Title: Wynn in Doubt
Author: Emily Hemmer
Publication Date: May 7th 2014
Synopsis
The memory of a stolen kiss ten years ago stirs up an adventure eighty years in the making.
Wynn Jeffries has wanderlust. Unfortunately, her life stalled somewhere between graduating college and slinging drinks at the local dive bar. Stuck in a one-room apartment with no career, no boyfriend, no…life, she dreams of something more. Something amazing. Something like Oliver Reeve’s, her high school crush, whose back in town and reminding Wynn of the way she used to want things.
When a forgotten news-clipping about two prohibition moonshiners falls out of a book belonging to Wynn’s grandmother, a well-kept family secret is finally revealed. Is Wynn’s gypsy spirit the result of an overactive imagination or did she inherit it from a woman so determined to live a big life she gave up everything to have it?
The choices we make now shape our future. It’s the fear of making the wrong ones that give us doubt. So the question is: how much are we willing to sacrifice to have the life we want?
Wynn Jeffries has wanderlust. Unfortunately, her life stalled somewhere between graduating college and slinging drinks at the local dive bar. Stuck in a one-room apartment with no career, no boyfriend, no…life, she dreams of something more. Something amazing. Something like Oliver Reeve’s, her high school crush, whose back in town and reminding Wynn of the way she used to want things.
When a forgotten news-clipping about two prohibition moonshiners falls out of a book belonging to Wynn’s grandmother, a well-kept family secret is finally revealed. Is Wynn’s gypsy spirit the result of an overactive imagination or did she inherit it from a woman so determined to live a big life she gave up everything to have it?
The choices we make now shape our future. It’s the fear of making the wrong ones that give us doubt. So the question is: how much are we willing to sacrifice to have the life we want?
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Author Interview
Who is Emily Hemmer?
Someone once told me
that in your twenties you pretend to be someone else, in your thirties you try
to be someone else, and in your forties you finally become comfortable with who
you truly are. I’m thirty-five. I’m still trying to become the person I want
to be. A happy one.
When and how did you know you wanted to become a writer?
I can’t remember a time
when I didn’t enjoy writing and creating stories, whether they were in my mind
or on paper. But it wasn’t until four
years ago that I began to think seriously about writing a book. I’d been idling for some time, waiting for
something to come along and change my life for me. One day I was in a Borders Books and it
struck me that I already had the tools needed to make that change myself, right
then. When I sat down and began to write it felt like the most obvious thing in
the world -- I chided myself for wasting so many prime imagination-driven
years.
Where do you look for a source of inspiration?
No one place. Movies and music inspire me quite a lot. History and uncovering why people do the
things they do also gets my creativity flowing.
If one song could be the soundtrack to your life, what would it be?
If one song could be the soundtrack to your life, what would it be?
Awake My Soul --
Mumford & Sons. “In these bodies we
will live, in these bodies we will die. Where you invest your love, you invest
your life.” Those words have served as
my motto for several years now.
Marilyn, Audrey or Jackie?
Audrey.
She understood the importance of empathy, acceptance, and kindness. She helped a lot of people in her life and
left behind a legacy to try and make the world a better place.
What's your favorite way of spending a lazy Sunday?
Breakfast with my husband at our
favorite spot. A walk through the woods with the whole family, the dog
included. Catching a movie and going for
ice cream afterwards. Then steaks and corn on the cob, both hot off the grill,
a beer in my hand and music on the record player.
What are your favorite five books?
Cause Celeb - Helen Fielding
Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
Backpack - Emily Barr
Blessed Are the Cheesemakers -
Sarah Kate Lynch
Persuasion - Jane Austen
Wynn suffers from wanderlust. Where would you love to go?
Persuasion - Jane Austen
Wynn suffers from wanderlust. Where would you love to go?
Everywhere. But if I had to pick one in this moment, I
think Australia. It does something to my
soul when I look at pictures of that country/continent.
One word that defines you.
Dreamer.
“There’s still time for your adventure, Wynn.”
“There’s still time for your adventure, Wynn.”
This book has evoked so many feelings and it’s so
hard to put them down, into words because I know they won’t do the story
justice. Won't do the characters and what they’ve been through justice. I laughed from the
first chapter because it was funny, light and easy, but then, as
the storyline flowed easily, it got deeper and deeper.
Wynn is stuck. That is what she feels. She’s
twenty-eight and she feels as if she hasn’t done or accomplished anything. She
thought she wanted something, went after it but things never went her way. She
finally settled for the mediocre, instead of the big she’s always wanted. But
the passing of her grandmother, a woman she has loved very much has a major
impact on her life, more than just leaving emptiness behind, more than Wynn missing
her.
“He looked at
her the way all women want to be looked at by a man.” Boy, did you get that
right, Fitzgerald.
Because of Wynn’s ‘thing’ – her love of books – she
gets her Grams’ books, the classics she read and loved. A book in
particular, one that I believe plays an important role in the story and,
especially a substory, The Great Gatsby.
She finds something that makes her question everything. And with the help of a
person she never thought she’ll see ever again, she embarks on a journey, both
physical and emotional. She needs to learn what happened to someone very
important to her but someone she has never ever met. When others tell her it is
foolish, she doesn’t listen and tries her best to find out everything, hoping
for closure, for a HEA.
I don’t want
to spoil the journey the reader takes, along with Wynn and Oliver – who, by the
way, is not only a hot rock star trying to find the passion for music he seemed
to have lost, but is also awesome and oh-so-swoon-worthy,
“You’ve always been
my muse.”
- but I’ll just say this: if you’ve read The Great Gatsby or even seen one of the
movies, you know what it’s about. A young lady stuck in an unhappy marriage and
even though she finds the love of her life for the second time, she is too afraid to
try, to do something to be with him
and be happy. Lola is a Daisy that’s not afraid of doing something, in order to be happy, to be more than just a wife and a
mother.
Two stories unfold in parallel. We find everything
out, along with Wynn and Oliver. The
Great Gatsby is one of my favorite classical books and I loved the
hinted-at association. I loved Lola. I’m sure you’re wondering what I’m talking
about, who’s Lola and what did she do.
If
Lola’s story has taught me anything it’s that life is about choices. I may get
them wrong sometimes, as she did, but the important thing is to try. I need to
start trying.
But for that, you’ll have to read Wynn in Doubt and
believe me, you won’t regret it. Just be prepared to get blurry vision, once in
a while and to accept that sometimes, the journey is the important thing, not the
destination. And, even if we had something that made us happy only for a while,
we still had it.
I
think too often we fear the unknown when what we should be afraid of is the
undone.
I was lucky enough to have received a copy of
this book from the author in exchange of an honest review and it was truly an
honor for me. I rarely come across books that make me stop and wonder. Not five
stars. That’s not enough. Six. Six stars.
“Have
you seen enough of the world yet?” He speaks so only I can hear. I know he’s
asking whether or not I’m ready to come back to him.
“No,”
I say, finding his eyes. “But I’ve seen enough of it alone.”
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