Tag Archives: Christian fiction

Review: When I Fall in Love

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When I Fall in Love by Susan May Warren

Susan May Warren’s Christiansen family series centers on six fictional adult siblings and their parents and friends in the small town of Deep Haven, Minnesota. The family runs an old-fashioned resort (cabins but no Internet).

Though all the family plus several side characters appear in each book, each focuses mainly on the story of one sibling.

When I Fall in Love is the third in the series, about second-oldest sister Grace. Grace loves cooking and wants to go to culinary school. But she’s also a homebody who doesn’t like to venture out of her comfort zone.

When she caters her oldest brother’s wedding, the family thanks her by pitching in to surprise her with a three-week trip to a cooking school in Hawaii.

But Grace is not pleased. She’s terrified.

Her sister’s fiance, a hockey player on the professional team in Minneapolis, chose this particular school because his teammate, Max Sharp, is going there, too. He asks Max to keep an eye on Grace and help her out.

Max is less than thrilled. He goes on a cooking vacation each year somewhere where he’s not known. He gives the bulk of his year to hockey. For that one month, he just wants to get away by himself and do something different.

Grace is not happy, either. She doesn’t want Max to feel he has to baby-sit her.

But when they meet on the airplane, each not knowing who the other is at first—well, this is a romance novel, so you know they are going to be attracted.

The problem is, Max never planned to be attracted to anyone. He’s the carrier for a disease that killed his father early and will probably take his life as well. He can never ask a woman to be part of his life knowing what she will have to go through, only to end up alone.

Grace tests his resolve, though.

In the subplot, Grace’s friend and coworker, Raina, had helped cater Grace’s brother’s wedding. She’s fairly new to town and has had a hard background. Her only remaining family is her aunt Liza in Deep Haven. Raina is not religious, but she attends church because her aunt requires her to.

Grace’s brother, Owen, seeks Raina out after the wedding, making Raina feel special. But she doesn’t know that Owen is in a downward spiral. He was a rising hockey star, only to be sidelined by a devastating injury. The fame and money had gone to his head, and the injury and loss of his career has sent him further to the wild side. He only uses Raina for a one-night stand.

Raina is bitter against all the Christiansen men. But when she gets to know Casper, the college-aged brother home for a semester, she finds he is much different from Owen.

I liked the themes of getting out of one’s comfort zone and trusting God with the unknowns in life.

I didn’t like so much the family pushing Grace out of her comfort zone. Older sister Eden, in particular, comes across really pushy and bossy here. I hadn’t gotten that vibe from her in the book focusing on her (It Had to Be You). Not only does she propel Grace into the trip, she wants Grace to cater her wedding with Hawaiian food–as if cooking in Hawaii for three weeks makes Grace an expert. The fact that Eden didn’t listen to Grace and kept insisting really bothered me.

Plus, the author has God answering Grace directly several times when she prays about something.

Also, though we’re spared a bedroom scene with Owen’s indiscretion, we’re still shown more than I would have liked.

Even with those caveats, though, I found much to enjoy in this story. Just like in real life, we get ourselves in messes. But God offers healing and redemption.

I had listened to the audiobook, which unfortunately didn’t contain any of the author’s notes about what inspired this story. However, I did find a bit of background on Susan’s site here.

Review: It Had to Be You

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In It Had to Be You by Susan May Warren, Eden Christiansen feels like she’s forever on the sidelines. Her other siblings have stand-out talents. Eden always dreamed of being a reporter. She landed a job with the city newspaper, but she’s stuck as an obituary writer.

Since she lives in the same town as her younger hockey-player brother, Owen, and she’s the only family member there, she goes to his games and watches out for him. She sees that the fame, acclaim, and money has gone to his head. But he won’t listen to her admonitions. It doesn’t help that Owen idolizes his team captain, Jace, who has a bad-boy reputation on and off the ice.

When Jace and Eden meet, they clash immediately. She berates him for not being a better example to his team.

Jace, meanwhile, has his own problems. Several slams on the ice have resulted in too many concussions and regular migraines. He has nothing else but hockey, so he keeps going despite doctors’ warnings. When he tries to avoid fights during games, his value drops in the eyes of his team, agent, and the spectators.

And there is a side to Jace that others rarely see. He helps his best friend, Sam, run a restaurant and helps Sam take care of his daughter, a heart transplant patient.

Owen, in a moment of carelessness, sustains a devastating injury. While visiting him in the hospital, Jace and Eden accidentally discover a John Doe, an unidentified patient in a coma. They are thrown together to try to find John Doe’s family.

I don’t read romance novels very often. They can be somewhat silly and too focused on the physical. But Susan’s don’t seem to be that way so far.

I got a little irritated with both characters’ tendency to create a whole scenario of what they thought the other was thinking from a line or gesture or silence. It’s not usually good to assume motives no matter how well we know someone. But learning not to judge or assume is part of what they experienced here.

Another theme throughout the book is letting go of things we can’t and weren’t meant to control.

Overall, I enjoyed the story. A couple of my favorite quotes:

Minnesota grew hockey players like pine trees.

There’s always light . . . God’s love is too bright for the darkness to win.

This book is the second in the Christiansen family series. The first was Take a Chance on Me. Since the sequels were free in Audible’s Plus Catalog, I am listening to them before they are rotated out.

Review: Dandelion Summer

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Dandelion Summer by Lisa Wingate

In Dandelion Summer by Lisa Wingate, J. Norman Alvord is a retired widower with heart trouble. As he fades in and out of consciousness from an angina incident, he has a vivid memory of a house with seven chairs and a black maid. His mother never had a maid, and he was an only child. Norman wonders if this is truly a memory or a figment of his imagination. If it’s real, where was this house and who was the woman?

Norman’s daughter, Deborah, is at her wit’s end with her curmudgeonly father. They’ve never gotten along, but she promised her mother she’d take care of him. She tries to nudge him to think about moving to a facility. but he refuses. So for the short term, she hires a woman to come in once a week to clean her father’s house and the woman’s daughter to come in two days a week after school to make dinner, clean up the kitchen, and keep an eye out for her dad.

The daughter, Epiphany, has an Italian mother and black father, though her father is long gone. Epiphany, or Epie, as she is sometimes called, doesn’t feel like she fits in anywhere. She’s bullied at school until the school’s basketball star takes a liking to her. But he is bad news.

Epie and Norman don’t hit it off at first. They are opposites in almost every way. But when Epie agrees to keep some of his secrets, like Norman’s searching for clues about the house in his dreams upstairs, where his daughter has forbidden him to go, Norman grudgingly accepts Epie’s presence. Eventually he tells her what he s searching for and accepts her help bringing boxes from the attic.

Clues and more emerging memories lead Norman and Epie to a road trip for more information. But with Norman’s heart trouble and Epie’s inexperience, will they make it?

The point of view switched back and forth between Norman and Epie. I listened to the audiobook wonderfully read by Jason Culp and Bahni Turpin. Their voices and expressions added so much more to the reading/listening experience.

This book was the fourth in Wingate’s Blue Sky Hill series. I hadn’t read any except the second book, The Summer Kitchen, but I didn’t feel there were any gaps that didn’t make sense. This book stood well enough on its own.

Though I thought the road trip was unlikely in real life, the author made it plausible. I enjoyed the slowly developing relationship between Norman and Epie–first just tolerating each other, then learning to appreciate things about each other, and then coming to truly care for each other like a grandparent and grandchild.

The mystery of Norman’s background was unraveled quite nicely, keeping me curious and invested throughout the book.

I was struck by how both Norman and Epie were misunderstood from the outside. In the book, we’re privy to their thoughts and circumstances that no one else knows. Epie seems like an underachieving student to her teachers, but they have no idea what she has to deal with from the other students and a mom who has gone from man to man. And they don’t take the time to find out what underlying problems there might be. Yet Norman can see her innate intelligence and the need to be nurtured.

Some quotes that stood out to me:

Maybe not everyone got the mom who baked cupcakes and showed up at all the school parties. There weren’t enough of those to go around, so maybe God used other people, like Mrs. Lora and J. Norm, to make sure you learned how to shell a purple hull pea or find Saturn in the night sky.

I would have lived more fully in the moment, realize how easily a perfect day can slip by unnoticed. Any day is the glory day if you choose to see the glory in it.

It’s funny how mistakes are so much clearer after you’ve already made them.

Wingate has a penchant for sometimes halting the flow of dialogue by putting extra information between the speaker’s answers (one of my writing pet peeves). But overall, I really enjoyed this book.

Review: Take a Chance on Me

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In Take a Chance on Me by Susan May Warren, Darek Christiansen is a single father working with his parents on the resort they’ve had for years: Evergreen Lake Resort in Minnesota. Darek had been a firefighter, but when his wife died, he worked at the resort to help take care of his son.

He and his wife, Felicity, and friends Jensen and Claire had grown up together in the area. But Jensen was responsible for Felicity’s death. Darek is angry at Jensen, at himself, at God.

Ivy Madison has just moved to the area as the new assistant county attorney. When she bids on Darek for a date at a charity auction, she doesn’t know what to make of his curmudgeonly behavior. But she sees a tender side of him when he’s with his son.

Ivy had grown up in the foster care system, and Darek’s family feels like the one she had always longed for.

But then she has a stunning realization. Before moving here, she had been asked to write a proposed plea deal for a man guilty of vehicular homicide. Since the incident was an accident, she suggested that the man do hours of community service rather than jail time.

After learning Derak’s story, Ivy realizes Jensen is the man whose plea deal she crafted. When Darek learns that Ivy was the one who kept Jensen out of jail, will he forgive her?

Meanwhile, a wildfire rages nearby. Firefighters are on it, but can they keep it from engulfing the town and resort?

Another plot line involves Claire, her unrequited love for Jensen, and her desire to stay in town while her missionary parents want her to go to college at age 25. There’s also a tussle when Claire’s grandfather has an accident. She wants to take care of him; her parents want to move him to a home.

I thought this was the first Susan May Warren book I had read, but I see I had read a few of her Christmas books in past years: Evergreen: A Christiansen Winter Novella (which I just realized involved the family from this book), The Great Christmas Bowl, and Baby, It’s Cold Outside.

The point of view switches back and forth between Darek, Ivy, Jensen, and Claire. One interesting thing about this story is that at first, Darek seems like the innocent wounded party and Jensen seems like the bad guy. But as we learn more of what happened and get to know them better, we see Darek (as well as Felicity) has done things he’s not proud of, and Jensen has good qualities no one appreciates at first.

I thought the faith element was woven in naturally.

Favorite quotes:

I knew your future would take you far from Evergreen Lake. I feared it would take you far, also, from your legacy of faith. Watching your son leave your arms has no comparison to watching him leave God’s. You never seemed to question the beliefs your father and I taught you. Perhaps that is what unsettled me the most. Because without questioning, I wondered how there could be true understanding.

“Small acts of justice can make great ripples in the community.” “Or tear it apart.”

We can’t hold onto something so hard that it destroys everything else we love.

I disagreed with one character saying that God acts almost entirely out of the emotion of love. Love isn’t just an emotion. And I wouldn’t say God acts primarily on emotion.

And I was disappointed Susan spelled out a metaphor that arose with the wildfire and something that was going on in the plot. It was kind of neat to make that connection, and I felt it would have been stronger if the reader had been allowed to make it for herself rather than being told.

But overall I liked getting to know the characters and their situations and where everyone ended up in their journeys. I enjoyed the audiobook narrated by Carol Monda. I didn’t realize that this book was the first of seven involving the Christiansen family. I was able to find several of them for free with Audible’s Plus Catalog,

Review: Dear Henry, Love Edith

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Dear Henry, Love Edith

In Becca Kinzer’s debut rom-com novel,. Dear Henry, Love Edith, Edith Sherman is ready to make a new start. Her marriage was difficult and about to end when her husband became ill and passed away. She stayed with him til the end, and they reconciled. But the problems there and in her relationship with her parents has soured her on marrying again. She had given up her hopes and dreams of traveling the world, and now is the time to pick them up again. She plans to go to South Africa to help in a mission there as soon as her passport arrives.

In the meantime, she heard from a friend that a crisis nursery in the small town of Westshire, IL could use her nursing skills for the summer. She had planned to stay in the house of a friend of a friend, Kat, who would be away during that time. But Kat sent her a note that a pipe had burst in her house. However, her uncle Henry had an upstairs he wasn’t using and would be glad to have her stay there until the damage was repaired.

Henry actually wasn’t glad. But since he was recovering from a knee injury and couldn’t use the upstairs, he reluctantly agreed that what he assumed was an older widowed missionary lady could stay there.

Edith, on her part, assumed that the uncle of someone her age would be an older bachelor. She didn’t realize that Kat and her uncle were just a few years apart.

For several weeks, living in different parts of the house and working different times, Edith and Henry didn’t meet and left notes for each other. Each assuming the other was older, their notes became more friendly and confidential.

Meanwhile, Henry can’t help but notice a beautiful brown-eyed blond in town. They run into each other several times without getting each other’s names. Then Henry realizes this is the Edith living upstairs in his house.

Edith notices Henry, too, and it’s only a matter of time before they find each other out and admit their attraction. But Edith remains firm about not marrying. And besides, she’s leaving the country soon.

I don’t usually read romantic comedies, but I saw good reviews for this one. When it was on sale for the Kindle and then free for Audible, I decided to try it. There were a lot of funny and cute moments, and the overall story was sweet. I enjoyed a lot of the banter. The “comedy of errors”—misunderstandings or things going wrong that escalate— is not my favorite type of humor. Nothing wrong with it, I just find it tiresome and not funny. I preferred the more serious parts. Even though this was meant to be a funny story, there was a lot of depth to it.

Though this was a Christian novel, at first I didn’t see much Christian about it besides an occasional mention of church or prayer. But later on, as the two main characters wrestle with their various issues, they pray and seek God more earnestly.

Unfortunately, there was one reference I was dismayed to see in a Christian novel. It wasn’t obvious, though, so I think some might overlook it.

If you like romantic comedies, you might like this book.

Review: The Winter Rose

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The Winter Rose by Melanie Dobson is a dual-timeline novel.

Grace Tonquin is an American Quaker woman living in Vichy France during WWII. She had left behind the lifestyle of her actress mother, Ruby. Now she works with a network of others to help Jewish children escape France over the Pyrénées mountains into Spain. Grace has been told by Roland, her friend and leader, this must be her last group. Previously she had gotten the children to those who would take them over the mountains; now she must go with them. It was no longer safe for her to remain in France.

One boy, Louis, ends up having to remain behind in hiding with Helene, a woman who worked with Grace. Grace takes the remaining eleven children through various dangers until they finally arrive in Spain.

Most of the children are sent to live with relatives. Grace takes two of the children, siblings Elias and Marguerite, home with her to Oregon. She and Roland marry, and they raise the children as their own.

In 2003, Addie Hoult comes to Tonquin Lake in OR to look for any remnants of the Tonquin family. Her mentor and father-figure, Charlie Tonquin, is desperately ill and needs a transplant preferably from someone related. Charlie has always steadfastly refused to share anything about his family or his past. But Addie is determined to try to find his relatives, hopefully even his long lost sister.

I had seen films about people who helped Jewish children escape over the mountains. However, those movies ended with the children getting safely over, where it was assumed they lived happy and stable lives afterward. This book deals with the aftermath some of them faced. Even getting to safety, many of them couldn’t help but be traumatized by having to leave their homes and families, travel in difficult conditions, and witness things children should not have to see.

Some of the quotes I liked best:

She didn’t understand, nor would she ever, why God didn’t rescue everyone in this life, but it was her job, her grandfather had often reminded her, to be faithful in caring for those God gave to her (p. 37, Kindle version).

No one wants to hold you against your will. We want you to master your will so you can be in control of yourself (p. 189).

Living, I think, defies the loss. Loving well defies it, too (p. 301).

I enjoyed Melanie’s notes at the end where she told some of the history the novel was based on as well as what was fictional. She included some of that information on her website here.

When I’ve shared Melanie’s books before, some have wondered if she was related to or connected with the Dobsons of Focus on the Family. The “About the Author” page at the back of the book says, in part, “Melanie is the previous corporate publicity manager at Focus on the Family, owner of the publicity firm Dobson Media Group, and a former adjunct professor at George Fox University.” Since her husband’s last name is Dobson and she worked at Focus, I assume he is related somehow–unless the same last name is just a coincidence.

Overall, I thought this was a good book. I got a little lost in some places, unusual for Melanie’s books. But I appreciated getting to know “the rest of the story,” as Paul Harvey wold have said, behind some of the displaced children of WWII and the people who helped them. However, they aren’t the only ones in the story dealing with past wounds and needing to heal from their experiences. That seems to be the common theme among many of the characters.

Review: When I Close My Eyes

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When I Close My Eyes, a novel by Elizabeth Musser

When I Close My Eyes by Elizabeth Musser is told from three different viewpoints.

Henry Hughes is ex-military with a wife and young son, Jace. Jace has had heart problems most of his young life and needs open-heart surgery. Henry doesn’t know how he’s going to pay the medical bills. His friend mentions he could get him a “job” with another friend–a job as a hit man. Henry is so desperate, he agrees to take on such a job just this once.

He stakes out the lady he has been hired to kill on a street in Asheville, NC, takes aim as she goes to her car—but she turns her head just as he fires. Consequently, the bullet that went through her brain puts her in a coma, but doesn’t kill her. He won’t get his money if she doesn’t die, but he can’t do anything else since people come running.

Henry hadn’t known anything about the woman he tried to assassinate, but when her name is splashed all over the news, he learns she is a best-selling author, Josephine Bourdillon. He begins to read her books and wonders if she really believes what she’s written about faith and forgiveness. He vacillates between wanting to ask her and needing to finish the job.

In her coma, Josephine remembers her past: society parents who kept up appearances despite fighting, alcoholism, and philandering behind the scenes, a rebellious, dramatic sister, and her own struggle with depression. She felt she had to be the perfect daughter to maintain the family myth and had to carry the weight of helping her sister, who, more often than not, didn’t want help.

Josephine’s daughter, Paige, has rejected the faith of her parents due to the hypocrisy of her grandfather and another family friend. Paige is a junior in high school but mature for her age. Her sister, Hannah, comes home from her year of studying in France to be with the family in the wake of Josephine’s shooting.

As police investigate, Paige is concerned that they’ll find out about what the family calls “the awful year.” Besides the death of her mother’s parents that year, there are hints of a secret that Paige doesn’t want to get out, a secret that might implicate someone in the family.

The “whodunnit” part of the story was handled well. Henry, of course, pulled the trigger, but once police find him, they want to know who hired him. I was sure it was one character—not the character the story points to at first—but I was wrong.

Depression is a big part of the book. Elizabeth said in a couple of interviews (here and here) that though her family was different from Josephine’s, her journey with depression was very similar. She wanted to bring light to that topic and show that even people of deep faith can struggle with depression. I would caution readers who might be sensitive to this that there is a suicide attempt in the book.

Other themes are hypocrisy and God’s grace.

I love that Elizabeth draws from her own experiences. She grew up in Atlanta, and she and her husband have been missionaries to France for several decades. Both Atlanta and France are featured in this book. The bulk of the story takes place in Asheville, NC. I’m not sure if Elizabeth has connections there, but that’s a city I love to visit. The drive some of the characters took on I-40 through the mountains is very familiar to me.

Some of my favorite quotes:

Mama always said that the painful things of life got redeemed in her stories.

The bad stuff hadn’t been able to snuff out the good stuff, or maybe it even happened because of the bad stuff.

My parents knew a lot about real, deep-down love. They knew it hurt. They knew it cost something valuable. They knew it was worth keeping.

There were just a couple of things I didn’t like. One was the use of a couple of words that aren’t profanity, but aren’t usually found in Christian books (though one is in the KJV. However, it’s not used there like it is used today). The other was bedroom scenes with Josephine and her husband, and mention of Henry’s wife in a see-through nightie. Nothing explicit was shown, but it was still more than I wanted to read. None of these things needed to be in the book. They only make up maybe half of one percent of the total book, but they still marred it a little.

Overall, however, the story was very good and the characters were well-developed.

I listened to the audiobook nicely read by three different narrators.

Review: The Cost of Betrayal

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The Cost of Betrayal: three suspense novellas.

The Cost of Betrayal is a trio of romantic suspense novellas by Dee Henderson, Dani Pettrey, and Lynette Eason.

In Betrayed by Dee Henderson, Paul and Ann Falcon (from Full Disclosure) are at an auction just for fun. Ann buys a box of perfumes and scarves as inspiration for painting. But when Ann looks through the box at home, she discovers an engraved jewelry box with a ring stuck in it and an engraved pink pocketknife. A retired Midwest Homicide Investigator, Ann puts her skills to work to search for the owners to try to return those items. She discovers the knife belongs to a Janelle Roberts, imprisoned for killing her boyfriend after a bad breakup.

But the more Ann looks into the case, the more she thinks Janelle is innocent. Ann’s husband, Paul, is the head of the Chicago FBI office, and they pool their resources to look into Janelle’s case. They find enough to free Janelle, but not enough to convict the person they think is guilty.

They graciously provide for Janelle to hide out on an island with a friend and psychiatrist who can help her process what has happened to her and help her decide what to do with her future. Meanwhile, they watch the suspected guilty party, waiting for her reaction to Janelle’s release.

In Deadly Isle by Dani Pettrey, Tennyson (“Teni”) Kent’s fiance has just broken up with her. Joining her cousin, Julia, for their regular swim, Teni falls behind due to her emotions. When she gets to their usual stopping place, she doesn’t see her cousin. But she does see her boyfriend from years ago, Callum. He picks her up in his boat and joins the search for Julia. Sadly, they find her body.

Teni is an underwater investigator and Maryland NRP officer, so she sets about documenting the accident, not realizing at first that Julia’s death resulted from foul play.

Then, back at home, Teni’s house explodes due to a cut gas line. Teni happened to be out investigating a noise, so her life is mercifully spared. But she and Callum wonder—is someone out for her family? Or was Teni the target in Julia’s murder?

As a storm rolls in, landlines are down and Teni and Callum are on their own trying to figure out what happened and avoid getting killed.

In Code of Ethics by Lynette Eason, trauma surgeon Ruthie St. John works on Detective Isaac Martinez when he comes into the ER with a gunshot wound. Hours later, when she goes to check on him before leaving for vacation, she finds an unknown orderly attempting to put something in Martinez’ IV. After a scuffle, Ruthie learns that Isaac has been investigating some bad cops. He had reported one for stealing money and drugs from the evidence room. But the security footage was altered, and Isaac has no proof. Now many of the cops on the force have turned against him. He needs to look for evidence, but he’s in no shape to.

Ruthie is the only medical person in a family of cops. She sneaks Isaac out of the hospital and takes him to the cabin she had rented for her vacation. She calls her two brothers for help and reports to her mother, the chief of police. Ruthie helps Isaac track down his main lead, only to discover she isn’t who he though she was.

Of these three authors, I’ve only read Dee before (except for another trio of novellas by these ladies which I had forgotten about). I’ve read and loved most of Dee’s novels. If you love suspense, she’s your girl. It was fun to “visit” with characters Paul and Ann again. (As an aside, I have heard that some of Dee’s theology is somewhat wonky in her nonfiction and a couple of her novels. I’ve not read those, and I don’t remember seeing anything amiss in the novels of hers that I’ve read. But, with any author, exercise discernment.)

I’ve seen some of Dani’s posts on Inspired by Life and Fiction (a group blog where ten authors take turns posting) and Lynette’s on The Write Conversation and the Steve Laube Agency blog. But I have not read their books yet.

The main connection with each of the novellas is the fact of betrayal. Dani’s was the scariest to me, making me jump at creaks in the house and such. Lynette’s story appears to feature characters from other books as well.

I was a little frustrated that the case in one of the stories remained unsolved. But that would happen in real life. I’m not sure if the author plans any more stories on those particular characters.

I’ve had the book on hand for a while, but when I saw the audiobook for free through Audible’s Pus Catalog, I decided to get it. It was nicely read by Susan Bennett.

If you like suspense, I am sure you’d like this compilation. Collections of novellas are a nice way to try out new authors.

Review: The Lies of Saints

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The Lies of Saints novel by Sigmund Brouwer

The Lies of Saints is the third Nick Barrett novel by Sigmund Brouwer, the first two being Out of the Shadows and Crown of Thorns, linked to my reviews.

Nick was born into an elite Charleston family but was considered and outsider because his mother was. After his father’s death and his mother’s abandonment, he was raised in an uncle’s family, always aware he was not really a part of the family except by blood.

The first book had Nick coming back to Charleston after several years due to receiving a clue about his mother’s disappearance. He comes into an inheritance and the family home.

He’s not really a detective or investigator—he teaches astronomy. But a detective friend has been in a serious car accident, and Nick volunteers to help her.

It turns out that the hazing and apparent suicide of a Citadel cadet two decades ago is related to the disappearance of a debutante, both of which are also connected to a current case. As Nick asks questions, he’s repeatedly warned not to stir up this hornet’s nest. But as he continues unraveling surprising connections, he finds himself in danger.

Some favorite quotes:

Merely going through rites was a much easier task than following the spirit behind them (p. 40, Kindle app).

Without God, life was dust and had no meaning. With God, hope transformed life and its sorrows (p. 158).

“I understand,” I said. “I will tell this woman how you feel.”

Life burst into the old woman’s face. She pointed at me, still clutching the shawl. “You, young man, have no idea how I feel!”

It was a well-deserved rebuke. “No,” I said quietly. “I don’t” (p. 160).

Not so fast, my junior-grade sidekick (p. 201).

I don’t often read this kind of book, but it’s nice for a change. I like Brouwer’s breezy style of writing here. Though there are dark and scary turns, there’s a lot of underlying humor and banter as well as a few sweet moments.

Review: By Way of the Moonlight

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In By Way of the Moonlight by Elizabeth Musser, Allie Massey’s grandmother, known as Nana Dale, has just died. Nana Dale was an accomplished horsewoman, placing first in several shows and even riding in the Olympics. Their plan had always been that Allie would inherit the grounds, house, and enough money to open an equine therapy business on her grandmother’s property.

But the family learns at the reading of the will that Nana Dale sold the property to a development firm, evidently taken advantage of in her beginning dementia by an unscrupulous contractor.

Now Allie has a limited time to clear the house and have an estate sale before the house is imploded.

Allie is beyond upset. She can’t cope. She even breaks up with her fiance. Nana Dale had left a letter with cryptic instructions to find a cherrywood chest which will have more information. But no one in the family has seen such a chest.

In intermittent flashbacks, we learn of Dale’s life. She had loved horses from her earliest memories. But her father’s business crashed along with the economy during the Depression, and the horses had to be sold. Dale prayed long years that she might find Essie, her beloved filly.

Before the Depression, when her family boarded horses, Dale met a boy named Tommy with a horse named Infinity. The two became friends, even competing as a couple in some events.

The rest of Dale’s story takes us through Tommy’s bout with polio, mounted patrols along the coast during WWII called Sand Pounders, and a daring rescue of a sailor whose ship was torpedoed, which resulted in a major surprise.

In one interview, Elizabeth said part of the story was inspired by her mother’s property in Atlanta. In a series of short videos, Elizabeth takes readers through various areas of the house and grounds that were inspiration for the novel, which was fun to see. She said that there is pressure now, just like in the book, for owners of such properties to sell to developers who want to raze the buildings and put up new cluster houses.

The WWII and Sand Pounders sections of the book are not Elizabeth’s mother’s history. But when she happened upon information about the coastal mounted patrol, she wanted to include them in her book.

Elizabeth says later in her interview that in this book she wanted to “examine the thin line between fighting for what you believe in and developing an unhealthy obsession. Both women learn important lessons about pursuing dreams at all costs, which may cause them to sacrifice something or someone they love.”

I listened to the audiobook read by Susan Bennett. I thought Susan did a great job with the character voices, but the narration seemed too slow. Maybe she thought that was fitting for a Southern accent (the next audiobook I started is also read by Susan, but at a much more normal pace). Also, she had an annoying habit of turning one-syllable words into two syllables, especially at the end of sentences (not to be nitpicky, but after 14+ hours of listening, some things grate). The audiobook didn’t provide any back matter, so I am thankful Elizabeth included information and links to interviews here.

The story itself also seemed a little slow, especially the modern-day part. There’s almost no movement in plot in Allie’s story until near the end.

Nevertheless, overall, this was a good book. One of my favorite quotes, and themes, in the book is “When life gets hard to stand, kneel.”

Another: “Bitterness will rot out your soul. . . You may never get the answer on this side of life to the why. So it’s much better to ask the question, ‘Now that I’m in this place, Lord, what do you want me to do?'”

And “Life ain’t fair. It’s brutal sometimes. . . faith don’t stop the horrible things. But faith helps you walk through those things, whipped and angry and screaming on the inside. Lord don’t mind our screaming and raging. He done shown us how to do it in those psalms of his that King David wrote.”

Elizabeth is one of my favorite authors. Even though I like some of her other books better than this one, I did enjoy this one and can highly recommend it as well.