**Blog Tour Review & Giveaway ~ Bird After Bird ~ Leslea Tash**

Welcome to my stop on the blog tour for Leslea Tash's Bird After Bird. My stop includes all the pertinent details for the book, my review, and a giveaway.

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Bird After Bird by Leslea Tash

Release Date: April 7, 2014

Genre: Contemporary Romance
Source: I received an ecopy in exchange for an honest review
Rating: 4.5 Bookworms

Synopsis

Dear Birdy, Princess Birdzilla von MuffinStuff, Keeper of Dreams, Love of our Fine Feathered Friends, queen of my life and light of my world, I hope this letter finds you well. If you are reading this then I am gone, and sweetheart, I am so sorry.

Chi-town professional Wren Riley is 25 and a rising star in the business world. She can eat a man alive and laugh about it to her girlfriends in seconds flat--and she does, on the regular. Behind the power suits and the flashing, flirty eyes,  however, Wren has a secret, vulnerable side. Following a devastating loss and the discovery of a bird journal she and her father made together years before, Wren sets out to seek peace, closure, and something she just can't name. Is that something tied to the little paper cranes she keeps finding along the way?

Laurence Byrd grew up a lanky Hoosier kid with the good/bad fortune of having the same name as the state's perennial basketball legend. With a better affinity for dogs than sports or school, he ends up in the Army instead of the Chicago art school of his dreams. Still, his service to our country is something he can be proud of--until an argument with the girl who means the world to him results in a series of events that blows his life apart. With no one left to understand him, black sheep Laurie pours out his heart into letters and drawings he never intends to send--then he folds them into paper cranes that he leaves behind like messages in little winged bottles. He never dreams someone might be finding them.

God damn it, Sylvia, for a few moments I tricked myself into feeling really alive. I cut it off before anyone got hurt, but just for a moment or two, I really thought I might feel something again--something like trust. Something like love. Not the kind of love we had, but something new. Something like hope.

Spoiler alert: Wren and Laurie are going to meet. And when they do, their lives are never going to be the same.

Bird After Bird is beautifully written. It is a tender and sweet tale about two bird lovers finding themselves and each other.

"You know all those birding trips we took, where we got out of town and bumped up our life list? You remember those times when we ended up lost, took a wrong turn, and still ended up where we were meant to be? Kid, that's where you are, I think. I think you're trying, but..."

Wren Riley spent one incredible summer with her dad, searching for birds and making new memories following the death of her mom. She then spent ten years doing all she could to make her dad proud - at least on paper. Following another devastating loss, she's back home to deal with some things and one of those 'things' is the journal she and her dad made that one summer. Wren then embarks on a soul-searching journey as she tries to follow her dad's advice and find the real Wren. And along the way, she finds Laurie Byrd.

Laurence 'Laurie' Byrd has more than a few demons. Having been raised by a mother who was never happy with who he was, he has a few issues. He's also an Army vet who saw and lost things in war on both sides - the home front and the battlefield. Laurie has been ghosting through life since his return. When he meets Wren, he feels something - like being alive again. So he sets out on a journey of his own.

Wren is a heroine I could identify with in that she worked very hard but wasn't following her passion. She was trying so hard to be enough but she wasn't happy doing it. Laurie's character resonated with me because of his feelings of not measuring up. It was such a joy to see these two help one another realize that neither one of them should be wasting time chasing paper birds. That's a lesson that resonated with me as well.

I adore this story. It's told in dual POV and having a front row seat to both Wren's and Laurie's journeys was fascinating. Ms. Tash clearly loves these characters and shares their story with such emotion and tenderness, it made me love them all the more. The fact that Wren and Laurie both have 'bird' names that correlate to the title was clever. There are many references to this throughout the story and Ms. Tash tied it all together with the birds brilliantly.

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Leslea Tash is a journalist-turned-novelist, an avid bird nerd and the happily married mom of four. She has been a professional writer for many years. This is her first romance novel.

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