The Kindle title is not currently available for purchase

You've subscribed to ! We will preorder your items within 24 hours of when they become available. When new books are released, we'll charge your default payment method for the lowest price available during the pre-order period.

Update your device or payment method, cancel individual pre-orders or your subscription at
Your Memberships & Subscriptions

There was an error. We were unable to process your subscription due to an error. Please refresh and try again.

Follow the author

Jenny Lloyd

Follow

Leap the Wild Water: Book One of the Megan Jones trilogy Kindle Edition

by Jenny Lloyd (Author), Jenny Lloyd (Author) Format: Kindle Edition

90

See all formats and editions

Brother and sister, Megan and Morgan, scrape a living on a remote hill farm in the wilds of Wales. Megan hankers for marriage to her childhood sweetheart, Eli, but Megan isn’t the good woman he thinks she is. Megan doesn’t want to deceive him, but would he still want to marry her if he knew the truth?
Morgan has reasons of his own for preventing the marriage, not least his knowledge of the consequences of what he and Megan did, consequences which Megan knows nothing about.
Perhaps some secrets are best not told and it would be wiser to leave the past buried along with their mother, but conscience is a heavy burden to carry and truth the only thing to lighten the load.
Set in rural Mid Wales, two hundred years ago, Megan and Morgan will discover that both honesty and dishonesty can be a person’s undoing.

Print length

217 pages
Language

English
Sticky notes

On Kindle Scribe
Publication date

March 7, 2013
File size

3588 KB
Page Flip

Enabled
Word Wise

Enabled
Enhanced typesetting

Enabled
See all details

Report an issue with this product or seller

Product details

ASIN ‏ : ‎ B00BQVX7KM
Publisher ‏ : ‎ Jenny Lloyd (March 7, 2013)
Publication date ‏ : ‎ March 7, 2013
Language ‏ : ‎ English
File size ‏ : ‎ 3588 KB
Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Not Enabled
Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Sticky notes ‏ : ‎ On Kindle Scribe
Print length ‏ : ‎ 217 pages
Page numbers source ISBN ‏ : ‎ 1482600021

Customer Reviews:
90

Brief content visible, double tap to read full content.

Full content visible, double tap to read brief content.

Videos

Help others learn more about this product by uploading a video!

Upload your video

About the author

Follow authors to get new release updates, plus improved recommendations.

Jenny Lloyd

Brief content visible, double tap to read full content.

Full content visible, double tap to read brief content.

Discover more of the author’s books, see similar authors, read author blogs and more

Customer reviews

4.5 out of 5

90 global ratings

How customer reviews and ratings work

Sort reviews by

Top reviews from the United States

There was a problem filtering reviews right now. Please try again later.

J. C.

I absolutely loved it.

Reviewed in the United States on November 8, 2013

Verified Purchase

I absolutely loved this book. I took it out of the cardboard package and opened it to peek inside, and my husband thought it was so funny when I just sat there, fixated, and kept right on reading it. The first night I read until about 2:00 in the morning.

Jenny Lloyd has a way of making the characters so real that you find yourself feeling their emotions to the point where you will lie awake thinking about them. I loved the way she portrayed not only the main characters, but also the hypocritical, bigoted church people. And Megan's mother, oh my goodness. Just wait – you will want to kill that woman! I felt hopeful, angry, enraged, shattered, endeared and many other things. I had to keep reminding myself that it was only a story, although I do think the author was inspired by the travails of her ancestors. She definitely brought them to life in Leap the Wild Water.

The book is set in Wales in the 1800's and the countryside is vividly described. That said, I was amazed at how easy it was to read and there were only a few foreign terms I had to look up. The words I did have to get defined only added to the atmosphere of the tale and my knowledge of Wales. Many of the situations in Leap the Wild Water reminded me of early America and the way people behaved back then, though the story strongly depicts the Welsh way of life at the time.

Leap the Wild Water is one of those books that gets into your blood and becomes a part of you. I think it's a rare book that does this, a book that affects you on an emotional level and that you would be perfectly happy to read more than once. It was inspirational to me and I can't wait for the sequel.

One person found this helpful

Helpful

Kissablysweet1

Great Read

Reviewed in the United States on September 29, 2022

Megan has a past she doesn't want to relive. She'd be just as happy to have it all disappear. It's not that easy though. One other person knows about her secrets and wouldn't hesitate to use them as bargaining chips. The question is, will Megan give in to the blackmail or will she divulge the secrets herself?
This suspenseful book is well written and the characters well defined. It will keep you thinking throughout. I thought the secrets and the person wielding them was a wonderful twist on the story. Ms. Lloyd does a great job of keeping you interested and turning pages. This should be an auto buy author.

I didn't find any issues.

I gave this one 4 cheers out of 5 because it does drag a bit in spots. The author provided a copy of the book but I chose to review it.

Helpful

Beem Weeks

A Gorgeously Brilliant Novel

Reviewed in the United States on August 26, 2013

Verified Purchase

What indie author Jenny Lloyd has accomplished with the publication of Leap The Wild Water is nothing short of gorgeous brilliance. With both delicate and harsh brush strokes, Ms. Lloyd paints a moving and beautiful portrait of lives trying to be lived against an early 19th century Welsh backdrop. This is a time when women were considered little more than the property of fathers or husbands, given lives that left them anchored to the family home, preparing meals, doing the wash, with no hope of escape--especially for those without financial means.

Young Megan Jones seeks to break those confining chains of familial servitude by marrying the man with whom she has long been in love. Megan has secrets, though; secrets that could bring shame and shunning upon the woman and her family should news get around.

With wonderful description, Jenny Lloyd builds a tale of love and loss, of pregnancy outside of marriage in an era where such events were viewed through judgmental eyes, of hope and redemption, and the chance of a better life. But this is also a bleak story at times, sharing in the hopeless struggles women of the era often engaged in, usually ending up on the losing side.

Even Morgan Jones, the brother of Megan, fights a daily battle just to keep the family farm from failing, possibly forcing the Jones's into the streets.

This story is not a fast-pace ride; it is a steady rhythmic tale that captures the harsh living those who came before us were meant to endure. Leap The Wild Water is a fantastic example of solid storytelling, never once veering into that territory of the boring. This is well written and well researched, lending a taste of authenticity splashed across each and every page. I can and do recommend this novel to anybody who appreciates brilliant authors. Jenny Lloyd is certainly one of my new favorites.

2 people found this helpful

Helpful

Linda

A Beautiful, must read work of literature!

Reviewed in the United States on September 5, 2013

Verified Purchase

I have never been to the Welsh countryside. I was not born in a time when women were treated like posesessions, where men ruled with an iron will that answered only to god. Yet, after reading Leap the Wild Water, the vision of it all is so pristine in its clarity, that a part of me believes it all to be own memory. I was Morgan, trapped between a mother I knew in my head was wrong, but couldn't in my heart disobey. I was Megan, struggling for freedom, wanting more, bitter from having every chance of it stolen away by the only people she wanted to trust. I felt the duality of every character, every emotion, building to a crescendo and a pace at the end with Morgan's feet, that was like a drum of anticipation beating in the background. I even found myself book-noting on a regular basis, something I normally don't do, so I could reread what was a sentence or paragraph from every chapter, just to relive each moment of purely eloquent writing.
In my humble opinion, you read good books, but you live great ones. This, was a truly great book. This, was a life worth living.

2 people found this helpful

Helpful

Top reviews from other countries

Chirasambwa

Excellent read

Reviewed in Germany on October 17, 2016

Verified Purchase

This was a really good read. It plays at a time when women were dominated by men, and how this must have felt. Great description of characters, most with personality disorders, but very believable for the times. I had nothing to do last week-end and got stuck with this book which I really enjoyed. Just bought the sequel. For anyone who loves good, not kitschy historical fiction.

Megan Denby, Author of A Thistle in the Mist

An Astonishing Debut Effort

Reviewed in Canada on June 11, 2014

Verified Purchase

Ms. Lloyd weaves a poignant tale of family with a beauty and grace that takes your breath away. We are taken into the minds of sister and brother, Megan and Morgan, and without being consciously aware, the reader feels sympathy to both, drawn in by the skillful depth of their characters. Leap the Wild Water transports the reader to a different time, letting us feel the rush of the water, the wind in our hair, the riotous colours of vegetation on a Welsh mountain, the harsh reality of child abuse and the hopelessness of just being free, as a woman, in an unforgiving time. As the rapids roar in the background, the reader feels as though they are floating down a meandering river of stunning lyrical prose. This story touched my heart and will stay with me for a very long time. I look forward to book two.

Jan Ruth

Emotive and Compelling

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on February 9, 2021

Verified Purchase

Set in nineteenth century Wales, Leap The Wild Water is a vivid portrayal not only of the struggles of women in those times, but of my home landscape too. I often come across derelict homesteads, farmhouses and animal enclosures of overgrown tumbledown stone, and one can’t help wondering about those past times. Jenny Lloyd brings all of this alive with her series, The Megan Jones Trilogy. The storyline is simple and yet the narrative is all the more powerful for this. A child out of wedlock was of course a heinous sin for women and the injustice of Megan’s predicament weaves a fascinating picture of those times. The fear and power of the church was the divine ruler, and as a result the cruelty imposed upon women was quite extraordinary. A beautifully written book with accurate detailing and stunning observations of the countryside.
The story continues in Where the Wind Blows and The Calling of the Raven. Sequels can be a mistake but there is plenty of meat on the bones of this one; and the story picks up from book one with a seamless continuity. And a serious message develops through these books; that of the oppression of women in the nineteenth century, and it is vividly portrayed through the eyes of Megan, now happily married to Eli. This was a time when the choices for women were limited to tending the needs of men and the land, so marriage to a rich farmer seemed a good idea at the time… But then news of Megan’s child, Fortune, whom she had out of wedlock and is in the care of her brother, slowly bubbles to the surface and the God-fearing community are up in arms, despite a brave effort by Morgan, to keep the situation under control. Eli turns nasty and straight into the arms of the dairy-maid, leaving Megan trapped in an unhappy household as little more than a domestic slave. And then in the third and final part, poor Megan is under scrutiny again for the murder of Eli.
From the cruel, narrow-minded control of the church to the truth of love, friendship and honour, the author weaves a skilful story of life in nineteenth century Wales. The restrained descriptions of the countryside, the healing hedgerow flowers and the strong influence of the seasons makes a wonderful background to this carefully plotted, often shocking tale. I could hear the larks and the rush of water. I could smell the markets, the honeysuckle, and the wet soil, and I could smell the fear as Megan’s fate drew to a chilling conclusion.

2 people found this helpful

Sylvia Valevicius

A Winner!

Reviewed in Canada on November 23, 2013

Verified Purchase

Strong characters (I embodied each one!) universal conflict & landscape a trip for the senses. I want a sequel! #writingtalent

C. Johnson C. Eng

A heartfelt, evocative and beautifully engaging story of harsh times

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on August 18, 2013

Verified Purchase

History is beset with inequalities of all kinds, far too many of which still blight the world. Cruelly common, the subservience of women was an ingrained feature of even purportedly libertarian countries such as Britain well into living memory, and even now not wholly eradicated. The more so where sex outside of marriage was concerned.

Much unhappiness, misery and indeed loss of life followed such injustice. Although invariably bringing suffering, it must have been particularly hard to bear in the remoteness of the Welsh hill-farming communities of the nineteenth century. Conditions there were harsh at best, and only made tenable by the support the people gave one another. It was support at a price, though, especially where chapel held sway over church.

This clearly well-researched and tightly plotted tale evokes a poignantly and exquisitely immediate feel for the austere yet majestic Welsh mountain landscape, deftly painted against its often bleak clime. Jenny Lloyd does it, though, with an eye for authentic detail and a love of the land's striking beauty. She also does it with compassion, with a genuine and balanced sensitivity to the predicament within which both the men and woman of her sad tale find themselves trapped. Sad, but also inspirational.

Be warned, however, for this story moves at a pace suited to the grinding toil and slow seasons of the land, a time well before the mad, hectic pace to which we're now more accustomed. It's also told in a style typified by the works of that time. It reminded me of Thomas Hardy's `Tess of the d'Urbervilles', in theme and approach, with a style reminiscent of many Victorian novels, where more leisure and less economy with words is shown. This is more an observation than a criticism, for there is a sharp, modern edge there; but in the sentiments, not the delivery.

Regardless of its slow pace, and perhaps even because of it, the reader will steadily find themselves deeply immersed in a tale alternately seen through the eyes of a brother and sister, of Morgan and Megan. Both these main characters are well drawn and convincingly real, each believably rendered as people of their time and place. The dialogue is natural and plausible, the Welsh intonation soon being heard almost in the reader's own ears.

At heart the tale is one of human fallibility set within a stoutly intolerant society, one where rumour can conspire with religious dogma to carry far greater and more immediate weight than human compassion and humility. It's a world where cruel conditions can sour the blood of families, turning mother against daughter against brother, as much as neighbour against neighbour. It's a world ruled by the peremptory and immediate retribution of the chapel, using public humiliation from the pulpit to exact terrible retribution.

The story should really have felt oppressive, but didn't. A measure of the author, who carefully weaves in enough of a glimmer of hope, enough to keep the reader's confidence, and so eventually delivers a well-heightened and gripping climax.

This is a commendable debut novel from a very promising new author, one to be taken seriously as both a worthy teller of fine tales and as a creditable creator of historical fiction. So many attempts at the genre get only as far as putting modern characters in period costume, whereas Jenny Lloyd has seriously managed to place her characters within the strictures and morals of the society in which they lived. Not an easy thing to achieve, for it requires extensive, careful and intelligent research along with a genuine passion for the subject.

A book well worth reading, and well worth keeping an eye out for its sequel.