I'm Reviewing Beneath Copper Falls by Colleen Coble at Suspense Sisters Reviews!

Today I'm reviewing Beneath Copper Falls by Colleen Coble over at Suspense Sisters Reviews. Click here to join me!

Book Review: You'll Think of Me by Robin Lee Hatcher

A Great Christian Romance

Eighteen-year-old Brooklyn Myers left her home town of Thunder Creek, Idaho, to marry Chad Hallston—who left her just months later, when she announced she was pregnant. She’s spent the last ten years trying to raise Alycia on her own, with the help of the neighbour who introduced her to a loving God:

A God who loved her, a Savior who had willingly died for her, a Spirit who renewed her mind and gave her strength.

Now Esther, her babysitter and best friend, is leaving town and Brooklyn has no idea how she’ll juggle working with caring for Alycia. Until she finds Chad is dead, and she’s been left the Hallston property back in Thunder Creek.

 Derek Johnston is looking forward to buying the ten-acre Hallston property from Chad, to expand his organic farm. He isn’t pleased when he finds Chad, his best friend, is dead and has left the land and house to Brooklyn. To complicate matters, Chad has also asked that Derek be the father Chad never was …

Yes, it’s a great set-up. And it’s a great novel.

I loved all the characters, even while they struggled to love themselves and each other. I loved the developing relationships, the witty dialogue:

“Don’t ask what I think of that oversight. I might tell you.” 

Or

“I’ve hardly seen you lately. When would I have had the chance to tell you?”
“Ever heard of a telephone?” 

That sounds like something my grandmother would have said. I also loved the way Brooklyn’s Christian faith was woven into the story:

She unfurled her hands, turning them palms up. Hands empty and open. And suddenly she understood that open hands were the only way she could receive anything new.

And I loved the way we discovered more about the histories of each character—Brooklyn, Derek, and Chad—as the story progressed, and the way those character histories explained and deepened their present journey.

Because this is a romance, and romance is all about the journey. 

 A great story of love and second chances. Recommended for contemporary romance fans.

 Thanks to Thomas Nelson and NetGalley for providing a free ebook for review.

I'm Reviewing Beyond Justice by Cara Putman at Suspense Sisters Reviews

I'm reviewing Beyond Justice by Cara Putman at Suspense Sisters Reviews! Click here to join me.

Book Review: The Memory of You by Catherine West

Thought-Provoking Christian Fiction

Natalie lost her twin sister in an accident when they were thirteen, and she’s been suffering the after-effects for the fifteen years since. Now she’s forced to return to the scene of the accident, her grandfather’s vineyard in California, where she reconnects with family and old friends.

And Natalie is disconnected. We see this early on—she's recently broken her engagement, she appears to have only one friend, and her relationship with her parents is distant, her relationship with her grandfather non-existent from having not seen him in fifteen years.

Natalie never knew what her mother was thinking, never knew how she felt. And couldn't imagine what it must be to live a life marked in half-finished sentences.

And

Her father would always find a flaw. Even her best was never good enough.

It’s rare to read a Christian novel about mental illness.

There are quite a few about returning soldiers suffering from PTSD. It’s even rarer to read a Christian novel where the heroine’s mental illness is treated with drugs. It’s as though taking drugs to treat a mental illness is seen as a sign of weakness, even though most of us happily pop pills for a headache, or get the flu jab every year. And don’t tell me physical pain is somehow different.

That painkiller isn’t stopping your body from hurting. It’s stopping your brain from telling you your body is hurting.

The Memory of You reunites two teenage almost-sweethearts fifteen years later. It's got the issues-driven emotional punch of other Catherine West titles I've read, but more of a focus on the developing relationship (aka romance) between Natalie and Tanner. It's a story of unearthing secrets, acknowledging truth, and finding reconciliation for both Natalie and Tanner.

It's a fascinating lesson in how wrong our assumptions can be—and how that can mess with our relationships, with God and with family and friends. 

Recommended. Thanks to Thomas Nelson and NetGalley for providing a free ebook for review. You can click here to find out more about Catherine West at her website.

Review: A Harvest of Thorns by Corban Addison

It's hard to know how to rate this book. I selected it from NetGalley for review because it was a new-to-me author (and a male!), in a genre I enjoy (legal thriller), and from Thomas Nelson (an imprint of HarperCollins Christian Publishing, which is important to me when I'm choosing books to review. Hey, my blog is called Iola's Christian Reads. The clue is in the title. I want to read and review Christian fiction).

As far as I can tell, this is Corban Addison's first book with Thomas Nelson. 

His previous highly acclaimed books were from a general market publisher. As this should have been, because A Harvest of Thorns is a general market legal thriller, not Christian fiction.

It has swearing and a rape scene and while a couple of characters go to church a couple of times, it's clearly because that's what people 'do'. The only people of faith were Muslim--and I have no objection to reading fiction about Muslims if that's what I'm looking to read. But in this case, it wasn't (see point above about the name of my blog!).

Okay, that's enough ranting about the genre. What about the book?

Some of the writing was outstanding, like the opening line:

The sparks danced like fireflies in the semi-dark of the storeroom. 

Some of the writing was below average, like the awkward dialogue tags. Some was overly intellectual. I have a pretty large vocabulary, but found myself stopping to look words up at least half a dozen times while reading (hurray for the Kindle dictionary!). I also found the structure awkward, as it flip-flopped back and forward in time, and was written in several Parts, each of which started at Chapter One.

Now to the actual plot and theme of the novel. 

Cameron Alexander is head legal counsel for Presto, a multi-billion-dollar retail chain, and the centre of a scandal involving a factory fire in Bangladesh. Cameron is responsible for putting out the resulting PR fire, and for improving internal compliance so Presto’s reputation isn’t compromised again. Almost two years later, Joshua Griswold is the journalist challenged with finding the truth behind the fire and Presto’s real involvement, and bringing it to the world’s attention through a legal case.

There were a lot of excellent things about A Harvest of Thorns. 

The author obviously has an extensive understanding of the law, business, global supply chains, and how easily things can go wrong (which makes me wonder how many other companies have such irregularities in their supply chains). It also reinforces that people do what you pay them to do, even if you tell them otherwise.

The underlying theme of A Harvest of Thorns is social justice: can we in the First World truly justify our never-ending consumption of cheap imported goods, made by sweatshop workers and slaves? And if we do have a problem (and as Christians, we should), what do we do? From this point of view, it’s certainly a novel that Christians should be reading.

Overall, I think this is a 4-star book. 

The writing ranged from average to outstanding. The plot, characters and overall theme were solid to excellent. But it wasn’t Christian fiction … which is what I expect from Thomas Nelson, an imprint of HarperCollins Christian Publishing.

Thanks to Thomas Nelson and NetGalley for providing a free ebook for review.

Review: The Things We Knew by Catherine West

Could have been excellent

Amazon Description

When their tragic past begins to resurface, can he help her remember the things she can’t?

After her mother’s death twelve years ago, Lynette Carlisle watched her close-knit family unravel. One by one, her four older siblings left their Nantucket home and never returned. All seem to blame their father for their mother’s death, but nobody will talk about that tragic day. And Lynette’s memory only speaks through nightmares.

Then Nicholas Cooper returns to Nantucket, bringing the past with him. Once Lynette’s adolescent crush, Nick knows more about her mother’s death than he lets on. The truth could tear apart his own family—and destroy his fragile friendship with Lynette, the woman he no longer thinks of as a kid sister.

As their father’s failing health and financial concerns bring the Carlisle siblings home, secrets surface that will either restore their shattered relationships or separate the siblings forever. But pulling up anchor on the past propels them into the perfect storm, powerful enough to make them question their faith, their willingness to forgive, and the very truth of all the things they thought they knew.

My Review

Lynette Carlise is the youngest of five siblings, and the only one still living at home . . . with her ailing father, and a house that is crumbling around her. She needs a loan to bring the house back to its former glory, or they'll have to sell. And for that, she needs her siblings.


Parts of the plot seemed contrived to me. The analytical side of me could see several options other than selling the property, and while it was logical that Lynette was too close to the situation to see other options, Nick the bank manager should have been able to offer some alternatives (like a reverse mortgage), as should her lawyer sister. However, as the story progressed, I could see the author needed a plot device to get all five Carlisle siblings back to Wyldewood, and the need to discuss the white elephant the house had become served as that device.

And it turned into an interesting plot, less about the fate of Wyldewood or Drake Carlisle’s possible Alzheimer’s or even Lynette’s relationship with Nick and more about secrets: secrets the characters knew they were keeping, and secrets they didn’t. The problem was that it took a long time for it to actually become clear that the characters were keeping secrets. At the beginning, it felt more like information was missing. I know that’s a subtle distinction, but it’s there.

How to explain it . . .

It’s one thing for a character to have secrets. Most good characters do. But with most good characters, the reader knows they have a secret, and often also knows what that secret is (for example, in a romance, the ‘secret’ is often that the heroine has feelings for the hero or vice versa). In other novels (say, in general fiction), the reader will know the character has a secret, but doesn’t immediately find out what that secret is. But we trust the author to show us the information at the right time, and we look for clues as to what that secret might be—because a good author will leave a trail of crumbs.

But if the character has a secret and don’t even know they have that secret, it feels like lying by omission, because we expect the characters to be honest with themselves (and, by proxy, honest with the reader) even if they can’t be honest with the other characters. Lynette had layers of secrets. Some, like the fact she paints and sells her work under a pseudonym, is a secret we know about, and that’s great because it provides ongoing tension—when will Nick and her family find out, and what will they say? Other secrets are more subtle but the breadcrumbs are there. This also provides ongoing tension and plot questions as I read and wonder whether the secret is what I think it is, and what’s going to happen.

But the secret which really bugged me was the one which didn’t get disclosed until almost the end, and even then it seemed to appear by accident (because one character made a mistake that sent a chain of events into action, which led to the big reveal of that character’s secret, which led to other characters revealing their secrets). Yes, I know the mistake was planned by the author, but it seemed out of character which made it seem contrived (hmm. Like the whole plot).

The reason this bothered me is it felt like Lynette had been keeping secrets from the reader because there were things she knew, things she’d done, that she (as the main viewpoint character) never let the reader see. To use a writing term, this made her feel like an unreliable narrator. I also think it took away from the tension, because the secret was actually a major plot point. I would have liked to have followed that part of her personal character arc, but was deprived of that.

The upshot of all these secrets was that the plot actually wasn’t about what I thought it was about. I thought it was about Lynette’s relationship with Nick, and about whether she and her siblings could keep the house. It was and it wasn’t. It was about both these things, but there was a bigger question, and one which, if approached differently, could have turned this from a so-so women’s fiction novel with romantic elements into something far better, a character-driven women’s fiction novel with romantic and suspense elements. But to say more would be a spoiler.

Overall, this was a solid novel. I think it could have been excellent, but there were too many undisclosed secrets and that didn’t work for me.

Thanks to Thomas Nelson and NetGalley for providing a free ebook for review. You can find out more about Catherine West at her website.

Review: The Ringmaster’s Wife by Kristy Cambron

Solid with Flashes of Brilliance

The Ringmaster’s Wife centres around two couples: the fictional Colin Keary and Lady Rosamund Easling, and the real-life John Ringling (of Ringling Brothers circus, which even I’ve heard of) and his wife, Mable (of which nothing much is known except the odd spelling of her name). John is definitely the minor character of the four, but his circus isn’t—the ever-moving, ever-changing circus.

The four main characters meant I did find The Ringmaster’s Wife a little difficult to get into. It started in 1929, then moved back to 1926, then to when Mable was twelve, then to when she was in her late teens (and had changed her name, so I did have to flick backwards and forwards a bit to confirm Armilda was Mable. Because, you know, that didn’t exactly jump out as being obvious. At least not to me. Overall, it wasn’t so much split timeline (as were Kirsty Cambron’s previous novels) as it was all over the place.

My other problem was with some of the writing. Don’t get me wrong: some of the writing was brilliant, lines like:

But time had wings

or

“How do you even know I’ll fit in?”
“You could never fit in, Rose. You were made to stand out.”

But some of the writing was lacklusture at best, and goes against every modern writing rule at worst (well, goes against all James Scott Bell and Margie Lawson’s writing rules, with dialogue tags like he noted, he stated, he reasoned, she questioned, she tossed out. I almost tossed the dummy at that one, to break another writing ‘rule’ and use a cliché. I’m not sure whether they would have bothered a reader who wasn’t also a freelance fiction editor, but they certainly bothered me).

The other thing which bothered me was describing Lady Rosamund’s mother as a courtesan aka high-class prostitute. I think the implication was meant to be that she sold herself to the highest bidder in marriage. But that wasn’t how it read to me—and I suspect that’s how other non-American readers or readers of British historical fiction or Regency romance will read it as I did. Words have meaning, and it's important to use the right word.

But that’s not to say I didn’t enjoy The Ringmaster’s Wife. I did. I enjoyed this historical detail, especially in regard to the circus—even though the circus was very un-politically correct from today’s standards in that it had animals and (horror!) dancing bears. But I also saw what a big deal the circus would have been for people in small-town 1920’s America, people who didn’t have television or the movies, people who would otherwise never see an elephant or a bear or a lion (although I don’t really see the attraction of the bearded lady or the tattooed man). And it was good to see that—it was original, and it was well done.

The underlying theme of The Ringmaster’s Wife was going behind the mask in the search for self (or perhaps the search for the person God meant us to be). This was mostly played out by the character of Lady Rosamund aka The English Rose, but it was also important for Mabel and for Colin. It’s a timeless theme, one that resonates as much today as in 1929.

Thanks to Thomas Nelson and NetGalley for providing a free ebook for review. You can find out more about Kristy Cambron at her website, and you can read the introduction to The Ringmaster's Wife below:

Review: A Mermaid Moon by Colleen Coble

A Little Too Predictable

Mallory Davis is a widowed jewelry designer from Bangor, Maine, and the mother of fourteen-year-old Haylie. Life is hard but she’s making it when one phone call changes everything. Her estranged father calls, and she heads back to her home town to find him dead. Possibly murdered. She reconnects with her teenage sweetheart to try and find who was after her father—and who is now after her and her family.

Mermaid Moon incorporates characters and locations from some of Colleen Coble’s previous contemporary romantic suspense novels, some of which I’ve read and some of which I haven’t. This meant several of the (many) characters introduced in the early chapters were recurring characters from previous novels, which I didn’t know. I found the number of characters confusing, but this perhaps wouldn’t have been an issue if I’d read all the previous books (and read them recently. Like, not read 100+ books since).

The characters and plot were interesting enough, but I did find the story a little predictable. The identity of the evildoer was pretty obvious from the start, although the motive was less obvious (and felt almost contrived when it was finally revealed). I also guessed the other big secret long before it was revealed, which took away from the suspense. In contrast, the big mysteries were never properly answered. Why did Mallory run away? (I didn’t find the reason given convincing.) Why did she marry so quickly after leaving?

I was also puzzled by the scene with forensic artist Gwen Marcey, ironically the only minor character I recognised. Gwen is the heroine of the excellent Gwen Marcey thrillers by Carrie Stuart Parks, yet there was no acknowledgement that the author had “borrowed” characters from another novel. Surely she had--it seems beyond coincidence that two authors would imagine a character with the same unusual name and almost unique occupation. A strange puzzle which unfortunately distracted me from the main plot.

Overall, I found Mermaid Moon to be a solid suspense novel, but lacked the spark of originality I’ve seen in some of Colleen Coble’s earlier novels.

Thanks to Thomas Nelson and NetGalley for providing a free ebook for review.