Book Reviews

Beside Two Rivers by Rita Gerlach

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Beside Two Rivers (Daughters of the Potomac Book 2) by [Gerlach, Rita]

Beside Two Rivers is book two in The Daughters of the Potomac series by Rita Gerlach. I think I read this book much faster than the first one. This book is about the life of Darcy, the daughter of Eliza from the first book.

Once again, Rita Gerlach has created well-developed characters that I could relate to immediately, and, again, I cheered for them, grew angry when others mistreated them, ached with them through their struggles, cried with them in their times of sadness and loss, and laughed with them in the good times. The characters in these books become like good friends.

I found it interesting that two of the characters, in these first two books, were cousins but had more similar character attributes and attitudes than some brothers. However, I longed for one to find redemption. The other I simply disliked and held no sympathy toward–there has to be one of these in almost every book.

I was also extremely pleased that the things, I longed to have resolved in the first book, were resolved in this book. Maybe not the way I had wished, but in a satisfactory and understandable way.

These are the first books I have read by Rita Gerlach, and I have to say that Ms. Gerlach is now on my list of favorite authors, and I will look for more books by her as soon as I can.

Again, this story was an historical romance story, so if that’s the kind of book you like to read, I’m sure you’ll like these books. I have one more to read to complete this series, and I plan to begin reading it tonight.

Before the Scarlet Dawn by Rita Gerlach

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In 1775, Eliza Bloome’s ailing father dies and just a couple days later she receives notice that she has to vacate her home. Her father was a vicar and the home would be needed for his replacement.

An Englishman who would soon inherit a wealthy estate expressed interest in marrying Eliza, but he was not the kind of man Eliza wished to marry. There was another Englishman she wished to marry, but he thought her beneath him. However, when his plans didn’t go the way he wished, he agreed to wed her and take her with him to America. Eliza’s maid, Fiona, went along.

Things were going fairly well in America, though Eliza was unsure of her husband’s love, and she longed for it–for him to say the words. America was in turmoil and the Revolution began. Her husband had embraced America as his home and agreed that they should break free from the King of England’s control. So, just after Eliza gave birth to a daughter, her husband left to join the fighting.

Nothing was the same after that. One tragedy followed another, and Eliza returned to England with no real place to go.

This book has well-developed characters that I could empathize with. I cheered for them and cried for them, and my heart broke for them. There is romance, the struggles of war and the family’s the soldiers left behind, and there is loss, and pain and suffering.

I couldn’t put the book down. It is the first in “The Daughters of the Potomac” series by Rita Gerlach, and when I reached the end, I found the end written well enough that it could be the end, but there was one thing that had not been resolved that my heart longed for. So, I immediately began the second book in the series. You’ll see that review soon.

If you like historical romantic fiction, you will enjoy this story.

 

The Writing Desk by Rachel Hauck

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In the past couple years, I’ve heard about a new style of historical fiction stories. The authors weave an historical fiction story and a contemporary fiction story and put them in the same book, and there’s something that connects the historical with the contemporary. The Writing Desk by Rachel Hauck is one of those stories and it is the first story like it that I have read.

The historical story follows the life of a young woman named, Birdie, who is from a prominent American family during the Gilded Age. She is a free-thinking independent woman, but her parents try to force her to marry a man she doesn’t love, so that the two will be even more wealthy, and put Birdie at the height of society. Her mother is much more adamant about it than her father. However, Birdie wants to marry for love, and she wants to write stories.

The contemporary story follows the life of a young woman who wrote a book in the midst of her grief over the death of her father, and it quickly becomes a New York Times Bestseller. Therefore, Tenley is pressured to write another one, but she is paralyzed by writer’s block and struggles with her emotions and who she really is. Then her mother, who deserted her twenty years ago, calls and announces she has cancer and needs Tenley to come to Florida to take care of her. However, the man Tenley has been involved with gives her an engagement ring and asks her to marry him, and he invites her to go to Paris to write.

The lives of both women are so different, yet they are connected by several threads.

I found this book impossible to put down. Last night I stayed up an hour and a half later than I usually do because I just had to finish it. I always say that a book that can make me laugh and cry is on my list of “best books”, and this one struck both of those chords within me, and there was one tremendous surprise twist in the story that I never suspected that made me laugh and cry tears of joy!

Because I, too, am a writer, I could relate to both the women in this story, and I continually cheered them on throughout the book.  The other characters also evoked strong thoughts and/or emotions within me and I either, cheered for them or wished for them to go away.

Not only was this an incredible pair of stories woven together, it was also an incredible story of loss, hurt, guilt, pain, hope, healing, and love. Birdie, Eli, Tenley, Jonas, and even Alfonse, Rose, Blanche, and Holt will live on in my memory and heart for a long time to come. This book has endeared itself to me. It is the kind of book I LOVE to talk about with friends who have also read it, and it is a book I will highly recommend to anyone who loves a wonderfully, skillfully told story that includes all of the things I’ve listed above.

The Writing Desk by Rachel Hauck gets five stars from me.

I also have to say it is the first and only book that I have ever read by Rachel Hauck, but I will definitely be looking for more.

Traiven’s Pass by Jessica Marinos

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Traiven’s Pass by Jessica Marinos is a debut novel and also the first book in the “Trimont Trilogy”. It is set in medieval times in a land where the king is missing, but a steward king is ruling the land. There are knights and peasants. There is mystery, intrigue, romance, and adventure, and through all of that, there is good and evil at work.

I struggled through reading the first four chapters of Traiven’s Pass because it is told in first person, which I am not a fan of. However, it wasn’t just the fact that it is told in first person, but that the first person Point of View changes from character to character, although each chapter is told from a different character’s first person Point of View. However, after getting through the first four chapters, there were more chapters told from the same character’s first person Point of View–the character’s didn’t change so often.

Because the story is told so well, and Ms. Marinos did such an excellent job of creating well-developed characters, after chapter four, the first person Point of View character switching ceased to bother me. I became so caught up in the characters’ lives and the story that it was quite difficult to put the book down. Ms. Marinos did an excellent job creating and describing her world without overdoing it, and she is quite masterful at weaving back story throughout the story and not simply dumping paragraphs of information from the back story in the middle of an important scene.

Ms. Marinos did such an excellent job showing her character’s emotions that I felt them with them. I have to say that my heart broke over Sir Danek, as I understood his character and so hoped that he could soften. I love Lydia and felt all of her joys and pains throughout the book. Galen has spent his life in a small town and has a lot to learn. I loved the children of Trimont and Meklon and Lady Vala and Rose. I could go on and on. Even after putting the book down, I would think about the characters and the struggles they were going through. They became real, living, breathing people to me, and I can’t wait to read more about them.

It was also wonderful to read a novel all the way through without finding grammatical and typographical errors. This book was obviously, painstakingly well edited.

This is the best debut novel I’ve read in quite a while. It will remain a favorite of mine for years to come. I cannot wait for the next installment of the “Trimont Trilogy”.

I highly recommend this book to anyone who loves medieval stories, and though, I rarely give a book five stars, in my opinion, Traiven’s Pass definitely deserves five stars!

He Knows The Way by Idella Borntrager Otto

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He Knows The Way by Idella Borntrager Otto is Ms. Otto’s debut novel.

Back Cover Blurb:

Ellen, a young northern Mennonite nurse is transplanted into the chaos of Mississippi’s church bombings and cross burning. When danger from the Ku Klux Klan lurks, the scripture text “He knows the way that I take and when He has tested me I will come forth as gold” nibbles at her mind like a broken record. She searches for a sense of direction.

Lord, did I misread your leading to serve you in Mississippi? I don’t need to be gold. Silver or pewter would be just fine. In the midst of racial violence, Ellen re-examines her peace-loving faith while trying to unscramble her feelings which vacillate between a handsome Yankee and her southern pastor’s engaging son.

My Review:

He Knows The Way grabbed my attention from the start with a scene of heart-pounding danger — Ellen arriving to do a job as men with guns block her path. She is alone. She is in Mississippi during racial tensions in the 1960s.

More danger crops up as the Ku Klux Klan burns a cross on the lawn of somewhere Ellen has been ministering to someone preventing Ellen from continuing in this ministry with a woman she has become very fond of.

Ellen, a young northern Mennonite nurse, struggles with the attitudes of people in the south who look down on those who are different and don’t want to treat them as human beings. In one situation, Ellen shows great courage and breaks a southern segregation rule, then fears she will lose her job for doing so.

She is encouraged to go to a school in Virginia to get her B.S.N. and apply for a nursing director position. She goes off to school where she meets a young man, and the two begin spending quite a bit of time together.

Then Ellen goes home for a school break and meets her southern pastor’s son and spends time with him.

She returns to school in Virginia, confused with tangled feelings. She prays the Lord would direct her and show her which young man is the one she might one day marry.

Between the southern tensions and the struggle to make a decision on a young man, this story kept me turning page after page. I was rooting for one particular young man, but eventually liked both men so much that I was confused. I had to keep turning pages to see how the story would clear up both Ellen’s and my confusion about which young man was right for her.

There was one place in the story where I was jolted out of the story for a chapter or two because Ellen was suddenly missing from a chapter or two. I was suddenly reading about a young man and another girl. Things soon became clear, when Ellen returned to the story and eventually met this young man.

All in all, I thought this story was very well written, it captured and held my attention, and I had to keep reading to see whom Ellen would spend her life with. Not only was it a decision as to who she would marry, but where the Lord wanted her to minister — foreign missions or missions in her own country.

I certainly hope Idella Borntrager Otto will be producing more books because I definitely look forward to reading more from her.

Small Church Essentials by Karl Vaters

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Small Church Essentials: Field-Tested Principles for Leading a Healthy Congregation of Under 250 by Karl Vaters is written in a conversational manner. I found it interesting, intelligent, and engaging.

Our family attended a small church for eleven years, and we are currently attending another small church. Karl Vaters makes some wonderful suggestions — suggestions that make sense — that may have helped our previous small church survive (No, it hasn’t completely died, but it had seriously shrunk by the time we left several months ago).

Karl Vaters is the pastor of a small church, and has been for 25 years (and counting). He explains why not every church can be a “big” church, but that’s not a bad thing. He also explains and offers suggestions for helping a small church to be a healthy church. He does an excellent job of explaining how small churches are different from big churches, which is why it doesn’t really work to run a small church the same way big churches are run. He does all of this without saying anything negative about or putting down big churches. His desire, for this book, is to help the pastors of small churches to see how their small church can be a healthy church, and how they don’t have to feel incompetent or like a failure because they aren’t making their small church into a big church.

Do you know there are more small churches than there are big churches? It’s just that the big churches are the hot topics in our current society. However, not everyone wants to be part of a big church either, which is another reason that pastors in small churches should not feel badly about not being big. Pastors need to focus on the health of their church, not the size of their church. A healthy church will naturally grow, but it may never grow to “big church” status, and that’s okay.

I am not a pastor, but I am part of a church of under 250 people, and Karl Vaters’ suggestions for creating a healthy small church make sense and are biblical. He uses several examples of Jesus ministering. Yes, you may think, “but Jesus ministered to huge crowds”, and yes, he did, but his main focus was on small groups like his twelve disciples.

If you’re a pastor of a small church who feels frustrated, stressed, and like you’re failing, or if you’re a pastor of a small church who just wants to get an idea as to how healthy your church is, I encourage you to read this book. I also encourage those of you who are part of a small church body to read this book, because it’s not the pastor’s job alone to keep the church healthy, and you may find some ways you can serve your church and your pastor by reading this book.

Summoned by Verity Moore

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Summoned is the debut novel of Verity Moore. It is a YA Fantasy novel. The Prologue caught my attention and drew me in. However, as I read the first chapter, I felt the pace seemed slow and my interest waned. Not one to give up on a book too quickly, I continued to read and was thankful that chapter two was much more interesting, and from chapter two to the end I was hooked.

Summoned had lots of adventure, danger, and excitement to keep me turning pages. I really enjoyed the male main character, Kyam and his dog. For me, these were my reasons to keep reading.  As a dog owner and lover, I love the almost human qualities attributed to the dog, Castoff, in this story. I also admired Kyam’s loyalty, faithfulness, and determination, even in the face of disappointment and rejection.

Cierra, the main female character, seems to have to learn her lessons the hard way. She is stubborn and independent and often self-centered.  The contrast between her character and Kyam’s make for some humorous and interesting scenes.

I was disturbed with one scene where Verity Moore mentions a flock of birds, then tells how the birds fly, and she calls the birds “emu”. Emu are a real bird, native to Australia, and they do not fly.

When the book ended quite abruptly, I was disappointed. I don’t know why the book ended so quickly and abruptly. It is considerably short for a Fantasy novel, coming in at a mere 153 pages. Most Fantasy novels I have read are more than double that page count.

Another disappointment came in the back of Summoned where a page lists Pursued and Besieged as the two other books in this trilogy and says they are all available on Amazon. However, neither Pursued nor Besieged is yet available.

Although Summoned wasn’t what I expected, I did enjoy it and look forward to reading the next book in the trilogy, and I hope the wait isn’t too long.

The Light Unbound by C.S. Wachter

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The Light Unbound (The Seven Words Book 4) by [Wachter, C. S.]

The Light Unbound is the 4th and final book of C.S.Wachter’s The Seven Words series. It is YA/Adult Fantasy.

Prince Rayne again falls prey to the evil Sigmund and in his frustration turns his back on the One and what he was called to do. Then he meets a child-like ancient, named Mite, who helps Rayne find anonymity in the Camp of the Forgotten.

In the meantime, his friends try to figure out why Prince Rayne is behaving in ways that are totally contradictory to his true character. Lexi struggles most as she wants to believe in Rayne, but something just doesn’t seem right.

There is also a black cloud approaching across the Cameron Sea, and mind-altering shadows threatening all Ochen. And when members of the Interplanetary Council die from a mysterious illness, the young prince declares himself Imperial Emperor of all Ochen, leaving all of his friends confused and questioning—is this really Rayne, or could it be someone, some-thing else?

This installment of The Seven Words series does not disappoint. It is just as good as the first three and kept me turning pages in anticipation of Rayne’s friends finding out the truth, and also cheering Rayne on to turn back to his faith.

The characters, both old and new, help to move the story along. Some create conflict and tension while others add a bit of humor to the intense story line.

By the end of this book, C.S.Wachter does a great job of making clear connections between all four books and resolving all of the conflicts from all of the story lines. The ending is very satisfying, and many of the characters will live on in my mind for a long time to come. This has become and will remain one of my favorite fantasy series, and if you enjoy good fantasy reads, I highly recommend them.

 

A Book Review: Rose’s Redemption by Donna L.H. Smith

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Rose’s Redemption is the new release by Donna L.H. Smith, and the second book of the “Known by Heart” series. The first book was Meghan’s Choice, and you can read my review of that book here.

The story setting is still the old western town of New Boston, where Meghan’s Choice also was set. As a matter of fact, Meghan and the main character, Rose, of Rose’s Redemption, are friends–a friendship that began in the first book.

Rose has had a very difficult life, and in Rose’s Redemption, those difficulties aren’t over. As she tries to change her life for the better and begins to hope that she could have real love, someone from her past comes back to find her.

I enjoyed Rose’s Redemption very much. Though, in Meghan’s Choice, Dr. Scott Allison was not my favorite  character, he redeems himself in Rose’s Redemption, and he plays a big part in the new life Rose tries to make for herself. Meghan and the characters from Meghan’s Choice still played a part in this story as well, so as a reader, I got to know them all better.

The characters in Rose’s Redemption are well-developed and I enjoyed meeting some new characters in New Boston in this installment of the “Known by Heart” series. I really like Rose and rooted for her the whole way through the book.

The story’s conflict was also well written, better than the conflict in Meghan’s Choice. I found the conflict in Rose’s Redemption to be more intense and realistic, and it kept me turning pages.

Donna L.H. Smith also had an interesting way of having some of her character’s experience God that drew them to Him. It was tastefully done and not preachy nor was it overdone. I don’t think someone who prefers not to read Christian novels would be offended or find it overbearing.

Donna L.H. Smith’s writing is stronger in Rose’s Redemption and she did a much better job of developing her characters and making me like them and care about them. She also included some subtle hints as to what may come in the next book, and I look forward to reading it.

If you enjoy stories with an old western setting, intense conflict, and sweet romance, I hope you will read Rose’s Redemption too.

A Talent for Trouble by Jen Turano

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A Talent for Trouble (Ladies of Distinction Book #3) by [Turano, Jen]

A Talent for Trouble is the third book in a trilogy known as “Ladies of Distinction” by Jen Turano. However, I have not read the first book. I previously read and did a review of book two A Most Peculiar Circumstance here. Therefore, I can attest to the fact that, though they are part of a trilogy, you can certainly read any of them as stand alones and not feel lost.

A Talent for Trouble is a light-hearted, fun historical romance about Felicia Murdock who is concerned about being single and in her mid twenties. She sets her sights on becoming a minister’s wife and pretends to be something she’s not in hopes of impressing the minister.

When things do not go according to her plan, she decides she’s wasted too much time pretending and is determined to be her true self and embrace a more lively way of life, and in so doing, finds herself in one troubling circumstance after another.

Grayson Sumner, otherwise known as Lord Sefton, soon finds himself attracted to Felicia, but becomes frustrated with her knack for stumbling into trouble. Then his past comes back to complicate his life and places Felicia in danger as well. Grayson is determined to keep Felicia safe as they struggle to extricate themselves from the latest trouble.

Felicia is a fun character and as her relationship with Grayson developed, they made me laugh out loud. Their troubling situations go from mild to quite scary and I found myself cheering for them while sitting on the edge of my seat. This was a very enjoyable read.