Dear Mr. Knightley - by Katherine Reay

Due to a past where the only characters she could trust were fictional, Samantha Moore has developed a habit of retreating from reality when things get tough.  Her life is peppered with "she does not relate" comments and rejections. Now, faced with one last chance for a better future, she is not only pushed into a graduate major she doesn't want, but she is asked to write regular letters to her anonymous donor.  Can she find a way into this future, or will she continue to seek solace between the pages that have encompassed her past?

I wasn't sure how I was going to feel about this book; I liked the idea of Sam's character, who felt more comfortable with fictional characters than real people.  However, and I hesitate to even admit this on a book blog, I am not really a fan of Jane Austen, so most of the references to her works blew by me without adding anything to the book.  Once Sam began to be more of herself and reveal more of her past, she became much more interesting to me, and I became engrossed in her search for how to handle real relationships. While I saw the ending coming fairly early on, it didn't seem ridiculous that Sam did not.  I could really appreciate Sam's efforts to pull herself out of her fictional world and engage with the people in front of her, especially her self-realizations that she had hurt others by retreating.

I give this book 3 stars.  If I were a true Jane Austen fan, I think that my rating would not fall in the middle; I would either hate what the author had done with Austen's fictional characters, or I would love the story with the added understanding of the wealth of quotes and characters.

You can find Dear Mr. Knightley HERE.
You can find the author's website HERE.

I received a copy of this book from Thomas Nelson, as part of their BookSneeze program, in exchange for my honest review.

Sisterchicks Do the Hula - by Robin Jones Gunn

Hope and Laurie have been best friends since college - when they first made plans to travel to Hawaii together.  That plan fell through, but now, as they approach their 40th birthdays, they have reconnected and decide that now is the time to do it.  While enjoying the beautiful sites the islands have to offer, they also find themselves digging a little deeper into what they've been made for by the One who created such beauty for them to enjoy.

This was the first Sisterchicks book I've read.  It was light, it was enjoyable; Hope and Laurie weren't especially deep characters, but that's what I was expecting when I started the book.  I loved the idea of two friends turning 40 and taking a trip of a lifetime together to enjoy the trip their way.  It didn't quite ring true that Hope would be concerned about the price of a "bargain" sun tanning lotion, versus the "expensive" one, but then order room service over and over again without blinking an eye, but if you suspend some disbelief and just enjoy the trip with them, then the book is a fun read.  It certainly made me wish I could take a trip like this!

I give this book 3 stars.  It didn't exceed any expectations, but it was a light, easy read.  There's a time and a place for such a book, and this was a good time for one for me.

You can find Sisterchicks Do the Hula HERE.
You can find Robin Jones Gunn's website HERE.

Please consider rating my review:


I received a copy of this book from Waterbrook Multnomah, as part of their Blogging for Books program, in exchange for my honest review.

Stones for Bread - by Christa Parrish

Liesl McNamara's life revolves around bread and the bakery she has opened to follow her passion for the bread.  Her memories of her mother and grandmother are wrapped up in the bread and she has sacrificed her dreams of travel for the bread.  When it comes down to it, will the bread be more important than her relationships?  And how does she fit faith into her life when she's so consumed with the bread?

How do I express how much I loved this book?  While it's not very plot-driven, it is rich with characters and emotions and vulnerability.  It took me awhile to adjust to the switches between current story, back story, and church history, but in the end, it was woven together so well that it made the book full and deep.  The history of bread would not normally be exciting for me to read by itself, but as integral as it was to Liesl's life, it made me care about the bread.  So much so, that I actually felt guilty buying plain white sandwich bread while reading this book.  That's an absorbing story!

There were so many relationships tied into the story that revolved around bread, but they were intricate and deep and real.  At first, I thought that the half-sister story line was distracting, and then I thought maybe it just wasn't filled out enough, but in the end, the purpose of the story was for Liesl to find herself both in the story of the bread and who she was without it, and the family story line served its purpose to help her.

I did find the recipes for bread sprinkled throughout the story a bit distracting; I would have preferred that they maybe be in an appendix at the end, but it did give me an appreciation for how much of an art these breads are.

As with Christa Parrish's other novels, I loved this one, and I give it 5 stars.  I will continue to eagerly await her future releases!

You can find Stones for Bread HERE.
You can find Christa Parrish's site HERE.

I received a copy of this book from Thomas Nelson publishers, as part of their BookSneeze program, in exchange for my honest review.

A Talent for Trouble - by Jen Turano

Felicia Murdock thought she'd been called to marry a minister; until she attends his wedding to someone else.  She then comes to the realization that not only was this man not for her, but she had turned herself into someone else completely while she was trying to capture his heart.  Slowly, she rediscovers who she truly is, and finds that maybe being herself is what she's been meant to be all along.

I love this author, I loved this book, and I love this series.  I love the quirky, spunky, adventurous heroines, and I love the men strong enough to handle them.  I love that the women frequently find themselves in jail for all sorts of ridiculous reasons.  Even while these books are amusing and enjoyable, however, the author embeds truth throughout.  Felicia thought that being a pastor's wife, and turning herself into what she thought that looked like, was the only way to truly serve God and His people.  Yet, as she rediscovers herself as God made her, she finds that there is more than one way to look while serving God, and it doesn't mean what she thought it did.  I loved watching her see others' reactions as she cast off the disguise she'd put on during her infatuation with the pastor.  Even Felicia hadn't realized how much of her true self she had put aside to please others.

I give this book 4 stars.  I really hope the author continues this series, because I am not ready to be done with these characters.

You can find A Talent for Trouble HERE.
You can find the author's website HERE.
You can find my review of the first book, A Change of Fortune, HERE.
You can find my review of the second Book, A Most Peculiar Circumstance, HERE.

I received a copy of this e-book from Bethany House, via NetGalley, in exchange for my honest review.

Eyes Wide Open - by Ted Dekker

Christy and Austin are not your average 17-year-olds, but not for the reasons they think.  Neither one of them have memories of their childhoods before they met four years ago in an orphanage.  Now, at 17, they're each living on their own, with very few real connections to anybody other than each other.  One day, they stumble into a situation so strange that they can't even trust what they thought to be true about themselves or each other.

This was not the book for me.  I don't mind the occasional thriller novel, or a good mystery, but I do not enjoy psychological mind games; especially when the plot gets so twisted that even the reader can no longer tell what is real and what is delusion.  And in no scenario do I find a story that includes convincing a young girl that her worst self-image is not only true, but that she's uglier than she thinks, and then using horrific cosmetic surgery to alter her body, in no way do I think that's an enjoyable storyline.  No matter the lessons that she supposedly learns at the end, the ends did not justify the means in this story for me.

I give this book 2 stars.  It was not badly written, it was just not, in any way, the type of book I enjoy.  If you enjoyed Dekker's Showdown, then you may enjoy this.

You can find Eyes Wide Open HERE.
You can find Ted Dekker's site HERE.

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

Forever Friday - by Timothy Lewis

Adam Colby has discovered a photo album of postcards that hint at a lifelong romance between sender and receiver.  A romance so strong that he feels the need to know more, to find their secret to lasting love after divorce has left him hurt and disenfranchised.  As he wades into the depths of the love story between Huck and Gabe, perhaps he can not only find healing, but his second chance at finding his soul mate.

I was not wowed by this book; the comparisons to Nicholas Sparks books seem founded, and it was very reminiscent of The Notebook, so perhaps if that's what you enjoy, you may like this book more than I did.  I loved the idea of a 60-year-long romance, cemented by sending love poems from husband to wife every Friday.  I loved Huck's character - starting with her insistence that friends and family call her after a male literary character, all the way to her dialing 911 because a lady "needs" to get her hair done.  However, I wasn't in love with the rest of the book.  Even their love story fell a little flat to me; yes, they worked on sharing their secrets, and not letting the "Long Division" separate them, but there was no growth, no work on bettering each other or helping people around them.  They saw their housekeeper, Priscilla, as the daughter they'd never had, but there wasn't even any depth to that part of the story; the reader didn't get to see any affect on her life from having interacted with the Alexanders.  And the part of the story that fell flattest to me was the faith aspect; several times, the reader was told that Huck had a strong faith, and it kept her going, yet there were no examples of this faith, and it the only real "faith" discussed was her faith in her "guardian angel," Mister Jack.  Believing in an angel who supposedly predicts your future and saves you from harm is not a deep faith.

I enjoyed the writing, I enjoyed the characters of Gabe and Huck for what they were.  But there just wasn't enough to this book to make me love it.  I give it 3 stars.

You can find Forever Friday HERE.
You can find the author's website HERE.

Please consider rating my review:


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

Beloved - by Robin Lee Hatcher

Beloved is the third book in Robin Lee Hatcher's Where the Heart Lives series.  Dianna Brennan has been living in Idaho with her adoptive mother, waiting for her husband Tyson to be declared dead so that she may move on with her life and marry Brooke Calhoun.  However, on the evening of their engagement party, instead of being presented with a death certificate, Dianna is confronted with Tyson himself, not only alive, but desiring for Dianna to stand by his side as his wife during his campaign for Senator.  Can she pretend to be the happy, smiling wife required for a candidate's appearances?  Can she live in his home and continue to hate him?  Or will she be convinced that he's changed and allow her heart to be open to possibilities she'd thought gone forever?

When I requested this book, I didn't realize it was part of a series I'd read and reviewed before.  I read the first book Belonging, which focused on Dianna's sister, Felicia, and reviewed it here, but never read book 2, Betrayal, which follows the story of their brother, Hugh.  Even with not having the complete story to this point, this book read well as a standalone novel.  I just found myself wishing I knew what had happened to Dianna's siblings along the way.

Tyson Applegate had a lot of reasons to ask for forgiveness, and was determined to not only tell people he'd changed, but also to demonstrate that the change went deeper than appearances.  While he worked hard to show Dianna and his father his remorse, they were also forced to look within and examine their own hearts and motivations.  I enjoyed that, while all of the characters were flawed in their own way, the growth that occurred was neither quick nor easy.  Each character had to make their own decision whether they could actually change, or whether they would remain mired in the mistakes of their pasts.  As Diana remembered her adopted father asking her, "Do you want to be right...or would you rather be righteous?"

I enjoyed this book, and while I wish I had read book 2 as well, the characters and story in this book were enjoyable on their own.  I give this book 3.5 stars.

You can find Beloved HERE.
You can find the author's website HERE.

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