Dear Henry, Love Edith - Becca Kinzer

 

In search of adventure and a new start, Edith finds herself staying in the upstairs of what she believes to be a disabled old man's house.  Meanwhile, the homeowner, Henry, is under the impression that an elderly widow, who's a retired nurse, is occupying his upstairs apartment.  Through a series of letters and unrelated interactions, they find themselves drawn to two separate people, for very different reasons, without knowing it's the same person.  When they do finally "meet," how will they reconcile their impressions and their wildly different visions for their futures?

In the end, this book turned out cute, but in the beginning I mostly found myself wishing for an extended version of the mistaken identities and written communication.  Once they found out the truth, the book took several rabbit trails with a variety of plots and more miscommunication that were less unique.  The twists seemed to cloud what could have been a very strong message from the story; both Edith and Henry needed to find that what they thought was God's calling could end up different than they originally thought, and through their journey find that they were loved and cherished.  The journey to those realizations is one that many readers likely find themselves taking.

I give this book 3 stars; I enjoyed the initial premise and the concluding wrap-up, it just got too messy for me in the middle.

You can find Dear Henry, Love Edith HERE.
You can find the author HERE.

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

Sea Glass Castle - T.I.Lowe

In this third installment of the Carolina Coast series, the story centers around Sophia Prescott, ex-wife of a pro football player, and now single mom living back in Sunset Cove with her best friends, the Sand Queens.  As she works to distance herself from her highly publicized divorce, and tries to find a new normal, she encounters Dr. Weston Sawyer, who is also trying to heal from his past.  Can they form a friendship to help each other re-calibrate their lives?  Maybe if they can get past all of their arguments.

This was probably my favorite of this trilogy.  I felt like the characters had really developed, and Sophia and Wes's stories were tragic, without being overly dramatic.  Their grief was different enough to provide comfort for each other, while giving them the kind of empathy necessary for healing. 

I loved that the couples from the first two books still played heavily into this story, making their group of friends wider and ever more protective of each other.  I would love to have more stories that centered around this trio of couples, their lives, and their friendships.

I give this book 4 stars.  I really enjoyed this series as a whole, and I would recommend reading them in order.

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

You can find Sea Glass Castle HERE.
You can find the author HERE.

The Saturday Night Supper Club - Carla Laureano

Rachel Bishop just wants to be left alone in her restaurant kitchen, and to have her food speak for itself.  However, when a mean-spirited review, an essay, and a misconstrued interview turn public opinion against her, she is forced out by her partners, and left floundering for a new direction in her career and life.  Alex Kanin, the author of the essay that led to the public backlash, feels guilty for the demise of her career, and works with Rachel to come up with a fresh idea to find her place in the restaurant world, and thus is born The Saturday Night Supper Club.

I was really drawn to this book by the cover and that title (I've recently discovered that I apparently have a favorite sub-sub-genre - books about food, and restaurants, and bakeries).  And while I enjoyed the book, and the characters, it fell a little short for me. I was hoping for a lot more to do with the actual "Saturday Night Supper Club," but instead, there were only 2 official events, even though they talked about making it the event nobody would want to miss, and how much they could charge for attendance.  That sort of draw never materialized.  The characters were full of interesting hints of backstories...almost too much.  Every character seemed to have issues they were working through that were affecting their relationships, yet there wasn't enough time in this book to get through them all.  It does appear that this will be a series, so I guess we'll just hope that we learn more about each of the main characters eventually.

I give this book 3 stars.  I hope that if the series continues the characters will settle into themselves and their stories will feel more cohesive.  I also hope for more food scenes. :)

You can find The Saturday Night Supper Club HERE.
You can find the author's website HERE.

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

Rescue Team - by Candace Calvert

Kate Callison has been running from her past for years, never staying in one place for long.  10 hospitals in 6 years, with the latest resting point being at Austin Grace Hospital as their interim Emergency Department Director.  While she hopes to make this stop permanent, she has some big shoes to fill of the previous ER Director who went missing six months ago.  In addition to Sunni's disappearance, the ER has been plagued with issues and the team Kate has stepped into isn't sure she's the one to help solve their problems.  The issues she's dealing with are stirring up Kate's own troubles, and while she's drawn to Wes Tanner, a member of the area's search and rescue team, she continues to insist she doesn't need rescuing.  Can Kate work with her team to get the hospital out of the media's hot water?  Can she reveal her past to Wes?  Can she find her own healing?

This book drew me in, and I found myself liking it more than I expected to.  Kate presents such a tragic figure of one who feels like her past is so unforgivable that she would rather run from it and try to hide it than to try to work through it for healing.  She keeps everyone at arm's length, certain that they would cast stones if they knew what she'd done.  Wes Tanner was a great love interest, having his own past to work through - a past that was definitely at odds with Kate's.  Although he had it in him to want to rescue everyone, he wasn't over-the-top in his interactions with Kate - he fell for her genuinely, and not for her unaccepted need to be rescued.  

There were, I felt, some inconsistencies within the story's characters - for instance, could a nurse really change jobs 10 times in 6 years?  Wouldn't that look sketchy on a resume?  But for the most part, it didn't affect the story enough to detract from it, it just added to the sense that Kate wasn't going to be able to settle down until she actually dealt with her past.  

I loved that there were no "perfect" characters within this novel.  Even those who were so busy helping others were dealing with their own messes, and nobody really pretended to be perfect.  

Overall, I give this book 3.5 stars.  The focus of the book is really on Kate's path to healing, but the surrounding stories and characters help to get her there without getting in the way of her story.

You can find Rescue Team, and the first book in the Grace Medical series, Trauma Plan, HERE and HERE. (While Rescue Team is the second in the series, it stood well on its own, and appears to maybe have only a slight character carry-over.

You can find the author's website HERE. Her background as an ER nurse added a very real-life feel to this book.  I plan to look into some of her other books!

There is a Q&A from Tyndale with the author HERE.

I received a copy of this book from Tyndale House Publishers, in exchange for my honest review.

Wings of Glass - by Gina Holmes

Penny Carson is swept away at the tender age of 17, by a man who manages to sound more possessive than her father.  Trent Taylor is not only possessive and intense, but quickly isolates Penny and becomes abusive.  Penny not only thinks begins to fear that escape isn’t possible, she can’t bring herself to want to leave Trent.  Until she finds new friends, Trent promises to change but doesn’t, and a baby enters the picture.  If Penny can’t stand up to Trent for herself, can she do it for their son?  And can Trent change, or will it take more than promises to fix what’s broken in this family?

Written as a letter to her son, Manny, Wings of Glass is disturbing in that the reader sees not only the abuse that occurs, but the psychological toll that the abuse and lifestyle has taken on the writer.  It’s a difficult book to read, but clearly shows the emotional turmoil that women stuck in abusive relationships endure.  Despite the content, the writing engaged me: I was frustrated at Penny’s refusal to leave, not taken in by Trent’s promise to change, and cheering her friends who were trying to help.  As with real abusive relationships, I’m sure, however, it had to be Penny’s choice.  Penny had to wrestle through what it meant to be a daughter of God, and whether divorce and separation was better or worse in His sight than being stuck in an abusive relationship.

Overall, I think this was a well-written book, but I don’t think I can say that I enjoyed it.  I’m not sure to whom I would recommend it, as I think it would be a hard read for anyone, and worse if you had actually endured this type of relationship.  Perhaps it could serve as encouragement for people to watch out for their friends and to help where possible should there be signs of abuse.

I give this book 3 stars.

You can find the author's website HERE, and she's doing a giveaway of a signed copy of this book now!

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

Abducted - by Janice Cantore

Carly Edwards and Joe King are police partners, on the graveyards patrol shift, when they get the call that Joe's wife and infant son have been admitted to the hospital.  While the doctors are still figuring out what's wrong with his wife, his son is Abducted directly from the pediatric wing of the hospital.  Even as Carly tries to solve the kidnapping, she's also dealing with her ex-husband and their relationship that was looking towards reconciliation, while another man in her life begins to show interest in her.  Additionally, her roommate seems to be distancing herself from Carly, and becomes agitated at Carly's new found Christianity.  How will Carly deal with all of these relationship issues while trying to help her partner get his family back together and to solve a crime that's bigger than any of them imagined?

Abducted is the second book in the Pacific Coast Justice series, written by Janice Cantore, a retired Long Beach police officer.  While this book can certainly stand alone as a novel, there were numerous references to incidents in Carly's past, as well as several other characters, that I can only imagine were detailed in the previous book.  This book would have flowed as a story, for me anyway, without so many of those references.  Most of the past crimes referenced didn't have a bearing on this story and only served as distractions instead of helping the story along.

The deepest part of the story was that of Carly and Nick's path of forgiveness and new beginnings.  It was refreshing to read a book where, even though hurtful mistakes had been made and forgiveness wasn't easy, or even understandable by most of the people who knew them, they worked at their relationship and prayed for renewal.

Other than the forgiveness storyline, I found the book just okay.  I give it 2.5 stars, rounded down to 2 stars.

You can find more from the author HERE.

I received a copy of this book for free from Tyndale publishers, in exchange for my honest review.

Coming Home - the Baxter Family Story Ends

Written as a conclusion to the tale of the Baxter family, Coming Home brings the Baxter clan back to Bloomington to celebrate John Baxter's 70th birthday.  Every son and every daughter has made plans to be there; they've all thought through what their father has meant to them over the years and written heartfelt letters to express their love to the leader of this family.  The family has dealt with their share of struggles and loss over the years, and have always managed to cling to God and to each other to get through.  Will another heartbreaking tragedy be enough to break them, or will they continue to rely on God's great faithfulness?

There was a time where I made a vow to myself to never pick up another Karen Kingsbury book again.  But the first series about the Baxter family - the Redemption Series still ranks as some of my favorite stories I've read.  I am a sucker for the Baxter family, and when I saw that this was to be either a "conclusion" or an "introduction" to their story, I couldn't resist.  I really wanted to see how their saga played out, but I wasn't sure that a book could serve as both an introduction and a conclusion.  I was right to wonder - it really can't.  The first 30% of the book was spent on catching the reader up on the Baxters' past, all six siblings' defining moments.  At first, I thought it was a nice refresher - after all, it has been several years since I read the original series.  I also knew that there had been several spin-off sets to the story that I had never read, so it was nice to catch up on who had how many kids and to find that Ashley and Landon were living in "the Baxter House" now.  But 30% is a large section of a book to be retelling events that have already been written about, yet one hundred pages (give or take, I was reading the e-version) is not really enough to tell a new reader all of the heartache, struggle, and victory that Kari, Ashley, Brooke, Erin, Luke, and Dayne have been through.  If a new reader picked up Coming Home, though, they would already know that Kari's husband dies, Hayley survivves, Luke marries Reagan, and other major plot points of the earlier series.

Once the book gets past the introductions though, the tears and grief hit hard and fast, and just keep on coming.  I will not pretend that I did not cry through a very large portion of this book.  I will absolutely not spoil the story for you, though, so I can't tell you anything about the tragedy.  You'll need to be like me, and with every point-of-view switch wonder: is this the person who won't make it to the next chapter?  I did hate that - I hated, from the perspective of feeling like I love this family, knowing that something major was going to strike one of them and not knowing who it would be.

Overall, I am glad I read this book.  I was glad to "hang out" with the Baxters just a little bit longer.  While I am very, very sad at the turn this book took, unlike some of the earlier books, I felt like there wasn't a moment where everything worked out just peachy for everybody.  My only wish was that less time had been spent rehashing the past and more time was spent on the present and future of the family.

I have a hard time rating this book, but I'll give it 4 stars, just because I love the Baxter family so darn much. And isn't a character, or twenty, that stays with you the mark of a good book?

Karen Kingsbury's site can be found HERE.
I don't know if I recommend the entire 22 books of this loose series, but I do highly recommend the first five books, starting with Redemption.