Take Three is the third in the Above the Line series by Karen Kingsbury about Christian filmmakers, their families, and the problems they run into. I don’t feel I can say much about the plot without revealing more spoilers than I want to, so I’ll just say it is a continuation of the journey, that Andi faces some serious consequences of her actions, and that there is finally some movement in the Cody/Bailey/Tim storyline. I enjoyed it and am looking forward to the next installment.

A Touch of Grace by Lauraine Snelling is the third in her Daughters on Blessing series. I had gotten it from a clearance table of a Christian bookstore over a year ago, and though I knew it was part of a series at first, I had forgotten that when I finally picked it up. At first I felt like I had been dropped in the middle of something, and realizing that I was in the middle of a series helped. I finally decided to stop trying to keep the characters straight except for the main ones, and eventually it all became clear.

Grace Knutson is the daughter of a Norwegian farming family in North Dakota in the 1900s. Though she is deaf, she copes well and works as hard as the others. Jonathan Gould is the son of an old family friend who happens to be wealthy and who thinks his son can learn hard work and responsibility by living with the Knutsons during the summer before he goes to college. Grace likes a young man named Toby whom her family disapproves of, but begins to be aware that Jonathan has feelings for her. Jonathan, for his part, finds that he loves farm work, but knows that his parents would never approve of his turning to a life of farming as a career.

I thought the story was a good depiction of farm life in that time, though perhaps a little too detailed in such instances as a thorough description of biscuit-making (though maybe I am mistaken in thinking that most people already know how it is done), and eventually I was drawn in to the characters and the conflicts they faced. At this time I don’t plan to go back and read the first two books in the series, but I’d like to read the ones that follow.