Book Review

Friends and Enemies by Terri Wangard

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Friends and Enemies is the first book in the Promise for Tomorrow series by Terri Wangard.

The story begins in 1943 and moves through 1944 and touches a bit of 1945. Heidi Wetzel lives in war-torn Germany. She moves to a rural farm to help care for evacuated children and has never been a supporter of National Socialism. She takes pleasure in passive resistance, but must exercise caution around neighbors who delight in reporting to the Gestapo.

Cadet Paul Braedel trains for the U.S. Army Air Force. As a navigator, he is sent to England with a crew that will fly a B-17.

Both Heidi and Paul experience loss during this difficult time in world history. Then Paul finds himself alone in Germany and he hears a gentle whisper, “Find Heidi”. Heidi had lived in America during her high school days and had known Paul during that time, but now he’s an enemy. How much will she risk to help him?

This story drew me in right from the beginning. I love history, especially when it is woven together with wonderful fictional characters. That brings history to life and implants it in my brain much deeper and stronger than any dry history textbook ever has. Friends and Enemies is a 527 page book, but it kept me turning pages and in just one week, I completed reading it.

I came to care deeply about both Heidi and Paul throughout the story and I felt their fears, shared their laughter and their tears in the experiences of life during war; war that touches every aspect of your life. Heidi and Paul will live in my memory for a long time.

Friends and Enemies was very well written and though war can never be without violence, pain and sorrow, Terri Wangard did an excellent job keeping the violence to a bare minimum. The story also taught lessons about what it’s like to live with war right in your own backyard.

I look forward to reading No Neutral Ground (Book Two) and Soar Like Eagles (Book Three) in the series.

If you enjoy reading historical fiction, I encourage you to pick up Friends and Enemies by Terri Wangard. You won’t be disappointed.

Unfolding by Jonathan Friesen

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I received a free copy of Unfolding by Jonathan Friesen in exchange for my honest review for BookLook Blogger.

Jonah has a heart of gold and he would like to be the guy who gets the girl, but Jonah has a physical deformity and suffers from debilitating epileptic seizures, while Stormi is beautiful and seems perfect, although there is something quite unusual about her as well — she seems to know things and many of the adults in Gullery are a bit intimidated by her.

Even though Jonah feels that he can never win Stormi’s love, Stormi prefers Jonah’s company over most other people’s. They seem to understand each other and are able to sympathize with each other.

Jonah has a job taking care of the one prisoner in the town jail but doesn’t know why the prisoner is in jail, and Stormi won’t go anywhere near the jail.

As the story moves along, Jonah and Stormi experience an adventure that reveals a secret that’s been kept for years in Gullery, a secret that could change everything.

You will care about Jonah and Stormi and find yourself routing for them for several different reasons.

Unfolding will keep you turning pages as you travel on the adventure with Jonah and Stormi, experiencing strange occurrences and finding the truth. You will want to turn pages to see if Jonah really can get the girl in the end.

Unfolding is a strange ride, and I did feel that the ending was a bit lacking, but all-in-all Unfolding by Jonathan Friesen is a good read.

A Portrait of Emily Price by Katherine Reay

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I received a complimentary copy of this book from BookLook Bloggers in order to write an honest review of the story.

Emily Price is an art restorer. She restores art that has been damaged by fire, water or that has become worn with age while harboring dreams of becoming an original artist, herself, one day. She travels to Atlanta to restore a mural in a home damaged by fire. That’s where she meets Chef Benito Vassallo, who is visiting Atlanta to reconnect with his brother and breathe new life into his aunt and uncle’s restaurant, Piccolo. Emily falls in love with Ben as she works with him to improve the appearance of Piccolo, and shocks everyone when she accepts his marriage proposal and follows him to Italy.

Once in Italy, Emily struggles to fit into Ben’s close-knit family and creates problems for some of Ben’s family members when she was only trying to help. She begins to wonder if she belongs in Italy and in Ben’s family.

The story was romantic and it was easy to be swept away on the wings of love with Emily when she spent time with Ben in Atlanta. However, when she follows Ben to Italy and struggles to fit into his tight-knit family I can relate to her feelings and I cheer for her to fight for her place in the family because she and Ben seem so right for one another. Besides, Ben’s father likes her and encourages her.

I love the relationship between Emily and Ben. It’s sweet and romantic and a little bit magical. I love the dialogues between these two.

Katherine Reay does an excellent job of showing the relationship problems in families; not just mixed cultural families. Yes, some of the issues Emily faces in Ben’s family in Italy has to do with their culture, but most of it has to do with the differences in personalities and in the things they choose to keep inside.

I also think Katherine did a lovely job of painting a picture of Italy for her readers. I loved the driving scenes.

The fact that this was a wonderfully realistic romantic story is what endears it to my heart. Ben and Emily have a deep love for one another but that does not exempt them from challenges in their relationship that could separate them.

To read the way that Katherine Reay chooses to deal with the issues that challenge Ben and Emily both startled me, bringing tears to my eyes, and gave me a warm heart and encouragement I can apply to my own relationships.

If you like romance stories, but prefer your romance more realistic and not of the “happily ever after” flavor, I encourage you to read A Portrait of Emily Price.

Unblemished by Sara Ella: Can I Just Say “Wow”?

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I received a complimentary copy of this book from BookLook Bloggers.

Unblemished by Sara Ella is a fantasy story about a young girl, Eilyana, in her seventeenth year of life. She has low self confidence due to a large red mark on her face and wishes she was invisible. However, there is a young man in her life that has been extremely kind and encouraging to her, and she is in love with him.

Tragedy strikes and Eliyana’s world begins to crumble. She runs out into the city at night, and that’s when she begins to see that her life isn’t exactly what she thought it was.

I am new to reading fantasy stories. I never really cared for them in the past, and Unblemished is one of two or three recent fantasy stories I have read.

Can I just say “wow”? This book is packed with so many things that make a great story. It has suspense, a couple of scenes are a little scary, and there is plenty of romance. I completely fell in love with a character named Ky. I was also frightened for Eliyana several times, but all of the romance in the story seemed so strong and sweet, and some of it came across as really pure.

Sara Ella did a fantastic job of creating characters that made me love and care for them, want to see them succeed, as well as some that made me hate them and want to see them destroyed, or at least defeated. There were a lot of characters and a lot of plot twists that moved the story along and kept me guessing at what was going to happen next. Ms. Ella certainly kept me riveted, to the point that I was always disappointed when I had to put the book down and wait to pick it up again the next day.

Unblemished certainly made me think about how easily we can become ensnared in things that are not for our good, or for anybody’s good, by the choices we make and in our actions. This is one of the rare books that continues to take up space in my mind as I continue to consider the characters and the things that happened to them, and that may yet happen to them.

Yes, Ms. Ella left an open ending, leaving me with lots of questions. This is the only thing I didn’t like about the story, although I will say, it wasn’t as much of a cliffhanger as some I’ve read. But I do so hope that she’s planning on writing another book to continue the lives of some of these characters.

If you are a fan of fantasy stories, I’m fairly certain you’ll enjoy this one.

Mr. Penumbra’s 24 Hour Bookstore by Robin Sloan

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Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore: A Novel by [Sloan, Robin]

Description

The Great Recession has shuffled Clay Jannon out of his life as a San Francisco Web-design drone—and serendipity, sheer curiosity, and the ability to climb a ladder like a monkey has landed him a new gig working the night shift at Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore. But after just a few days on the job, Clay begins to realize that this store is even more curious than the name suggests. There are only a few customers, but they come in repeatedly and never seem to actually buy anything, instead “checking out” impossibly obscure volumes from strange corners of the store, all according to some elaborate, long-standing arrangement with the gnomic Mr. Penumbra. The store must be a front for something larger, Clay concludes, and soon he’s embarked on a complex analysis of the customers’ behavior and roped his friends into helping to figure out just what’s going on. But once they bring their findings to Mr. Penumbra, it turns out the secrets extend far outside the walls of the bookstore.

My Thoughts

This is Robin Sloan’s first full length novel, and if you are a book lover, or you love to hang out in bookstores and/or libraries, this book is for you. Also, if you are a techie and/or Google lover, you will love this book.

The story is full of mystery and intrigue and fascinating characters. I found myself having a hard time putting the book down. This is a very unique story and it connects libraries and bookstores with current technology, as well as revealing some interesting historical facts about publishing.

Mr. Sloan wrote great descriptions that brought the places and the characters to life. I never felt the story dragging nor did I ever feel lost.

I thoroughly enjoyed the story because I liked the characters and wanted to see them solve the mystery. I also love history and enjoyed learning the history of a typing font. The story was filled with fascinating things both history as well as some futuristic ideas. I look forward to reading more from Robin Sloan.

Book Series Review

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Yes, today I am doing a review on a book series. It is an old series, but a good one. Years ago I read a couple of the books in the series and saw a movie that was based on one of the books, so this year I decided I wanted to read the entire series and see all of the movies based on the series. I recently finished reading the books but have not yet watched the movies.

The series is the  “Love Comes Softly” series by Janette Oke. There are eight books in the series. However, Janette Oke’s “A Prairie Legacy” series continues the stories of the characters from the “Love Comes Softly” series, and “A Prairie Legacy” has four books. Therefore, altogether there are twelve books.

I enjoyed each of the books, but my favorites are the original “Love Comes Softly” series. You see, Janette Oke didn’t plan to write a series when she wrote the first book “Love Comes Softly”. However, it sold so well and readers wanted more about the characters in the book, so Ms. Oke’s publisher encouraged her to create a series.

When she finished “Love Finds a Home”, the eighth book in the series, she decided she was finished and moved on to other books. However, again, readers asked her to continue the series. The characters from the “Love Comes Softly” series are truly realistic, and readers come to love and care about them quickly and easily from the very beginning. So, Ms. Oke wrote “A Prairie Legacy” series a few years after the original.

As I read the series, I could tell that some time had passed from Ms. Oke’s writing the “Love Comes Softly” series to writing “A Prairie Legacy” series. I found it harder to love the characters at first, and because Ms. Oke wrote the stories as time had progressed, as indeed it would have in real life, the issues the characters dealt with were more modern, which just seemed like a big jump to me, but in the reality of time, wasn’t. Ms. Oke is a wonderful writer who went on to write and cowrite many more wonderful stories.

Of course, Clark and Marty are my absolute favorites of this series and I love how Ms. Oke wrote so well of their aging throughout the series, but decided to end the series before their deaths. I’m sure I’m not the only reader/fan who is thankful for that.

Then there was Missie, Clark’s daughter to his first wife who had passed away. When she grew up and married and they decided to move far from Clark and Marty, they all had to adjust to the separation.

Missie had married a young man named Willie, and all through the book, “Love’s Long Journey”, he constantly shows his love and caring for her in such tender, touching ways. There is a dialog in the book that I just have to share because it melted my heart and convinced me that Missie had definitely married the right man:

Willie: . . . “I love ya. I’ve loved ya ever since ya were a little schoolgirl.”

Missie: “And you showed it by dunking my hair ribbons in an inkwell.”

Willie: “An carvin’ our initialls–”

Missie: “And putting a grasshopper in my lunch pail.”

Willie: “An’ tellin’ young Todd Culver thet I’d knock out his teeth iffen he didn’t leave my                   girl alone. An’ closin’ yer classroom window when it got stuck. An’ prayin’ fer ya                   every single day–that iffen God willed, ya’d learn to love me.”

Missie: “You did that?”

Willie: “I did.”

So, yes, “Love’s Long Journey” was another of my favorites in the series. Also, the last three books of the original eight. In “”Love’s Unfolding Dream”, Belinda meets a young man whose family has fallen on rough times. She finds the young man attractive and intriguing. Later in the book, they have a conversation that makes me feel in my heart that they are destined to be together. However, they both want to pursue other things, as they are still young. In the seventh book of the original eight, “Love Takes Wing”, Belinda has two or three young men interested in her, and I was afraid Ms. Oke was going to have Belinda end up with a different man. I felt tortured all through “Love Takes Wing”, and I don’t want to spoil anything for anyone, so you’ll have to read the series if you want to find know all of Belinda’s story and whether or not she ended up with that original boy from her childhood or someone else, and then you will know if I enjoyed the final book of the original eight, “Love Finds a Home”.

I concluded the reading of these two intertwined series by Janette Oke by reading “Janette Oke: A Heart for the Prairie” written by Ms. Oke’s daughter, Laurel Oke Logan. It is Ms. Oke’s life story and explains how she eventually became the wonderful writer that she still is today.

“Love Comes Softly” was published in July 1979 and was Janette Oke’s first book, and her most recent book “Where Hope Prevails” from the “Return to the Canadian West” series was released just last month.

 

Dauntless by Dina L. Sleiman

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Dauntless is the first book in the “Valiant Hearts” series by Dina L. Sleiman.  It is an historical fiction novel that includes adventure, danger and romance.

Born a Baron’s daughter, Lady Merry Ellison is now an enemy of the throne after her father’s failed assassination attempt upon the king.  Merry will go to any lengths to protect the orphaned children in her care.  The group becomes known as “The Ghosts of Farthingale Forest.”

Merry’s life becomes more challenging when an old friend finds her after thinking her dead for two years.

Ms. Sleiman did an excellent job creating characters that wind your care and your heart quickly.  Merry appears as a female Robin Hood, but her and her group are quite different.  As danger lurked around every corner, I found myself routing for Merry and her group.  Another situation arises that caused a dilemma for my heart and mind as I read and found it difficult to know who to route for in the romance department.

Ms. Sleiman did an excellent job of resolving the story line at the end without causing my heart to break for any one of my beloved characters.  I finished the book feeling happy for Merry and her group and satisfied that I had read a good book worthy of my time.

I recommend this story for anyone who loves to read about strong women, adventure, history and romance.  I look forward to digging into Book Two of the series, Chivalrous.

 

Mystery Mountain Four by Marie Grace

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I received a free eBook copy of Mystery Mountain Four by Marie Grace to review for BookLook Blogger.

Book Description

Marie Grace wows readers with the fourth novel in her Mystery Mountain series. In the small town of Raincroft, the bonds of love and family are stronger than all outside or dangerous influences and adventures while romance blossoms between two unlikely people. Through determination and strength, Grace’s engaging characters find the courage to overcome adversity.

I have not read the first three books in this series and therefore, I was not familiar with the characters or the setting and the author did not offer any background that would help a reader who didn’t read the previous books.

I think Marie Grace has some great story ideas.  She has many plot ideas and character ideas.  The problem I found was that there were too many characters and too many plots in this one book.  I know this is a continuation of three previous books but I think it would’ve worked better if she had separated some of the characters and plot lines into the separate books in the series.  I believe that would make the story easier to follow.

In addition, it would have given the author more time and space to create a solid setting with understandable description.  She also would have been able to put more time and detail into creating her characters so that they would be deeper and more enjoyable.

As it is, I felt like the story jumped around too much.  Also, there didn’t seem to be enough time spent on creating the conflicts in the stories and the author often switched back and forth between present and past tense.  A couple of her characters spoke a dialect that the author attempted to write, which I found distracting and annoying.  I also found contradictions in some of her characters that seemed out of place.  There were also some places where she switched point of view in the same paragraph or scene, even though she had page breaks and chapters.  The page breaks and chapters seemed to transition to a different location or story line.

In this book, out of the many characters that were part of the story, I felt like I only really got to know two of them fairly well and I found their romance cute but juvenile.

I believe Marie Grace has great ideas for a great series here, but I would highly recommend that she go back and break it apart and put fewer characters and conflicts into each story; to focus on not more than four main characters and maybe four conflicts per book.  I believe if she did that and really developed those four main characters and the conflicts, her stories would be much more readable and enjoyable.  I also suggest that she find an interesting way to include the information as to why a select few of the characters seem to have speech issues without trying to write their issues in their dialogue.

There didn’t seem to be a single connecting theme throughout the book either.  It seemed that there were many themes that Marie Grace addressed and there were times when the message(s) she wanted to get across came across preachy.  Also, I didn’t feel like there was any real resolution to any of the plot lines in the story by the end of the book, which was also disappointing.  I understand she wanted to have some loose ends to tease her readers with in hopes they would want to read the next book in the series, but with all of the plot lines she had, I think it would have left me feeling better about the book if one or two of the plot conflicts had come to clear resolution by the end of the book.

In conclusion, I like Marie Grace’s story line ideas and the characters I was able to get a grip on.  However, I found the book difficult to read and follow.  I would recommend this book to the Young Adult audience but feel it’s too juvenile for the adult audience written as it is.  If Marie Grace was to go back and do a bit of editing and break the story and flesh out her characters and add more meat to the conflicts for each book of the series, I believe it would be a much better, stronger series that would definitely be interesting and enjoyable for adults.  I see a lot of potential in these stories.

Kissed By a Cowboy by Debra Clopton

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I received a free ebook copy of this book to review for BookLook Blogger.

Cassidy Starr returns to the only place she has ever felt happy and loved in her life.  She has suffered too many broken relationships in her life and so decides to live a simple, peaceful life alone in Wishing Springs.  However, her neighbor, handsome cowboy, Jarrod Monahan, may challenge those plans.

This is the first book I have ever read by Debra Clopton, and it is evidently part of a series known as the “Four of Hearts Romance” series.  I have always enjoyed cowboy romances and this book did not disappoint me.  I love this story.  Ms. Clopton did an excellent job creating her characters.  Not only did I fall in love with and care about what happened to Cassidy and Jarrod, but all of the townspeople captured my interest and my heart as well.  The camaraderie between Jarrod and his brothers is an added pleasure to the story.

There was also a mystery in the story that needs to be solved.  This adds a bit of danger and suspense to the story.  Between the blossoming romances and this mystery I couldn’t put the book down.  The pace of the story was well written, the plot was interesting and kept moving and the characters were lovable.

The only disappointment I experienced was the ending.  I felt that Ms. Clopton rushed the ending a bit.  I think if she would have written one more chapter, included a bit more detail and included the townspeople a bit more since they had been key figures in the story up to that point, it would have been a better, richer ending, and would’ve have left me completely satisfied, instead of slightly disappointed.

I will, most likely, read this story again someday, just because I loved the characters so much.  I would also highly recommend this story to anyone who loves cowboy romances or just a good romance, or to anyone who loves to get a chuckle out of a good small town story.

Inspirational Reflections by Ian J. Roberts

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I received a free copy of this eBook to write a review for BookLook Blogger.

Inspirational Reflections by Ian J. Roberts is a short book of poems and songs about faith in God and our salvation through the Lord Jesus Christ.  These writings could be used as daily devotionals.  They are good to reflect upon.

Ian J. Roberts did a fairly good job with these poems and songs, though I thought some of the poems rhyme schemes were sometimes off and the syllable structure seemed a bit awkward in some of them.  The theme throughout the book was a bit repetitious as well, but it was clear that these were words of praise and glory to the Heavenly Father.  The writings have deep meaning and are worth thinking, meditating and reflecting upon.

Though I wish Mr. Roberts would have included other truths and themes from the Bible, his writings were inspiring.

I would recommend this book to anyone who is seeking meaning in their life, anyone who enjoys having something additional to include with their daily Bible reading, anyone who would like to reflect on the power and glory of God.