Tag: Contemporary Christian Romance

How long’s it been since you shared a sermon only you could preach.

Book Review | A Surefire Love by Emily Conrad

Blaze Astley has raised her half-sister practically since birth, and certainly since their mother died four years ago. Now she’s volunteering to help out in youth groups after Mercy came home crying after the youth pastor told her off.

Anson Marsh is the youth pastor who has his own set of problems, not least of which is an elder who wants to see him fired.

While I do have some sympathy for an elder who wonders why the church employs a full-time paid youth pastor to run a youth group with only a dozen attendees, it’s not the youth pastor’s job to grow the entire church. I also felt the head pastor didn’t stand up for Anson as much as he could have, particularly since the elder seems more focused on growing a social club than a church.

So the story has been set up as a romance between Blaze and Anson, with some obvious issues for them to overcome … not least that Anson is currently dating someone else.

I’m not a big fan of romances where one of the main characters is dating someone else, even if they do break up. I also wasn’t keen on the reason for the breakup–because Anson and Sydney didn’t have “passion”. The foundation of a strong Christian marriage is a strong shared faith, not passion. Too often, passion burns and dies, and divorce ensues.

During the story, Blaze and her sister Mercy were both tested for and diagnosed with ADHD.

The story did a great job of showing how the disorder presents differently in females than in males, the difficulty in getting a formal diagnosis, but the difference a diagnosis can make.

All in all, while I thought A Surefire Love did a great job of showing a great redemption story and the challenges of ADHD (and it certainly had some thought-provoking lines), I didn’t enjoy this nearly as much as I enjoyed The Rhythms of Redemption Romances.

Thanks to the author for providing a free ebook for review.

About Emily Conrad

Author Photo - Emily Conrad

Emily Conrad writes Christian fiction. She lives in Wisconsin with her husband and two 60+ pound rescue dogs. Some of her favorite things (other than Jesus and writing, of course) are coffee, walks, and road trips to the mountains.

Find Emily Conrad online at:

Website | Facebook | Instagram | Twitter

About A Surefire Love

Small towns have long memories, and generations of dysfunction burned Blaze’s reputation before her own faults could.

A Surefire Love

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?

Fans of Nicole Deese and Melissa Tagg will fall in love with this opposites-attract romance about faith, second chances, and sacrificial love.

Find A Surefire Love online at:

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Click here to check out my Amazon shop for my top picks in Christian fiction!

Being adopted was a gift I'd never take for granted. But I was tired of letting it keep me from living life.

Book Review | A Run at Love (Love in the Spotlight #2) by Toni Shiloh

A Run At Love is another winner from Toni Shiloh.

At twenty-eight years old, Piper McKinney has finally gained her independence from her somewhat overprotective adoptive parents, and bought her own farm … and her own racehorse. She’s hired Tucker Hale, her best friend and secret crush, as her trainer, hoping to take Dream to the Kentucky Derby.

A Run At Love has all the things I most love in contemporary Christian romance.

Friends-to-more plot? Check.

It’s one of my favourite tropes, and A Run At Love is the perfect illustration of why I love it so much.

Christian romance where the characters live their faith? Check.

It’s a strength of Toni Shiloh’s writing in general, and I loved the way Piper and Tucker both had spiritual lessons to learn.

Unique characters? Check.

Piper is an orphan adopted from Oloro Ile (a nod to Toni Shiloh’s In Search of A Prince), and has spent a lifetime navigating being the only African American in white-dominated spaces.

Unique plotline? Check.

There are a lot of Christian novels about cowboys and ranchers and their horses, but this is the first novel I recall reading about the Kentucky Derby, horseracing in general, and the issues in the industry.

And, of course, romance.

The friends-to-more plotline is obvious from the opening chapter and Toni Shiloh does a great job of bringing Piper and Tucker together late enough to build tension, but early enough to make for happy readers.

Recommended for fans of contemporary Christian romance, especially from BIPOC authors or with BIPOC characters.

Thanks to Bethany House and NetGalley for providing a free ebook for review.

About Toni Shiloh

tonishiloh_highresToni Shiloh is a wife, mom, and Christian fiction writer. Once she understood the powerful saving grace of the love of Christ, she was moved to honor her Savior.

She writes soulfully romantic novels to bring Him glory and to learn more about His goodness.

Before pursuing her dream as a writer, Toni served in the United States Air Force. It was there she met her husband. After countless moves, they ended up in Virginia, where they are raising their two boys.

When she’s not typing in imagination land, Toni enjoys reading, playing video games, ​making jewelry, and spending time with ​her family.

Find Toni Shiloh online at:

Website | Facebook | Instagram | Pinterest | Twitter

About A Run at Love

A CONTENDER RUNNING FOR THE ROSES

A Run at Love

As a Black woman in a field with little diversity, Piper McKinney is determined to make her mark on the horse-racing world. Raised on a Thoroughbred farm in Kentucky, Piper’s dream is for her horse to win the prestigious Kentucky Derby. With the help of her best friend and trainer, Tucker Hale, she gains national attention but must grapple with the complications that arise when a journalist delves into her past as a transracial adoptee.

A BEST FRIEND RACING FOR LOVE

In an effort to win Piper’s heart, Tucker formulates a plan to train Piper’s horse to victory, hoping to prove himself to her, her parents, and his own self-doubts. Then a shocking scandal hits the media, implicating both Piper and her parents, and she and Tucker will have to survive the onslaught to find their way to the winner’s circle–and each other.

A ROMANCE WORTH THE CHALLENGE

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First Line Friday

First Line Friday #337 | Her Part to Play by Jenny Erlingsson

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 Her Part to Play, the debut novel from Jenny Erlingsson, an American author of Nigerian descent who currently lives in Iceland. That’s a unique background!

Here’s the first line from the Chapter One:

Sleep didn't come easily to the brokenhearted. Which was ridiculous.

What’s the book nearest you, and what’s the first line?

About A Part to Play

Her Part to Play by Jenny ErlingssonDesperate for extra income after her mother’s passing, Adanne accepts a last-minute job as a makeup artist for a movie filming in her small Alabama hometown. She’s working to save her parents’ legacy and help her brother, but the money hardly seems worth having to face the actor who got her fired from her last job in Hollywood.

John Pope has made his share of mistakes over the years. But after turning his life over to God and enduring a messy breakup, he’s ready to start rebuilding his career. Imagine his surprise when the woman called in to cover for his usual makeup artist is a quiet but feisty newcomer on the set–and definitely not a fan.

Sparks of tension–and could that be attraction?–fly between them, but Adanne hates the spotlight, and John’s scheming manager has bigger plans for him than to end up with the humble makeup girl from the small-town South. Can these star-crossed lovers find their way to happiness? Or will the bright lights of Hollywood blind their eyes to what’s right in front of them?

Debut author Jenny Erlingsson’s diverse cast comes alive with faith, romance, and a touch of humor to create a story worthy of the big screen.

Find A Part to Play online at:

Amazon | BookBub | Goodreads

Click here to check out what my fabulous fellow FirstLineFriday bloggers are sharing today.

And you can click here to check out my previous FirstLineFriday posts.

Share your first line in the comments, and happy reading!

Don’t forget to click here to check out my Amazon shop for my top picks in Christian fiction!

Book Review | The Road Before Us by Janine Rosche

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 - author photo
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.

Find Janine Rosche online at:

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About The Road Before Us

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.

Find The Road Before Us online at:

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Don’t forget to click here to check out my Amazon shop for my top picks in Christian fiction!

First Line Friday

First Line Friday #335 | A Surefire Love (Many Oaks #1) by Emily Conrad

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?

Find A Surefire Love online at:

Amazon | BookBub | Goodreads

Click here to check out what my fabulous fellow FirstLineFriday bloggers are sharing today.

And you can click here to check out my previous FirstLineFriday posts.

Share your first line in the comments, and happy reading!

Don’t forget to click here to check out my Amazon shop for my top picks in Christian fiction!

One day sure made a difference. May fifteenth would go down in the books as the day her life changed.

Book Review | Emma’s Hero by Carrie Walker

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 WalkerCarrie 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.

Find Carrie Walker online at:

Website | Facebook | Instagram | TikTok

About Emma’s Hero

Emma's Hero“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.

Find Emma’s Hero online at:

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"I'm fine." "Feelings inside not expressed. That's what fine stands for. It's a cop-out people use when they want to avoid having a real conversation."

Book Review | The Roads We Follow (Fog Harbor 2) by Nicole Deese

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 DeeseNicole 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.

Find Nicole Deese online at:

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About The Roads We Follow

Cover image: The Roads We Follow by Nicole DeeseAs 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.

Find The Roads We Follow online at:

Amazon | BookBub | ChristianBook | Goodreads

Don’t forget to click here to check out my Amazon shop for my top picks in Christian fiction!

It’d be nice to spend one entire day where nobody looks at me like I’m on the verge of jumping off a bridge because my brother stole the love of my life.

Book Review | Love in Tandem by Becca Kinzer

Charlotte Carter is a music teacher who is about to lose her job because of a lack of funding. So it’s up to her to figure out how to earn the money over the summer. She also wants to avoid her ex-fiancé … which becomes a little more difficult when she meets his brother in somewhat awkward circumstances.

Things go from bad to worse when Charlotte finds herself and Zach signed up to complete a five-hundred mile tandem bicycle ride which, if they can complete the ride in ten days, will earn hem enough to fund the music programme. The catch is that the cycle ride is for couples, so Charlotte and Zach have to pretend to be dating. Pretending should be harder than it is.

Given the title and book description, I’d expected the race to start earlier in the book. As it was, we were a third of the way through the story before the race was introduced, which meant I spent a good portion waiting for the “actual” story to start. As a result, I found the early chapters didn’t capture my interest.

Love in Tandem is a rom-com with an emphasis on the comedy, from Charlotte and Zach’s initial meeting to the tandem bicycle ride. Becca Kinzer says in her author’s note that many of these scenes were inspired by her own long-distance tandem bicycle ride with her then boyfriend (now husband) in 2010. All I can say is that she hasn’t convinced me to take up the sport.

This is the first novel I’ve read by Becca Kinzer, and I thought it was her debut. It’s not—she is also the author of Dear Henry, Love Edith, which got excellent reviews when it released last year. I guess it’s time I put that on my to-read list.

Thanks to Tyndale House and NetGalley for providing a free ebook for review.

About Becca Kinzer

Becca KinzerBecca Kinzer lives in Springfield, Illinois where she works as a critical care nurse. When she’s not taking care of sick patients or reminding her husband and two kids that frozen chicken nuggets is a gourmet meal, she enjoys making up lighthearted stories with serious laughs. She is a 2018 ACFW First Impressions Contest winner, a 2019 Genesis Contest winner, 2021 Cascade Award winner, and all-around champion coffee drinker.

Find Becca Kinzer online at:

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About Love in Tandem

Cover image - Love in Tandem by Becca KinzerShe’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.

Find Love in Tandem online at:

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First Line Friday

First Line Friday #326 | The Roads We Follow by Nicole Deese

It’s First Line Friday! That means it’s time to pick up the nearest book and quote the first line. I’m reading an advance copy of the next book in Nicole Deese’s Fog Harbor series, The Roads We Follow. Here’s the first line from the Chapter One:

I breathe in the fresh dopamine hit of a dark roast brewing somewhere behind the coffee shop's counter and remind myself that turning off my GSP location from the family tracking app is not one of the seven deadly sins.

If that appeals to you, then you might also be interested in the first book in the series. The Words We Lost is currently on sale on Amazon for $1.99 for the Kindle version.

What’s the book nearest you, and what’s the first line?

 

About The Roads We Follow

Cover image: The Roads We Follow by Nicole DeeseAs 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.

Find The Roads We Follow online at:

Amazon | BookBub | ChristianBook | Goodreads

Click here to check out what my fabulous fellow FirstLineFriday bloggers are sharing today.

And you can click here to check out my previous FirstLineFriday posts.

Share your first line in the comments, and happy reading!

Don’t forget to click here to check out my Amazon shop for my top picks in Christian fiction!

When you go undercover, the line between what is real and what is acting can blur. Neither of you can allow that to happen.

Book Review | Rocky Road (Sons of Scandal #2) by Becky Wade

Rocky Road has one of the best boy-meets-girl scenes I’ve read. It’s the perfect rom-com introduction—unique, not cringey, and the perfect introduction to both characters: the staid and responsible Jude Camden, and the outgoing and impulsive (but secretly equally responsible) Gemma Clare.

Jude studied law before deciding he wanted to track down the bad guys, not defend them.

He’s now an FBI agent, and his new assignment has him working undercover with Gemma to collect evidence against her cousin, Cedric.

Gemma blames Cedric for her father ending up in jail, not least because Cedric is still walking free despite being the brains behind her father’s crimes. So she’s more than happy to post as Jude’s girlfriend to get him close to Cedric if that means Cedric will face the consequences of his actions.

Of course, the one rule of undercover work is that the couple aren’t to form any kind of attachment. Jude doesn’t think this will be a problem—he’s never met a rule he can’t follow. Gemma is not so sure … and that’s going to ruffle Jude’s calm demeanor.

One of the things Becky Wade is famous for is the banter between her characters, and Rocky Road is full of banter. Gemma and Jude were perfect opposites and that meant they were each the perfect foil for the other … which leads to lots of wonderful banter. But there’s also some serious points, especially when it comes to matters of faith.

I appreciated the way Becky Wade crossed the boundary from fun to faith without it seeming forced.

I was about a third of the way through the story before I realised the connection between this story and Memory Lane, the first in Becky Wade’s Sons of Scandal series. For those who read and enjoyed Memory Lane, we get enough of Jeremiah and Remy to keep us interested, as well as more of an introduction to Max, the third Camden son… who is clearly being positioned to be the hero of the next book. I can’t wait.

Recommended for contemporary Christian romance fans, especially those who like an element of rom com and suspense.

Thanks to the author and NetGalley for providing a free ebook for review.

About Becky Wade

Author Photo Becky WadeBecky is the Carol and Christy award winning author of heartwarming, humorous, and swoon-worthy contemporary inspirational romances.

During her childhood in California, Becky frequently produced homemade plays starring her sisters, friends, and cousins. These plays almost always featured a heroine, a prince, and a love story with a happy ending. She’s been a fan of all things romantic ever since.

These days, you’ll find Becky in Dallas, Texas failing to keep up with her housework, trying her best in yoga class, carting her three kids around town, watching TV with her Cavalier spaniel on her lap, hunched over her computer writing, or eating chocolate.

You can find Becky Wade online at:

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About Rocky Road

Cover image - Rocky Road by Becky WadeFBI Agent Jude Camden handles every aspect of his job with by-the-book professionalism. There’s no reason why his latest assignment—which calls for him to pose as the boyfriend of perfumer Gemma Clare—should be any different.

Except Gemma is different. She’s creative, bold, and feisty. And as soon as she meets Jude, she wants to loosen him up, wrinkle his perfect shirts, and test every ounce of his towering self-control.

The FBI has an iron-clad rule against romances between those working together on operations. Jude’s never met a rule he didn’t respect. But adhering to this one is going to be tough because, as time goes by, he finds Gemma more and more irresistible.

Buckle up! It’s going to be a rocky road.

Find Rocky Road online at:

Amazon | BookBub | Goodreads

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