Pick up Castle on the Rise, and you might as well be picking up your very own ticket to Ireland. Kristy Cambron’s lyrical prose is the perfect vehicle for bringing the Emerald Isle to life—its atmosphere, its history, its sights, and its sounds. Including that swoony accent! I found myself equally invested in all three of the storylines that make up this novel, and I loved these characters, yet for some reason, I’m not quite able to gush about this one. And for the life of me, I can’t figure out why.

Perhaps a little bit of it has to do with following three different stories. Yes, they were connected. Yes, they were all easy to follow, but when I’m engrossed in a story, I like to stay right there, and I think the constant switching just broke that engagement a little. That’s not the story’s fault so much as my own total immersion reading style not being best suited to a three-way time-slip novel. Then again, that didn’t stop me from gushing about the first book in this series. And it certainly won’t stop me from reading the next.

Another possibility is that I didn’t quite get the sense of resolution I was looking for. In some ways it felt as though Ireland was the protagonist in this story, the other characters merely vessels through whom her story was told. But at the risk of giving a spoiler for people who don’t know their history, neither of the historical storylines ended with the freedom Ireland was looking for, and independence was already historical fact in the contemporary storyline. So in that sense, maybe it felt as though a key part of Ireland’s story was missing.

When it came to the three female protagonists, each had to reach a point where courage and resilience rose up in the face of disappointment and loss, but in many ways, I felt as though they’d only just grasped that in the final pages of their stories. As a reader, it was almost like someone taking away your dinner plate before you’d had a chance to eat those last few choice morsels. Then again, if this one is anything to go by, perhaps Laine and Cormac’s story will continue into the next book. And I certainly hope we get more of Quinn and Ellie from The Lost Castle, because there have been some developments in their story too.

Bottom line: regardless of what may or may not be preventing me from gushing about this one, it really is a gorgeous and engaging read, especially if you have any love for Ireland. Go back and reread my first paragraph to remind yourself of all the why.