ARC Review: The House on Mulberry Street by Jeannie Chin

Between helping at her family’s inn and teaching painting, Elizabeth Wu has put her dream of being an artist on the back burner. But her plan to launch an arts festival will boost the local Blue Cedar Falls arts scene and give her a showcase for her own work. If only she can get the town council on board. At least she can rely on her dependable best friend Graham to support her. Except lately, he hasn’t been acting like his old self, and she has no idea why.

Graham Lewis has been secretly in love with Elizabeth forever, but it’s past time that he faces the cold, hard truth: vivacious, amazing Elizabeth will never see him as anything but a platonic pal. He’s going to help her get the festival off the ground, but after that he needs to forget his one-sided crush. Until one impulsive kiss changes everything. Can they really rebuild their entire relationship—and the festival—from the ground up? Or will it all come crashing down?

We've all been waiting for Elizabeth's story. If you've read the prior books you will have to wonder what kind of person Elizabeth really is. Not that the other books gave too much away but they gave you enough that you wanted, no needed, to know more. The funny part is that as I read the story my opinion changed with almost every chapter. It's why I love reading so much. 

You start off thinking Elizabeth is younger than what she is. Or at least I did. I kind of thought she was closer to twenty then thirty. I do admit at first, I was a bit shocked. It might have been mentioned in her sister's books, but I missed it. I think why I thought she was younger is because of how she acted and felt. 

I learned a lot about her in this book. Some I liked other times she made me want to sit her down and have a talk with her. But one of the things that I like the most about her was just how good of a person she is. There is more to her then what you think you know. Layers always makes me happy. 

I also liked Graham too.  He's the sweetest guy you'll ever meet. He works hard and at times is very misunderstood by those around him. But never by Elizabeth. She saw him for what and who he was all put for that one thing. She never really realized how much he loved her. I didn't blame her for that. When you love having someone in your life you don't want to take a chance on anything happening that would ruin that. I would mentioned that these two planned no matter what to be best friends I'm not sure how that would have worked out for them if they found other people to love. 

For the most part I really enjoyed this story. I did wonder why everyone held one bad deed against her. At times I wanted to yell at them. But other than that, I liked how they both decided to work on themselves. You can quickly see that these two are meant for each other and just work. I really enjoyed being part of their story. 

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