I was initially going to give 3 stars (3.5 stars rounded down), but I just couldn’t bring myself to do it. It really is better than just 3, so 4 it is!
This is the 3rd installment of the series The Witches of Tanglewood. Almost the entire narrative follows the anchor child named Natalie of the goddess Nat as she attempts to retrieve Nat from a book housing all the past goddesses’ stories. He is overcome with grief over a tragedy that apparently took place in the second book (I’m trying not to include spoilers, but it’s pretty clear right away what happened). I’ll be completely upfront and say that after reading the first book, I wasn’t really interested in reading the 2nd, so I skipped straight to this ARC for review. The beginning and end of the book are fabulous. The ending is particularly well-done and left me with warm fuzzies for days.
I have to say, though, that the middle of the book is kind of… long. At one point I actually annotated on my kindle that it “felt like it was dragging on” and that “although the descriptions of faraway places and times were interesting, there’s not much of a plot so far. She’s just getting aimlessly shuffled from one time period to another.”
That said, Rene’s writing is excellent. This would be an excellent choice for the upper middle grade to YA crowd, especially if there is interest in historical time periods. I received a free ARC ebook through LibraryThing’s early reviewers program. All opinions are my own. ( )

Goddess Stories by Michelle Rene: an early reader’s review
I did not know when I started that this was the third book in a series, and the beginning felt a little sketchy, but once I got into the meat of the story, I enjoyed the action and the “world tour”. Some of the details were engaging, but at times, I felt a little glossed over. Because this was the third in the series, the climax left me feeling abandoned as other characters just seemed to appear out of the woodwork and the intended emotional impact was lost on me. This was probably not the fault of the author, rather it should be mentioned that this is not a stand alone novel. ( )

I loved how this story went through so many different timelines with their own characters. All the characters were unique. The plot was unique. Nothing in this story could be anticipated. I was sorry when the story ended. I highly recommend this book. ( )