same time continue their traditions?

The New Diary, a fictional account, contains actual excerpts from the real diary of Carol Ayers, the author’s great-grandmother.

Find it on Goodreads

Author Bio:

Hanna Kraft, an introverted Christian Homeschooler, is very grateful to have the opportunity to learn at home, and desires to spread her love of Jesus to others. Every day she sees new ways the Lord has provided, blessed, and cared for her and those she cares for. Hanna enjoys writing much more than any of her five siblings, and has enjoyed it for several years. When she realized her ability to publish The New Diary, she decided to pursue writing as a bit more than a mere hobby.

Besides reading and writing, Hanna lives in the country with her family, and enjoys playing the banjo, swimming, listening to much Southern Gospel music, and watching college basketball.

 Find her on Goodreads.

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The New Diary, by Hanna Kraft, is a neat book. I read this book in a day, and it was a pretty rough day (basically, our neighbor’s forest was one fire, which was almost in our backyard…), so to come home and have a good little book to relax with… was definitely nice! The story was easy to relax into.

     The story was interesting to me. I love when authors take their heritage/ancestors and write stories inspired by them…  To read books inspired by writer’s ancestors is fascinating to me.  It is slipping into history in an unbelievable real, heartfelt way. Everyone has a story to tell. We just have to listen.

Knowing Ms. Kraft was taking her great-grandmother’s diary and writing Carol’s story sucked me in. That being said, this book’s way of writing such an idea was quite unique.I really liked how Kraft mixed the diary into each chapter, it felt very real and sweet. I also got the strong feeling that Ms. Kraft mixed diary entries very smoothly into the chapter itself, without directly quoting the diary. It seemed that she took much from the diary, and let it play and come to life. I really enjoyed that, I think she did a great job there! The story came to life in a relaxed way.

   The writing style was simple and pretty nicely crafted, though I think some parts could have been reworded; but these are only little things that every author/writer deals with. The writing of the characters was well done.The length of the book, to me, captured a neat package of the diary and the history of Carol’s life in a way where it stayed true, but didn’t linger or trail on. It was very well done.

The characters were easily differentiated, and they seemed very realistic to me; especially within the length of the book, the characters didn’t really fall flat of much. I thought they were cute, and Pete made me a little nostalgic at times. The siblings all seemed very awesome and realistic.

  The New Diary was a good book. The way Ms. Kraft took truth and let it play out in a historical fiction format, went very nice and I enjoyed it. The setting and plot seemed very close to the actual diary. The illustrations gave the book a sweet, homey touch and feeling. Overall, the book was fun! Definitely ideal for a rainy or stressful day with a nice cup of tear/coffee. Hanna Kraft pulled off a sweet story. The New Diary has me very curious to see what happens next, and that’s always awesome!

 You can also found my review of The New Diary on Goodreads here.

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That’s my book review for The New Diary! It is a great little book, and if this review makes you interested in checking it out, you definitely should! Thank you Hanna Kraft and Kellyn Roth for including me in the blog tour. Hanna Kraft, I am very excited for the next book in the Heritage Diaries! 😀

Be sure to check out the rest of the blog tour! And congratulate Hanna, because ahh, this book.

The Tour

Wednesday the 1st

-Kellyn Roth @ Reveries Reviews (kick-off/author interview)

Thursday the 2nd

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Friday the 3rd

-Megan @ A Barefoot Gal (author interview)

Saturday the 4th

-Kellyn Roth @ Reveries ReviewsReveries ReviewsReveries Reviews (review)

-Angela R. Watts @ The Peculiar Messenger (review/author interview)

-Anika Joy @ Anika’s Avenue (review/author interview)

Thanks for reading! God bless.

-Angela Watts