A Victorian Mystery Full of Faith, Secrets & Yearning: Of Silver and Secrets
Rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️.5/5
I’m not going to lie—I picked this book up because the cover was beautiful and the premise sounded intriguing. And as someone who actually spent my first two years of undergrad as an archaeology major, the archaeological mystery pretty much sealed the deal.
What I didn’t expect was how much I would love everything else. Michelle Griep is a new-to-me author, and this book had so many layers woven together beautifully.
Eva and our archaeologist MMC were childhood friends, and Eva had been in love with him—until he disappeared from her life without an explanation or even a goodbye. Years later, circumstances bring them together again when she needs his expertise to determine whether the Roman relics being discovered on her family’s property might actually be valuable. And she desperately needs them to be. Her family has fallen on difficult times, her father is gone, and Eva is trying to save what remains of their home and future. But someone very much does not want those artifacts discovered.
So yes, there is an archaeological mystery. There is danger. There are secrets. There is sabotage. But then there are these two.
Eva is fiery, stubborn and wonderfully spirited, and rather than being intimidated by her, he meets her fire with humor and this mischievousness that I absolutely loved. Their banter was one of my favorite parts of the book.
And apparently all it takes is one Guy Fawkes celebration and a hot-air-balloon incident for a man to start looking at his childhood friend a little differently. 😂 Suddenly he’s dreaming about her, noticing her, and realizing that perhaps what he feels for Eva isn’t quite as safely buried in the past as he thought.
Hello, yearning. I’ve been expecting you.
But what really elevated this story for me was the faith element. It isn’t dropped into the story occasionally to remind us we’re reading Christian fiction. Faith is woven naturally into how these characters understand their lives, their guilt, their choices and the things they cannot control.
Eva carries an enormous amount of guilt. She has convinced herself that she bears responsibility for tragedies that have touched her family—her mother’s death, her sister’s blindness, even the circumstances surrounding her father’s death. Watching her confront that burden became just as important to me as discovering what was buried beneath the ground.
And underneath all of it is this beautiful reminder about God’s timing.
Some things cannot be forced. Some answers don’t come when we want them. Some things we think we’ve lost may simply not have reached their appointed time yet. And considering this is also a story about uncovering things that have been buried for centuries, I thought that theme worked particularly beautifully.
I came for the gorgeous cover and the archaeology. I stayed for the mystery, the faith, the banter, the childhood-friends-to-something-more romance, the mischievous archaeologist, the yearning, and a story with far more emotional depth than I expected. This one was such a lovely surprise. ❤️
#OfSilverAndSecrets #MichelleGriep
Wonderful book link-ups I enjoy—
It’s Monday, What Are You Reading? at The Book Date
Top Ten Tuesday at The Artsy Reader
The Friday56 at My Heads if Full of Books
Book Beginnings on Friday at Rose City Reader
First Line Friday at Reading in My Superpower
Stacking the Shelves at Reading Reality
Sunday Post at Caffeinated Book Reviewer
Monthly Round-Up at Feed Your Fiction Addiction
Foodies Read at Based on a True Story (monthly)
