Forever and Forever: The Courtship of Henry Longfellow and Fanny Appleton by Josi S. Kilpack

I am always so excited when Shadow Mountain comes out with a new proper romance! I haven’t read one that I’ve been disappointed with! All of them have been fantastic. The newest release is called Forever and Forever: The Courtship of Henry Longfellow and Fanny Appleton by Josi S. Kilpack. Others call the story the 7 year courtship of Henry Longfellow and Fanny Appleton.  Recently I have loved reading historical fiction novels as I have mentioned in some of my book reviews this year. I didn’t know a lot about Henry Longfellow, I have read a few of his poems, but I did have to look up to remember which poems he wrote. He wrote the poem about Paul Revere’s ride, and a few other well known poem such as The Bridge.  

Forever and Forever: The Courtship of Henry Longfellow and Fanny Appleton by Josi S. Kilpack

Book Description:

My Review:

The book starts in Europe when both Fanny Appleton and her family and Henry Longfellow are touring Europe.  Henry’s wife has recently died and he had to send her back to America until he could come back for her burial. He is grieving and is sad about the loss of his only child and wife. The story goes on where he meets the Appleton family and becomes good friends with Fanny, her brother and father and sister. He spends a good amount of time with them in Switzerland and then must leave to go home. When he leaves he realizes how much he likes Fanny, her love of language and literature and strong willed person she is.  Fanny admirers him also, but wouldn’t really consider a relationship with him because he is at least 10 years her senior. She only being 18 and him being in his late twenties and of a lower class she looks to him as a friend a mentor. She gets back to Boston and Henry finds the Appleton family again and is very interested in courting Fanny, in fact he so interested in that he actually proposes to her. She, being shocked avoids him.  He realizes he

The story is sometimes hard to read, not really, but you wonder when her heart will ever change, and when she will realize she is right for him.   You hope it will finally be the time for them to fall in love but then realized that the timing still isn’t right.  It was almost painful the issues that they had as they were trying to come together.  I kept thinking to myself, “are you kidding me, whey did you do that Henry, how is she supposed to fall in love with you now?” or “Come on Fanny, he loves you so much, stop being so hard headed and marry the man!”  Henry was definitely persistent, but I love that it showed that he actually had to go find himself and who he was, and turn his life over to the will of God.  She too, had to do the same.  Find herself and who she was before she could commit to a relationship with a man who was a little older than her, and who had already been married. The sweet story ends beautifully but I would very much recommend reading more about the history of their relationship. At the back of the book she goes through and tells a lot about their after story. Which is very interesting. I really enjoyed this book and would recommend it to anyone for a great story, but also someone that might want to know a little bit more about Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and his wife Fanny.  It is clean, and sweet and very well written. I think she did a very good job trying to keep most of the story true, but a lot of the history isn’t complete, and so she had to put in a few of her own things, which I think she didn’t excellent job in doing so.