I can think of a lot of characters I wouldn’t want to go on holiday with …
I like modern comforts such as electricity, hot and cold running water, and flush toilets. On that basis, I think I’ll avoid holidaying with any characters from historical fiction.
I live in New Zealand, so I’ve already visited most of the locations in Close to You by Kara Isaac. I’d definitely recommend a holiday with Alison Shire and Jackson Gregory if you’re a Lord of the Rings fan … or if you just want to visit New Zealand.
I do enjoy a good road trip, and a few road trip novels do spring to mind:
I recently read an advance copy of The Summer of Yes by Courtney Walsh, and it’s one of the best books I’ve read in a long time. Kelsey and Georgina have a lot in common (although neither wants to admit it). I enjoyed tagging along on their fictional road trip, especially once we met Georgina’s son …
Another road trip that springs to mind is The Roads We Follow by Nicole Deese. Raegan Farrow heads off on a cross-country road trip with her country music star mother, her sisters, and a driver. They’re a fascinating family, and it’s sounds like a great trip.
And one more: The Billionaire’s Teacher by Elizabeth Maddrey is set in the Caribbean, so features lots of warm islands and no pesky restrictions on budget. It also happens to be a great romance.
Overall, I think my pick is Wes and Sunny in the Caribbean, simply because of the location.
So those are my picks.
What about you? Which character would you most like to go on holiday with?
Twenty-nine-year-old Jade Jessup is jobless, homeless, and owns little more than the fancy finance executive wardrobe she wore before she found out her fiancé and his father (her boss) were using her client’s money to finance their extravagant lifestyles through a giant Ponzi scheme.
Jade gets a shot at redemption when Berenice “Benny” Alderidge and her foster son, handsome playboy Bridger Rosenblum, invite her to join them on their roadtrip down Route 66, following Benny’s trip close to seventy years earlier.
The story starts with a Prologue which, honestly, was a little confusing. It’s one of those prologues that turns out to be from somewhere in the middle of the story, but it took a while to work out it was the future.
The story then moves between three timelines: Jade’s present story (told in first person present tense), Jades’s past story (also told in first person), and Benny’s past story (told in first person past tense). I enjoy stories told in first person, but I know not everyone does.
The Prologue, combined with the three timelines, made the story a little hard for me to follow at first.
Perhaps I should have read the book description …
The book description makes it quite clear there are three stories in this novel. However, I did work out the present journey was echoing the past—Benny’s original road trip to Hollywood with the man she later married, and Jade’s less-happy road trip as a child, when she was kidnapped by her father. As such, the time shifts were a clever way of sharing the information and showing the progression of the three stories.
Once I got into the flow of the story, I loved it.
Jade, Benny, and Bridger all had their own emotional journeys. I was fascinated by Bridger’s backstory—I hadn’t known about the Samoan adoption scandal before, and it’s horrible to think of all the people hurt through the lies. I love it when I read a novel and learn something new like this.
Bridger’s backstory was fascinating and tragic, but it came out fairly easily and naturally through the story. Jade’s backstory was fascinating and tragic in a different way, but was far harder to uncover, even though Jade was the main point of view character. It’s a testament to Janine Rosch’s strong writing that it never felt like Jade was hiding information from the reader, even though there were some big surprises in her story.
The writing was excellent, and while the novels wasn’t overtly Christian (in that there was no on-the-page prayers or church services), the story had definite Christian themes. And for the romance lovers out there, there is also a romance subplot …
Recommended for fans of dual (or triple) timeline fiction who don’t mind first person present tense.
Thanks to Revell Books and NetGalley for providing a free ebook for review.
About Janine Rosche
Janine Rosche is the author of the Madison River Romance and Whisper Canyon series of novels. Prone to wander, she finds as much comfort on the open road as she does at home. This longing to chase adventure, behold splendor, and experience redemption is woven into her stories. When she isn’t traveling or writing novels, she teaches family life education courses, produces The Love Wander Read Journal, and takes too many pictures of her sleeping dogs.
How far would you go to fix the mistakes you’ve made and regain the trust you lost? For Jade Jessup, the answer is 2,448 miles. Once one of Chicago’s significant financial advisors, Jade lost her credibility when her fiancé (and coworker) stole millions of dollars from their clients in a Ponzi scheme. Now she’s agreed to help one of them–an aging 1960s Hollywood starlet named Berenice “Benny” Alderidge–seek financial restoration.
Jade sets off along Route 66 with Benny and her handsome adult foster son, Bridger, who is filming a documentary retracing the 1956 trip that started the love story between Benny and her recently deceased husband, Paul. Listening to Benny recount her story draws Jade into memories of her own darker association with Route 66, when she was kidnapped as a child by a man the media labeled a monster–but she remembers only as daddy.
Together, all three of these pilgrims will learn about family, forgiveness, and what it means to live free of the past. But not before Jade faces a second staggering betrayal that changes everything.
It’s First Line Friday! That means it’s time to pick up the nearest book and quote the first line. I’m quoting from Darkness Calls the Tiger, the latest release from Jaynre Tromp. It’s set in Burma during World War II. That’s a new-to-me setting for Christian fiction, so I’m looking forward to getting stuck in.
Here’s the first line from the Chapter One:
What’s the book nearest you, and what’s the first line?
About Darkness Calls the Tiger
After the attack on Pearl Harbor, Imperial Japan devours the southern portion of Burma, intent on taking over mainland Asia. Unaware of the coming darkness, Kailyn Moran drifts in her role as the only daughter of a widowed missionary. As whispers of war snake through the Kachin mountains, Kai’s father is convinced God will protect the mission. He entrusts the village to her and the kind yet inexperienced new missionary, Ryan McDonough, while he makes routine visits to neighboring villages.
War descends like a tempest upon the mountain peaks, and an unbreakable bond forms between Kailyn and Ryan as they unite to provide solace to both villagers and the flood of refugees. Despite their tireless efforts, a brutal enemy shatters almost everything they love, pushing Kailyn to embark on a path of unrestrained vengeance.
Afraid he’s losing the woman he loves, Ryan fights to protect Kai from the deadly consequences of her choices. But in the face of destruction, can he convince her of the power and freedom of forgiveness?
A few different titles sprang to mind this year: two I’ve read and reviewed recently, two I’ve read and will review soon, and two I read years ago which feature my favourite US state: Hawai’i.
The Roads We Follow by Nicole Deese
The Roads We Follow by Nicole Deese might not count – it’s a road trip across the US, but it isn’t really a holiday. But it’s a great story!
As the youngest daughter of a country music legend, Raegan Farrow longs to establish an identity away from the spotlight and publish her small-town romances under a pen name. But after her dream is dashed when she won’t exploit her mother’s fame to further her own career, she hears a rumor from a reliable source regarding a tell-all being written about the Farrow family. Making matters worse, the unknown author has gone to great lengths to remain anonymous until publication.
Raegan chooses to keep the tell-all a secret from her scandal-leery sisters as they embark on a two-week, cross-country road trip at their mother’s request and makes it her mission to expose the identity of the author behind the unsanctioned biography. But all is complicated when she discovers their hired bus driver, Micah Davenport, has a hidden agenda of his own–one involving both of their mothers and an old box of journals. As they rely on each other to find the answers they seek, the surprising revelations they unearth will steer them toward their undeniable connection and may even lead them down the most unexpected of paths.
A 500-mile tandem bicycle ride isn’t my idea of a fun holiday, but Becca Kinzer turns it into a fun story.
She’s perfectly content leading a quiet life in her small hometown. He’s an adventurer with unquenchable wanderlust. The two couldn’t be any more opposite if they tried. But a tandem bicycle and a 500-mile road trip just might change all that.
After a failed engagement and her mother’s battle with cancer, Charlotte Carter’s life is finally turning around now that she’s landed a dream job teaching music. What she didn’t see coming was the imminent closure of the school’s music program. She’s determined to save it, even if it means getting creative. There’s no way she’s chalking this up as just another failure in her book of recent embarrassments.
Zach Bryant is back in town just long enough to see his brother Ben get married and then he’s off traveling the world again. He never imagined he’d run into Charlotte Carter, his brother’s ex-fiancé, or that everyone would believe he and Charlotte are an item. He certainly didn’t dream he’d end up riding a tandem bicycle hundreds of miles with her in an attempt to raise funds for a defunct music program, but how can he say no when the prize money would help him out of his financial predicament too?
Charlotte is sure she can set aside her differences with Zach long enough to cross the finish line and win the giant cash prize . . . can’t she? A few hundred miles in, she’s questioning her deeply held assumptions about Zach and wondering if maybe tandem biking is only the start of their biggest adventure yet.
An unusual and unpredictable unplanned holiday leads to Kelsey having a total rethink on life … and love. My full review will publish in July, but I couldn’t help myself – I had to read this as soon as I got my review copy!
Sometimes you’re so busy writing other people’s stories that you can lose the plot of your own.
This wasn’t how Kelsey Worthington’s day was supposed to go. She wasn’t supposed to be picking up Starbucks for her smarmy boss. She wasn’t supposed to get hit by a car that jumped the curb. And she certainly wasn’t supposed to wake up in a hospital room next to Georgina Tate—the legendary matriarch of New York City businesswomen.
Kelsey and Georgina couldn’t be more opposite. Kelsey’s a dreamer, a writer who questions her own skill. And Georgina is a confident businesswoman whose years of shouldering her way into boardrooms and making her voice heard have made her far too outspoken for the faint of heart.
But now, when Georgina’s failing kidneys force her to face some big regrets about the way she’s lived her life, the two women recognize they share a common thread. Maybe it’s time to confront a few things. They must ask themselves: What if I said yes to everything I’ve always said no to?
With Georgina as her companion, Kelsey soon finds herself doing things she’s never done before. Eating street food. Swimming in the ocean. Matchmaking for Georgina with the help of Georgina’s handsome son. And writing her own romance—both in book form and in real life.
Join Jade, Benny, and Bridger on 2,448-mile road trip down the historic Route 66. Now I want to My full review will publish in May.
How far would you go to fix the mistakes you’ve made and regain the trust you lost? For Jade Jessup, the answer is 2,448 miles. Once one of Chicago’s significant financial advisors, Jade lost her credibility when her fiancé (and coworker) stole millions of dollars from their clients in a Ponzi scheme. Now she’s agreed to help one of them–an aging 1960s Hollywood starlet named Berenice “Benny” Alderidge–seek financial restoration.
Jade sets off along Route 66 with Benny and her handsome adult foster son, Bridger, who is filming a documentary retracing the 1956 trip that started the love story between Benny and her recently deceased husband, Paul. Listening to Benny recount her story draws Jade into memories of her own darker association with Route 66, when she was kidnapped as a child by a man the media labeled a monster–but she remembers only as daddy.
Together, all three of these pilgrims will learn about family, forgiveness, and what it means to live free of the past. But not before Jade faces a second staggering betrayal that changes everything.
I’ve visited Hawai’i several times, including two visits to the Big Island and one to Maui, but I’ve never been to Kauai. Hawai’i is my favourite US state – its the best of New Zealand combined with the best of the USA (although I haven’t yet visited Alaska yet, so that view may change …)
When a young woman stumbles out of the Hanalei Mountains on the island of Kauai with no memory of who she is or how she got there, Cameron Pierce reluctantly agrees to investigate the mysterious circumstances surrounding her arrival. As pieces begin to fall into place, he suspects her injuries were no accident, but he’s far from convinced she’s an innocent victim. And there’s that nagging feeling he’s seen her somewhere before….
Now known as Jade, the woman begins to recall fragments of what led her to this place, and she realizes the danger isn’t over. Jade and the cynical Hawaiian investigator attempt to reconstruct the threads of her identity, but the stakes are far higher than either expected.
I enjoyed the entire Glenbrooke series, but love the first three books the most. Whispers takes us hiking in Maui, and it was great to see the island through Teri’s story.
Version 1.0.0
Teri leaves Glenbrooke thinking her visit to see her sister on Maui is going to be her chance to reconnect with the Marine biologist she met last summer.
She’s surprised to run into an old high school love interest from Escondido. And who is this clumsy, endearing guy from Australia who keeps showing up? Three men want her attention. What a vacation this is turning out to be!
Only one of them makes it clear that he’s got what it takes to win her heart. How does Teri know? The answer comes to her in whispers.
Come to Glenbrooke – a quiet place where souls are refreshed.
In a departure from the two previous books in the Timeless series, For a Lifetime is told from two points of view: identical twins Grace and Hope. Both are time-crossers, with their consciousnesses living in two separate times: 1692 and 1912. They are both twenty-four years old, and the time is coming when they each must decide when to live the rest of their lives.
In 1692, they are the daughters of widowed Puritan Uriah Eaton.
They work in their father’s business, the Salem village ordinary (ordinary is a new-to-me term which apparently refers to the local tavern and eating establishment). Anyone who knows anything about American history will know this is a challenging time and place—the Salem witch trials are about to begin, with Grace and Hope stuck right in the middle.
In 1912, Grace is a journalist and Hope is an aviatrix.
It’s therefore no surprise that both women have already decided they will stay in 1912, where their time-crossing mother still lives, and where women are viewed as people with rights, not possessions under the control of their fathers and husbands.
The story starts in 1692, and is told from Grace’s point of view. Based on the previous stories, I was expecting the whole story to be from Grace’s point of view so was a little discombobulated when I realised the 1912 portions were being told from Hope’s point of view. The two women have very different characters and very different voices, so it was easy enough to tell the difference once I realised they were each telling a portion of the story (the identity of the point of view characters was clearly identified at the beginning of each chapter. However, I have developed a habit of not reading chapter titles, which is why I missed that vital information).
I did find the beginning of the story a little frustrating, particularly as I related to Grace’s character best. I found Hope to be more impetuous and insensitive, almost to the point of being selfish (although that view did change in the second half of the story).
I wondered for a time if I was going to enjoy For a Lifetime as much as I enjoyed the previous books, When the Day Comes and In This Moment. My worries were unfounded: although For a Lifetime took longer to get going than the earlier books, it got better and better as the story progressed, and the ending was both unexpected and excellent.
The book has a romance element, although this isn’t as strong as in the previous stories.
In This Moment forced Maggie to choose between three different men in three timelines, while Grace and Hope had a different choice: each other. While they each do have a romance, the story was more about the relationship between the sisters than their relationships with the men in their lives.
The two historic periods were also interesting to read about. I’m relatively familiar with the history of aviation, but less familiar with the history of the Salem witch trials. On that basis, I enjoyed the 1912 side of the story most, but learned more from the 1692 side. I certainly would not have wanted to live in Puritan America, which came across as religious yet godless … perhaps much like the modern world.
For a Lifetime will be a must-read for anyone who has read the earlier books in the series.
However, it is a standalone story so you don’t have to read the other two in order to enjoy this. (But if you read For a Lifetime, you will absolutely want to go back and read In This Moment, which is the story of Grace and Hope’s mother, and that will ensure you want to read the first book, which is the story of their grandmother).
The best part is finding out the Timeless series is going to continue!
I had thought it was going to be a trilogy, so was a little disappointed to realise this would be the final story. But the end of the book has an excerpt from Across the Ages, which will release in November 2024! I’m looking forward to it already. I hear there will also be a book #5 in 2025.
Thanks to Bethany House and NetGalley for providing a free ebook for review.
About Gabrielle Meyer
Gabrielle lives on the banks of the Upper Mississippi River with her husband and four children. As an employee of the Minnesota Historical Society, she fell in love with the rich history of her state and enjoys writing historical and contemporary novels inspired by real people, places, and events. The river is a constant source of inspiration for Gabrielle, and if you look closely, you will find a river in each of her stories.
When Gabrielle is not writing, you might find her homeschooling her children, cheering them on at sporting and theatrical events, or hosting a gathering at her home with family and friends.
Grace and Hope are identical twin sisters born with the ability to time-cross together between 1692 Salem, Massachusetts, and 1912 New York City. As their twenty-fifth birthday approaches, they will have to choose one life to keep and one to leave behind forever–no matter the cost.
In 1692, they live and work in their father’s tavern, where they must watch helplessly as the witch trials unfold in their village, threatening everyone. With the help of a handsome childhood friend, they search for the truth behind their mother’s mysterious death, risking everything to expose a secret that could save their lives–or be their undoing.
In 1912, Hope dreams of becoming one of the first female pilots in America, and Grace works as an investigative journalist, uncovering corruption and injustice. After their parents’ orphanage is threatened by an adversary, they enter a contest to complete a perilous cross-country flight under the guidance of a daring French aviator.
The sisters have already decided which timeline they will choose, but an unthinkable tragedy complicates the future they planned for themselves. As their birthday looms, how will they determine the lives–and loves–that are best for both of them?
It’s First Line Friday! That means it’s time to pick up the nearest book and quote the first line. I’m sharing from A Surefire Love, the first book in a new series by Emily Conrad. Here’s the first line from the Chapter One:
What’s the book nearest you, and what’s the first line?
About A Surefire Love
Small towns have long memories, and generations of dysfunction burned Blaze’s reputation before her own faults could.
Twenty-six and guardian to her preteen sister, Blaze is determined to give her sister the stability she never had. Her church is a big part of that plan, until a run-in with an uptight youth pastor derails their progress. Blaze goes toe-to-toe with a man who looked down on her back in high school—and volunteers for his team of youth leaders.
A survivor of the wreck that took his high school basketball coach, Anson sacrificed a promising athletic career to pick up Coach Voss’s legacy. Now a youth pastor, his mission to offer students real hope clashes with a leadership board that’s more concerned about numbers.
As his allies turn their backs and Blaze explores the impact of undiagnosed ADHD on the patterns of her life, Blaze and Anson find unexpected support in each other. Perhaps her preconceived ideas about him are as far off base as his are about her and her sister. When scandal ignites around them, will their love prove to be surefire—or crash and burn?
Interior designer Emma Reynolds is doing great after a bad year … until her twenty-week scan reveals her baby boy has semi-lobar holoprosencephaly, a brain abormality that causes seizures, developmental delays, diabetes, and other health problems. Despite the obvious challenges ahead, she is determined to keep her baby.
EMT supervisor Ben Sullivan sees the distraught woman as he’s delivering a patient to the hospital. He can’t do anything but pray … but God brings them back together when he is the EMT who answers the emergency call for Theo’s birth.
Mason Hughes is a high school student with no idea what to do with his life. He’s less than pleased when his mother signs him up to shop for Emma once a week. He’d rather be playing Minecraft or Fortnite and building his blog. In that, he echoed the preferences of many teenage boys.
As the title implies, Ben is the real hero of this story.
He’s a Christian, an EMT (always a great start), and a genuinely good guy. His main fault is that he likes to be in charge, which makes it difficult for him to give his backup EMTs the freedom to actually do their jobs. However, his desire to take charge never crosses the line into being controlling,and I appreciated that.
Mason also turns out to be a hero in his own way, mostly because of Ben’s encouragement and good example.
I will admit to some apprehension from the opening line—so many novels have All the Bad Things happen to their characters that I was afraid Emma was going to lose her job and have to figure out not only how to raise a child with special healthcare needs on her own, but have to do it with no job and no medical insurance. Fortunately that turned out not to be the case.
I found Emma’s character a little confusing at first. Where is her baby’s father? He’s not mentioned, which got me wondering why not. The question was eventually addressed, but that did mean, it took a little longer for me to warm to Emma as a character. She came into her own once Theo was born and we could see her inspirational tenacity and determination to keep Theo alive.
What I especially liked was the character growth from each of the three main characters, especially Emma and Mason. In some ways, they are different sides of the same coin: Emma is the single parent raising her son alone who still needs to forgive herself and accept God’s forgiveness, and Mason is the son of a single mother who needs to forgive the father who abandoned him.
Emma’s Hero was inspired by a real-life baby.
It’s great to see Christian fiction—especially Christian romance—that deals with some of the hard situations and show we can rely on God to bring us through.
Recommended for readers who want a solid Christian romance and aren’t going to be triggered by a baby with a life-threatening condition.
Thanks to Mountain Brook Ink for providing a free ebook for review.
About Carrie Walker
Carrie Walker lives in Michigan with her husband and seven children. From her ten years serving as a high school youth minister, adventures around the globe, and raising a family, many stories have been knit within her heart.
As an avid reader she pens what she loves to read, contemporary stories that bring hope to a hurting world. Weaving romance among story lines of characters in struggle, she aims to show God working in all situations. When she’s not playing board games with her husband, shuttling kids in the Walker bus or wishing for snow, Carrie can be found at the keyboard bringing those stories to life.
Carrie’s writing has been recognized in many contests. Her debut novel, Emma’s Hero, placed in the ACFW Crown Award, Monroe Walton Center for the Arts Award, and won the 2020 ACFW First Impressions Contest.
“God won’t give me more than I can handle? I’m pretty sure He just did.”
After a year of loss and bad choices distance Emma Reynolds from her lifelong beliefs, she finds herself pregnant and alone at a twenty-week ultrasound, hearing the words “incompatible with life.” When her son, Theo, survives birth, she fights to give him the best care possible. As each day passes, Emma’s love for Theo grows—along with her fear of losing him. She can’t understand why God allows her son to suffer.
Seventeen-year-old blogger, Mason Hughes, feels lonely and worthless after his father left their family years ago. When he ignores his mother’s push to “contribute to society,” she volunteers him to help Emma each week. Wishing he’d applied for any other job, Mason has no choice but to grocery shop and practice his rusty social skills with a mother and son he doesn’t know.
Paramedic Ben Sullivan has earned himself the title of “most eligible” bachelor among his friends as they continually set him up on blind dates. While he’d love to avoid the uncomfortable events, his heart can’t help but seek the one thing missing in his life—a marriage like his parents have. If only he could find the woman himself.
As Theo’s tiny life connects them to each other, their loneliness breaks under the love of community, and they will never be the same.
Most of the time I read to be entertained, not to think. But some novels manage to do both at the same time, which is great.
Kaleidoscpe Eyes by Karen Ball introduced me to synesthesia, which colours (literally) the way some people see. I wonder if this is where the New Age ideas around auras came from.
Raegan Farrow is the much-younger sister of control freak Adele, who is the CEO of the family record label, and distraught and depressed Hattie, whose slimy ex has taken their two children to Greece for the summer to meet his much-younger fiancé’s family. Raegan also works for the family record label as general assistant and gopher, constantly being ordered about by Adele and generally taking care of Hattie.
But Raegan has a secret dream to write.
She has actually completed a young adult fantasy novel that she submits for publication. The publisher is interested because of her family name, but Raegan wants to publish under a pen name—she’s had enough of being part of the family rather than her own person.
I admired Raegan for not taking the easy way out, of wanting her writing to sell and be read because of the story, not because she was trading on her mother’s name … even when that meant her own dream was less likely to come to fruition. I admired her loyalty to her family and her willingness to stay with them and do the hard things, even when that meant she wasn’t following her own dreams.
Luella is singing at Watershed, a music festival in California. Almost at the last minute, she upends Adele’s careful plans with a decision the family will take a road trip from Nashville to California, and impels her daughters to join her.
Micah Davenport has recently lost his mother to kidney disease.
That would be devastating enough. What is even more devastating is the discover that he and his brother are only half-brothers, which leads Micah to volunteer to be Luella’s bus driver for her cross-country road trip in the hope that will help him discover the identity of his biological father.
Micah was born to be a therapist and is a great character because his professional expertise and consequent emotional maturity provides the perfect foil to the messed-up Farrow family. But he’s not perfect–he’s currently unemployed and searching for his identity and purpose in life in exactly the same way as Raegan.
The story is alternately narrated by Raegan, the youngest daughter of country music icon Luella Farrow, and Micah Davenport, oldest son of Luella’s once-best friend and onstage co-star, Lynn Hershel-Davenport. Raegan and Micah’s stories are both told in first person, which was a little confusing at first (and which I know some people don’t like). If that’s you … this story is worth the effort.
The main story is about search for identity.
Micah is searching for his biological father and Raegan is searching for her identity as someone other than the daughter of Luella Farrow. But there is also a sweet slow-build romance between Raegan and Micah (after a slightly awkward case of mistaken identity, where Micah is attracted to Raegan before realising she could be his half-sister, and his subsequent relief when he finds out she can’t be).
I particularly liked the faith elements of the story.
All the main characters are Christians with a deep level of faith that underpins what they say and do. They start each day of their travels with prayer, but their faith is understated and personal—this isn’t a rah-rah-rah-come-to-Jesus story, but the faith elements are clear.
The story is a kind-of sequel to The Words We Lost, with a common underlying story element, but with a completely different setting and only one character in common—Chip, the acquisitions editor at Fog Harbor Books. (I like Chip, and I hope he gets his own story at some point.)
Overall, The Roads We Follow is an excellent story that’s part family relationships, part romance, and all Christian. Recommended.
Thanks to Bethany House for providing a free ebook for review.
About Nicole Deese
Nicole Deese is an award-winning author who specializes in humorous, heartfelt, and hope-filled novels. When not working on her next contemporary romance, she can usually be found reading one by a window overlooking the inspiring beauty of the Pacific Northwest. She currently resides with her happily-ever-after hubby, two sons, and a princess daughter in Idaho.
As the youngest daughter of a country music legend, Raegan Farrow longs to establish an identity away from the spotlight and publish her small-town romances under a pen name. But after her dream is dashed when she won’t exploit her mother’s fame to further her own career, she hears a rumor from a reliable source regarding a tell-all being written about the Farrow family. Making matters worse, the unknown author has gone to great lengths to remain anonymous until publication.
Raegan chooses to keep the tell-all a secret from her scandal-leery sisters as they embark on a two-week, cross-country road trip at their mother’s request and makes it her mission to expose the identity of the author behind the unsanctioned biography. But all is complicated when she discovers their hired bus driver, Micah Davenport, has a hidden agenda of his own–one involving both of their mothers and an old box of journals. As they rely on each other to find the answers they seek, the surprising revelations they unearth will steer them toward their undeniable connection and may even lead them down the most unexpected of paths.
It’s First Line Friday! That means it’s time to pick up the nearest book and quote the first line. I’m quoting from The Mapmaker’s Secret, the new release from Australian author Jennifer Mistmorgan. Here’s the first line from the Chapter One:
What’s the book nearest you, and what’s the first line?
About The Mapmaker’s Secret
May 1943, Lincolnshire, England:
Grace Deroy’s family estate is requisitioned by the Air Ministry, so she takes a job in the new cartography facility to protect what used to be her home, a small cog in the vast machinery of war. When the new American intelligence officer Jack Marsden arrives, she has no idea he’s been sent to spy on her.
Jack has little experience with espionage, but his real task is simple enough: get close to Grace and find out whether she’s leaking Air Ministry secrets to the enemy. It should be a dream assignment, but Jack finds himself tongue tied and awkward every time he comes in contact with his target––a sure sign he’s falling in love.
Grace isn’t the Nazi sympathizer that MI5 suspects, but that doesn’t mean she’s got nothing to hide. When compromising stories about her appear in the press, Grace fears someone she trusts––someone working in her own home––is trying to expose her. Can she find out who before all the shameful secrets from her past are laid bare? And can she trust this quiet new American to help her work out who the real traitor is?
Book 2 of the On Victory’s Wings series, The Mapmaker’s Secret is easily read as a standalone novel.
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After the attack on Pearl Harbor, Imperial Japan devours the southern portion of Burma, intent on taking over mainland Asia. Unaware of the coming darkness, Kailyn Moran drifts in her role as the only daughter of a widowed missionary. As whispers of war snake through the Kachin mountains, Kai’s father is convinced God will protect the mission. He entrusts the village to her and the kind yet inexperienced new missionary, Ryan McDonough, while he makes routine visits to neighboring villages.
Carrie Walker lives in Michigan with her husband and seven children. From her ten years serving as a high school youth minister, adventures around the globe, and raising a family, many stories have been knit within her heart.
Nicole Deese is an award-winning author who specializes in humorous, heartfelt, and hope-filled novels. When not working on her next contemporary romance, she can usually be found reading one by a window overlooking the inspiring beauty of the Pacific Northwest. She currently resides with her happily-ever-after hubby, two sons, and a princess daughter in Idaho.
