Greetings from the Flipside - Rene Gutteridge and Cheryl McKay

Hope Landon has always loved creating greeting cards and making people laugh.  As far back as elementary school, when she rewrote a fellow student's "do you like me?" card, she has been affecting the people around her with her cards.  Now, she's about to get married and leave this small town of Poughkeepsie and find a way to live her dreams.  Instead, she's left at the altar and attacked in the parking lot, resulting in a coma, where she suddenly finds herself in the Big Apple anyway, but things don't seem quite right.

It took me a little while to get into the flow of this book.  The dual perspective of real life and Hope's fantasy life in the coma was just a little too weird for me at first.  Over time, I warmed up to it, and to the characters in the story.  It was fun to start to see the things from real life that were creeping into her dream life.  It was an interesting idea for a story, but it didn't leave any real impact on me.

I give the book 3 stars for originality and characters that kept me interested.

I received a copy of this book from the publishers, via NetGalley, in exchange for my honest review.

You can find Greetings from the Flipside HERE.
You can find Rene Gutteridge's website HERE.
You can find Cheryl McKay's website HERE.

An Accidental Life - Pamela Binnings Ewen

Rebecca and Peter are a happily-married, career-driven couple, content in their long work days with an agreement that this is not a marriage for children.  Peter works hard as a district attorney, moving his way up, and Rebecca has paid her dues to work towards becoming the first female partner in her law firm.  She has neither time nor desire to be a mother.  However, as she starts to suspect she's pregnant, she finds herself weighing her options and wondering whether their agreement to stay childless is as concrete as she originally thought.  Meanwhile, Peter has encountered a case that involves live births at an abortion clinic and he and the detective on the case are gathering evidence to bring the doctor to trial.  As Peter and Rebecca are both dealing with the idea of new lives, how will this affect their marriage, their careers, and their faith?

This was a hard book to read, but very well written.  The idea of late-term abortions, live births, and infants left to die is hard enough to read about in a fictional setting, but knowing that a lot of the situation was based on real research and was very real to life, made it that much harder to process mentally.  I had to take about a week off of reading altogether once I finished this book because it sat that heavily on my heart and on my mind.  The book did not take the idea of abortion lightly; although the book clearly came on the side of life being a precious gift from God, it was not harsh in its treatment of women who'd opted for the procedure.  Even as Peter and Rebecca worked through what a child might mean to their lives and their careers, it was vulnerable, and real, and not an easy decision.

I give this book 4 stars, not without reservation.  This was a tough book to read, and I don't think it's for everybody.  However, the fact that the author tackled this topic, and tackled it well, makes it stand out to me.

I received a copy of this book from the publisher, in exchange for my honest review.

You can find An Accidental Life HERE.
You can find the author's site HERE.

Invisible - by Ginny L. Yttrup

In Invisible, Ellyn, Sabina, Twila are all women struggling with issues that they think that nobody else can see.  Well, except maybe Ellyn, who thinks that the only thing people see when they look at her is her weight.  Sabina has come to Ellyn's town ostensibly to heal, but is she looking to be healed or merely trying to hide?  Twila has a gift from God that allows her to sense others struggles, but what about her own struggles with her father and how that relationship has manifested itself upon her life and health?  These three women are fighting separate battles, yet they find their paths and lives woven together and may find that helping each other leads to healing within their own lives.

I was eager to read a second book by Ginny L. Yttrup, and while the first book I read may have impacted me more deeply, this one did not disappoint.  The depth of the relationships and how the author weaves them together so seamlessly, so that each woman is integral in the healing of the other two was engaging and felt honest and vulnerable.  The individual characters are so deep and layered that they quickly become people that the reader will care about.  Ellyn's struggles with not only her weight, but with the voice in her head that tells her that she doesn't deserve more in life, is understandable.  Twila's insight into other people and her courage to face her fears knowing that she is created in the image of God is unexpected, refreshing, and adds depth to the story.  Sabina's own struggles with depression, even though she has her doctorate in psychology, gives her a base from which to help her friends, but it also makes her vulnerable, imperfect, and allows others to show her the love of God.

As in the first book I read, Ms. Yttrup uses a single author's quotes, in this case Saint Augustine, to open each chapter.  The quotes lend an extra weight of thoughtfulness to the story, and the continuity of a single voice gives a cohesion to the journey of the characters as they discover their need for God's healing.

Perhaps the strongest theme from this book that will stick with me can be echoed in a character's thought: "I don't have to be all things to all people.  I'm not the only person God will use in someone's life."  Each of the characters within this book, even the "minor" ones had a very real impact on the lives of those they touched.  It's a wise thought to keep with us as we interact with those in our own lives.

I give this book 4 stars.  It was well-written, with depth and insight that will continue to make me think.

You can find more about the author HERE.  (I certainly plan to keep up with her upcoming novels!)

I received a copy of this book via NetGalley from the publisher in exchange for my honest review.

Lost and Found - by Ginny Yttrup

Jenna Durand Bouvier has been under the influence of Brigitte Bouvier since her mother died and Brigitte stepped in to guide and shape Jenna to what Brigitte envisioned her to be.  Now that Jenna is married to Brigitte's son, Gerard, and living in her house, she finds that she is losing herself, to the point that when Brigitte suggests that Jenna's jawline is "too masculine," Jenna undergoes plastic surgery to try to please Brigitte's ideals.  However, when the surgery goes wrong and Jenna is left with a lingering infection, she withdraws from the public eye and begins to search even more for God's presence and His will for her life.  Sensing outside influences on Jenna that might bend her away from her plans for her daughter-in-law, Brigitte wields her considerable power to break Jenna and keep her in line.  Will Jenna be strong enough to thrive?  Or will she continue to bear what she considers to be her cross?

This book was intense.  Jenna's search for God and her true desire to seek Him and do what was pleasing to Him was inspiring.  I really hated Brigitte for what she was doing to Jenna, but wanted so badly for Jenna to overcome her situation.  Jenna's search and struggles are so relatable that I think every reader could find himself or herself in her shoes.  The overarching theme to Jenna's journey is "Therefore there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus."  Yet as I would imagine so many of us wonder, she says "The words play in my mind over and over.  I try to rest in their truth.  But the insistent accusations are hard to ignore.  Why can't I rest in truth?  Rest in my relationship with the One I know loves me most?"  Even as Jenna struggles to find her own way and peace with God, she can't help but encourage and strengthen the people around her.  She allows others, whom many would consider not in her class, to speak truth to her life, and she values them and their spiritual wisdom.

I feel that I can't do this review justice.  There is so much I loved about this book that I could go on and on and on.  I don't give many books 5 stars, but this one earned it.  The writing was good, the characters were deep, and the spiritual truths presented were challenging.  I even had to look up the author of the quotes presented at the head of each chapter, Jeanne Guyon, because there was such wisdom in her words.  I will definitely be looking to read other works from Ginny Yttrup, because Lost and Found is not a book that will be forgotten quickly.

I received this book from the publisher in exchange for my honest review.

Rooms - by James L. Rubart

Micah Taylor is an incredibly talented and wealthy software company owner in Seattle, or at least, that's what he is when he receives a letter from his Great Uncle Archie.  A great uncle who has been dead for several years, and whom Micah has, to his knowledge, never met.  Weirder still is that Archie has left Micah a house on the Oregon Coast, the same coast where as a child, Micah created both happy memories, and the worst memory of his life.  When he goes to Oregon to inspect the house, ostensibly to put it up for sale and to return to his life in Seattle, he finds the house to have been created to his exact taste and preferences.  He is drawn to the house, and even when strange things start to happen in the house, and his life seems to be shifting out of balance, his search for himself and God within him keep him going back and digging deeper to see what his life is meant to be.

This book was a bit strange for me; not necessarily the content - the idea of God working through a shifting house and an inexplicable timeline is not out of the realm of possibility, but it was just a tough story for me to get through.  Instead of being eager to see Micah change and grow and realize the path God had for him, I found myself irritated at Micah and his reluctance to seek the whole truth at each step.  I can't even pinpoint why the book didn't connect with me.  Maybe there were too many back and forths for the story's continuity, or maybe it felt like too many chances for Micah to pick the right one.  Micah's girlfriend Sarah confronts him with "God gives only two choices; hot and cold.  Living in a world of lukewarm gets you spit out," and yet Micah continues to waver between his two lives and separate worlds, trying to find a way to have both.

Overall, I give this book 3 stars.  I didn't find it to be a bad book, I just didn't think it a great book. Even still, we can take Micah's story as a lesson to not be lukewarm in our own lives, and to not try to live in two worlds of our own.

You can find the book and an excerpt HERE.

I received a copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for my honest review.