Tag: Book Review

Book Review: A Plain Death by Amanda Flower

From USA Today Bestselling Author Amanda Flower aka Isabella Allan

Chloe Humphrey is a twenty-four-year old Masters graduate, a computer geek with a pet cat called Gigabyte. She counts two suitcases full of obsolete computer parts among her most precious possessions. She is moving from Cleveland to Appleseed Creek, Ohio, to take a two-year job as Director of Computer Services. As she is driving to her new home , she picks up an Amish woman who is being harassed by two men.

Nineteen-year-old Becky has recently left home, following an argument over her artistic desires. Chloe finds herself with an unexpected boarder who places her in the middle of a family argument.

Things get even more untidy when Becky borrows Chloe’s car without permission, and has an accident which kills the Amish Bishop. But what appears be a simple car accident turns into a murder investigation. Chloe works with Becky’s handsome older brother, Timothy, to determine the likely victim and investigate the accident.

I really enjoyed A Plain Death. It is a cozy mystery set in an area with significant Amish and Mennonite populations, and involves both Plain and Englisher characters. I find this more interesting than a story centred solely around the Amish. There was a good level of suspense, and a little romance as well.

All that was missing was … um, no. That would be a spoiler. I look forward to reading more about Chloe, Timothy and Appleseed Creek in future books.

Thanks to B&H Books and NetGalley for providing a free ebook for review. You can find out more about Amanda Flower at her website, and you can read the introduction to A Plain Death below:

Review: Ring of Secrets by Roseanna M White

Have you signed up for my Newsletter? If so, you’ll already have received my entirely biased list of 50 novels from my favourite Christian authors. If not, sign up on the right! Today I’m reviewing Ring of Secrets by Roseanna M White, one of my favourite historical romance novelists.

Introducing The Culper Ring …

Book CoverWinter Reeves’ pretty smile and vacant expression belie her intelligence. She’s a spy for the Culper Ring, collecting information in 1779 New York, a British stronghold. She must hide her true allegiance from everyone except Robbie Townsend, her childhood friend, and Freeman, a loyal family servant who is treated no better than a slave by her Loyalist grandparents.

Bennet Lane is a Yale professor sent to New York to try and find the source of the intelligence leaks. He meets Winter and is attracted to her—he believes that she is more than she appears. He also recognises that a courtship with the beauty will give him a reason for being in the company of New York’s elite, which should aid his quest.

Ring of Secrets is told in the third person from the viewpoints of Winter and Bennet, with occasional scenes from more minor characters (actually, I thought these were probably unnecessary). Winter and Bennet are both well-rounded and likeable characters. It is said that any character with an interesting secret has a good chance of coming alive, and this can certainly be said of both Winter and Robbie (her contact in the spy ring). There is also the added complication of Colonel Fairchild. Winter has cultivated a relationship with Fairchild in order to gain intelligence, but he wants a more permanent relationship.

Overall, I thought the romance was well-developed and the story excellent. I did find some of Winter’s prayers a bit long-winded (even for Christian fiction), and there were a couple of too-convenient coincidences towards the end.

I really enjoy historical fiction that is based on history, as Ring of Secrets is.

Even I, as a non-American, recognised some of the historical figures. A note at the end of the book enlightened me more about the founders of The Culper Ring, an organisation which may still exist—a rumour the CIA will neither confirm nor deny. Recommended.

Thanks to Harvest House and NetGalley for providing a free ebook for review. You can read the introduction to Ring of Secrets below:

Review: Five Days in May by Ninie Hammon

If you’ve signed up for my monthly Newsletter, you’ll already have receive my entirely biased list of 50 novels from my favourite Christian authors. If you haven’t, sign up on the right!

Today I’m reviewing Nine Days in May by Ninie Hammon. I also interviewed Ninie, and you can read our conversation here.

Five Days in May

Five Days in May starts with the end: the “Big Ugly”, a massive tornado that strikes the town of Graham, Oklahoma, in May 1963. It then goes back five days to show in detail the lives of the townspeople—who know nothing. The reader knows what’s coming, but the characters are tied up in their everyday lives. There is no warning of the coming disaster.

There are four main characters.

Princess (Emily Prentice) is due to be executed in five days for murdering her baby sister. Mac, the widowed preacher has lost his faith in God. Jonas, Mac’s father-in-law, is caring for a wife with “old-timers” disease. Joy, Mac’s teenage daughter, has her own set of problems. There are also some fascinating yet disturbing minor characters, including Wanda and Jackson.

The characters are excellent. Princess has a distinct and engaging voice, and who “sees” things in a way that’s a cross between the movies Green Mile and Being John Malkovich. Joy is a typical teenager, so tied up in her own problems that she can’t see the wood for the trees. Mac is the typical father of a teenage daughter, in that he can’t relate to her and can barely hold a conversation with her. (I could relate—their relationship had a lot of similarities to the relationship between my husband and my daughter.)

The plot was complex, a tangled web of relationships. While I did guess one of the major plot points before it was revealed, that only added to the tension. Was I right? What would the characters think and say when they found out? I was right, but the reaction of one character in particular surprised me. Another behaved exactly true to character … but justice was served in the end, albeit not in the tidy way I perhaps expected.

There are ‘rules’ of writing.

These rules say authors should limit the number of viewpoint characters, and shouldn’t use omniscient point of view. Hammon ‘broke’ both rules in Five Days in May, yet in such a way that it didn’t detract from the story. Rather, it added to the tension (especially given how unhinged some of these characters were …)

While Five Days in May isn’t specifically Christian fiction, there are strong Christian themes of love and sacrifice. These themes underpin a story that is, quite simply, brilliant in both concept and execution. Recommended.

Thanks to the author for providing a free ebook for review. You can find out more about Ninie Hammon at her website, or check out our interview. And here’s the book trailer:

And you can read the beginning below:

Book Review: Secrets She Kept by Cathy Gohlke

If you’ve signed up for my monthly Newsletter, you’ll already have receive my entirely biased list of 50 novels from my favourite Christian authors. If you haven’t, sign up on the right!

Today I’m reviewing Secrets She Kept by Cathy Gohlke.

Secrets She Kept

Goosebump Good

I was a little apprehensive about reading Secrets She Kept. I was one of the three judges who awarded Cathy Gohlke the 2015 Inspy Award for General Fiction, for her novel Saving Amelie. After reading a book as good as Saving Amelie, I’m always a little worried that the author’s next book won’t meet my high expectations.

Well, Secrets She Kept blew Saving Amelie out of the water. Yes, it was that good. Goosebump good.

It’s a split timeline story—the modern story is set in 1972. Hannah Sterling’s mother has just died, and Hannah finds her mother was never entirely honest with her. For starters, Lieselotte wasn’t Austrian . . .

No. Lieselotte was German, living in Germany during the rise of Hitler and during World War II.

The past story is Lieselotte’s, during those life-changing war years. It’s not a happy story, but as we journey with both Hannah and Lieselotte, we discover what made Lieselotte the distant mother she was. It was the secrets she kept.

The writing, the research, the characters, the plot—all were outstanding. It’s one of the few split timeline stories I’ve read where the past and the present stories were equally compelling. Recommended.

Thanks to Tyndale House Publishers and NetGalley for providing a free ebook for review. You can find out more about Cathy Gohlke at her website.

You can read the introduction to Secrets She Kept here:

Book Review: Dangerous Passage by Lisa Harris

If you’ve signed up for my monthly Newsletter, you’ll already have receive my entirely biased list of 50 novels from my favourite Christian authors. If you haven’t, sign up on the right!

Today I’m reviewing Dangerous Passage by Lisa Harris.

Dangerous Passage

Excellent Romantic suspense.

Atlanta Detective Avery North has just been called in from her day off to investigate a murder. The victim was a young Asian female with a magnolia tattoo. It’s similar to a recent unsolved crime, and Avery wants to solve this murder before another girl suffers the same fate.

She is assisted by her partner, Mitch, and by Jackson Bryant, the associate medical examiner for the force. Avery has recently started dating Jackson. He’s the first man she’s had more than one date with since her husband died three years ago.

Avery also has family issues. Her father has recently retired from the police force, her brother was murdered four months earlier, and his killer is still at large. She struggles to balance the competing demands of God, family, a full-time job and now dating, and this felt very real.

Dangerous Passage is the first book in the new Southern Crimes series, and I’ll certainly be keen to read more in the series.

It’s got everything I look for in Christian romantic suspense: intelligent and likeable yet imperfect characters, a strong plot with plenty of suspense and a developing romantic subplot, good writing, and an underlying Christian theme.

It deals with big issues—modern slavery—but manages to do it without getting too graphic. Recommended.

Thanks to Revell and NetGalley for providing a free ebook for review. You can find out more about Lisa Harris at her website.

You can read the opening chapter here:

Book Review: Swimming Through Clouds by Rajdeep Paulus

Book Review: Swimming Through Clouds by Rajdeep Paulus

Book Cover - Swimming Through Clouds by Rajdeep PaulusIf you’ve signed up for my monthly Newsletter, you’ll already have receive my entirely biased list of 50 novels from my favourite Christian authors. If you haven’t . . . sign up on the right!

Today I’m reviewing Swimming Through Clouds, the debut novel from author Rajdeep Paulus. It’s the first in a trilogy, and you’ll want to read them all.

Edgy YA Contemporary Fiction

Talia Grace Vanderbilt is the strange girl at school, the one all the lids call ‘emo’. She’s not. She’s just hiding a home life where her every move is controlled by her father, immigration lawyer Gerard Vanderbilt, and where there consequences for not meeting expectations. She is responsible for caring for her younger brother, Jesse, as their mother is dead.

The whole book is written in first person, from Talia’s point of view.

This means we don’t always get to see or understand the motivations of some of the other characters, like Jesse, Lagan and Gerard. What we do see is filtered through Talia’s understanding, and while she is an intelligent high school senior, her insular upbringing means she is naïve in some respects.
Logan is an equally interesting character. He goes out of his way to befriend Talia, allowing the relationship to develop slowly and almost entirely on her terms. Logan sticks by her, and it’s only late in the book when we begin to get an idea of why.
Gerard, Talia’s father, is an equally interesting character, although in totally the opposite respect. He is, without a doubt, one of the most chilling antagonists I’ve come across is fiction. His entire life is a secret from his family, so we find out very little about him. But what we are shown gives the plot a string of tension that kept me turning the page, even though I was afraid to find out what might be coming. It’s outstanding writing, both compelling and repulsive.

I was particularly impressed by the way backstory was handled.

A lot of writers don’t understand the need to layer it through the story. Swimming Through Clouds dropped hints, so that when when we finally found out about a particular incident from Talia’s past, we wanted to know the details. The author also managed to write some of these scenes so the reader ends up understanding the incident better then Talia does, which is impressive.
This is the first book in a series, and while it had a sense of closure in itself, there were several unanswered questions as well, leaving plenty to cover in the sequel. Swimming Through Clouds isn’t a Christian novel per se, in that God, Jesus and Christianity aren’t mentioned. However, a Christian reader will find Jesus in the story.

Recommended for fans of gritty YA fiction and authors such as Theresa Santy, Trudy Adams and Michelle Dennis Evans. Thanks to the author for providing a free ebook for review. You can find out more about Rajdeep Paulus at her website, and you can read the opening here:

Book Review: Feast for Thieves by Marcus Brotherton

If you’ve signed up for my monthly Newsletter, you’ll already have receive my entirely biased list of 50 novels from my favourite Christian authors. If you haven’t . . . sign up on the right! Today I’m reviewing Feast for Thieves, the debut novel from author Marcus Brotherton. It’s historical fiction with a definite masculine tone—a departure from my romance recommendations—but it’s got an excellent plot, and the writing is fabulous.

This review first appeared at Australasian Christian Writers.

I was asked to review Feast for Thieves months ago, and for some reason never got around to reading it. I was reminded of it again when I saw it was a finalist for the 2015 Christy Awards in the First Novel category, so thought I’d better open it up and see what I was missing.

I was hooked from the first page. And I don’t say that often.

Feast for Thieves begins with Crazy Ake and Rowdy Slater robbing the bank in the small town of Cut Eye, Texas, in the spring of 1946. It’s written in the first person, from Rowdy’s point of view, and right from that first line two things are evident. Marcus Brotherton can write. And Rowdy Slater isn’t your typical Christian fiction hero. After a near escape from death by drowning, Rowdy sees a vision …

Now, I’ve read other books with fantastic opening hooks which simply fizzled out after that one fast-paced and original scene. But Feast for Thieves just kept going. Rowdy decides to return the money, which causes the Sheriff of Cut Eye a few problems. Sure, it’s good that he solves the crime, but the expense of a trial is sure going to put a dent in the county budget, and his chances of re-election. And he’s got another problem: the town needs a preacher. So the Sheriff delivers Rowdy an ultimatum: spend a year as Cut Eye’s minister, or go to jail.

Rowdy knows nothing about God, preaching or running a church, but he knows enough about jail not to want to go back there. Besides, he’s got other problems, and he’s going to need a paying job to fix them. It’s an excellent plot, with lots of twists, yet all making perfect sense, and tied together with a cast of true characters.

Rowdy is an especially fascinating character. He’s a likable rogue, with a little too much rogue to make a good minister. But he has his own unique way of dealing with problems—serving in the Army during some of the toughest battles means he probably knows more about human nature than many preachers.

But what really made Feast for Thieves stand out from the opening line was the voice. Rowdy isn’t an educated man, and his language is earthy (but stops short of being vulgar). What makes him unique is his vocabulary and way of speaking—I could hear every word in that Texan accent, yet there wasn’t a single misspelled word to indicate accent.

There was an Author’s Note at the end in which Brotherton explained how he developed Rowdy’s voice, and it took extensive research and a deep knowledge of the time and place. It took a lot of effort to make Rowdy’s voice seem this easy and this authentic. Writers, if you are ever looking for a way of expressing dialect without apostrophes and misspellings, read Feast for Thieves.

Men, if you’ve been bemoaning the fact that too many Christian novels are sappy romances (especially Amish romances!), read Feast for Thieves. While I’m not a betting man (well, I’m not a man at all, not that you could tell based on the spam email I receive), I’d say even your non-Christian friends would enjoy this one.

But it’s not all manly stuff. There is a solid and real Christian message in here, and even whispers) a little romance. I can absolutely see why Feast for Thieves was nominated for a Christy Award. Recommended.

Thanks to River North fiction for providing a free ebook for review. You can find out more about Marcus Brotherton at his website (and make sure to read his article on why men need to read more fiction). You can read the first chapter here:

Book Review: The Goodbye Bride by Denise Hunter

We all have bad days, but none of mine have been like Lucy Lovett’s bad day: waking up in a strange diner with no idea how she got there, wearing a wedding dress she doesn’t remember buying, and wearing white shoes she remembers not buying because they were so expensive.

Now, that’s a bad day.

Zac Callahan’s bad day starts when he gets a telephone call from ex-fiance Lucy Lovett, the woman who ran out on him with no explaination seven months ago, just weeks before their wedding. Now she wants to pick up their relationship where it left off, because she has no memory of the last seven months. No memory of dumping Zac.

There is something about amnesia stories which intrigues me, and The Goodbye Bride was certainly intriging. Why had Lucy left Zac? How had she got herself engaged to someone else so quickly? And why was she in the diner in her wedding dress, when surely she should have been actually getting married?

It takes a while, but we eventually discover the answers to all these questions as we watch the exquisitely awkward dance between Lucy and Zac: Lucy, whose most recent memory is being head over heels in love with Zac, and Zac, who has spent the last seven months trying to get over Lucy.

The Goodbye Bride is a romance, but it’s also a story of rediscovery and of healing, as one character explains:

“Our reactions don’t always seem rational, but they make perfect sense in light of our experiences.”

As we discover more of Lucy’s past, her actions and reactions do make sense, but will it be too late for her and Zac?

The Goodbye Bride is the second book in Denise Hunter’s Summer Harbor series.

I read the first, Falling Like Snowflakes, thought it was excellent, especially the way it set up the whole series. I had hoped this second book would be Riley’s story . . . now I’m hoping the next book, Just a Kiss will be.

Thanks to Thomas Nelson and NetGalley for providing a free ebook for review. This review previously appeared at Australasian Christian Writers.

What Are You Reading?

My picks of the top Christian fiction for April 2016

What Christian fiction have you been reading over the last month? And what are you planning to read in May? Here are my top Christian fiction picks for April 2016, and a quick look at some of the books I’m planning to read and review in May.

Top Christian fiction April 2016

The best novels I’ve read over the last month were:

Close to You by Kara Isaac (click here to read my review. My extremely biased because it’s set in New Zealand review)

On the Edge by Theresa Santy (click here to read my review)

Sit Stay Love by Dana Mentink (click here to read my review)

Like Never Before by Melissa Tagg (click here to read my review)

I’m looking forward to my May reads: I’ve got Dressed for Death, the latest in Julianna Deering’s 1930’s-era detective series (a must-read for fans of Agatha Christie), Someone Like You by Victoria Bylin (one of my new favourite authors), and Her One and Only (contemporary Christian romance from Becky Wade).

What were the best novels you read in April? And what are you planning to read in May?

Book Review: The Bridesmaid’s Hero by Narelle Atkins

Amazon Description

Serena Blaxland’s job at her parents’ B&B in Snowgum Creek, Australia, is only temporary. Sparks fly when hire car driver Harry Westmore saves the beautiful pastry chef from disrupting her sister’s wedding day, but the opportunity of a lifetime threatens to push them apart. Can Harry and Serena’s love and faith overcome the obstacles in their path?

My Review

Okay, I’m slow. I’d wondered why Bridesmaid’s Hero was part of a box set was called Love Blossoms. There was the obvious: that each of the seven stories had a flower or garden theme. But I’ve only just realised that it’s also around spring blossoms, because was published as the Northern Hemisphere was coming into spring. Duh. It’s high summer here. Spring is almost a year away.

Anyway . . .

The Bridesmaid’s Hero is a standalone story which is part of a series (although after reading it, you might just want to check out more in the series).

It was a fun Aussie story featuring two characters who have to decide if their attraction and common faith is enough to overcome the obstacles in their way. I did have to question the sanity and intelligence of one of the characters: surely no normal person would call a snake ‘pretty’! (However, it did provide the hero with an early opportunity to be a hero.

It’s a short story, but a fun easy read for a bright summer day (or a long winter night).

Thanks to Narelle Atkins for providing a free ebook for review. Disclosure: I edited Bridesmaid’s Hero, so there might be a slight element of bias in my review . . . This review previously appeared at Iola’s Christian Reads.