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.

Book Review: The Long Highway Home by Elizabeth Musser

An Outstanding Story of Christian Faith

The Long Highway Home is the story of Bobbie, an ex-missionary who has been diagnosed with inoperable cancer at the age of 39. It’s the story of Tracie, Bobbie’s niece, who accompanies her to Europe, to visit the missionaries she used to serve with before tragedy sent her back to the US. It’s the story of Hamid, a devout Muslim who is forced to flee Iran after a well-meaning missionary gives his six-year-old daughter a New Testament. But my favourite character is Rasa, the child with a faith that puts mine to shame.

The structure of The Long Highway Home is more like a thriller novel than the women’s fiction and romance I’m more used to reading. There are a lot of viewpoint characters spanning the US, Holland, France, Austria, and Iran. Unlike most thrillers, it’s always obvious who the characters are and how they are related, which kept me turning pages to find out how they’d eventually be brought together.

The author has drawn on her own missionary experiences in writing this excellent novel.

This shines through in both the story of Hamid and his family, and in the advice from some of the minor characters (e.g. Peggy, the elderly prayer warrior who supports Bobbie). These sound like real conversations Ms Musser has had in her years as a missionary—stories of the refugees who survived the refugee highway and made it to The Oasis in Austria.

It’s a story of human courage in the face of adversity, persecution, and possible death. 

It’s a story of hope, of perfect love driving out fear. It challenges our views of refugees by introducing us to real refugees—we know Hamid and Rasheed and Rasa and Omid aren’t real people, but at the same time their stories have that ring of truth, of authenticity. They could be real stories. They may well be.

After all, significant elements of the story are real. 

The Oasis is a real place, and welcomes volunteers and short-term missionaries (and long-term missionaries!) to support its outreach to refugees in Austria. Elizabeth Musser is a missionary with International Teams, an organisation dedicated to helping those who survive the refugee highway. World Wide Radio was inspired by the real-life work of Trans World Radio, which broadcasts in 230 languages to reach listeners in 160 countries.

It’s inspiring and humbling to read about people like this—missionaries who are risking their lives to bring the gospel to others. Refugees who are risking their lives to escape a government that wants them dead. Normal, everyday people who are doing extraordinary things every day.

Recommended.

Thanks to Elizabeth Musser for providing a free ebook for review. You can find out more about Elizabeth Musser at her website, and you can read her Friday Fifteen here.

You can read the introduction to The Long Highway Home below:

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Today I'm reviewing Long Way Gone by Charles Martin at Australasian Christian Writers. It's an excellent novel, so click here to read my review. Or read the introduction below:

Review: A Lady Unrivaled by Roseanna M White

Outstanding Conclusion to Trilogy

Book Description

Lady Ella Myerston can always find a reason to smile--even if it's just in hope that tomorrow will be better than today. All her life everyone has tried to protect her from the realities of the world, but Ella knows very well the danger that has haunted her brother and their friend, and she won't wait for it to strike again. She intends to take action . . . and if that happens to involve an adventurous trip to the Cotswolds, then so much the better.

Lord Cayton has already broken two hearts, including that of his first wife, who died before he could convince himself to love her. Now he's determined to live a better life. But that proves complicated when old friends arrive on the scene and try to threaten him into a life of crime. He does his best to remove the intriguing Lady Ella from danger, but the stubborn girl won't budge. How else can he redeem himself, though, but by saving her--and his daughter--from those dangerous people who seem ready to destroy them all?

My Review

This is this third and final novel in the Ladies of the Manor series, and while I thought each of them was excellent, I thought this was definitely the best. There are several reasons for that view. First, this story was excellent. Ella and Cayton were both wonderful characters, determined not to do anything so foolish as to fall for each other, but both unable to stop themselves. Their joint scenes were they weren’t interested in each other (ha!) brought a smile to my face.

It was also good to revisit the main characters in the two previous books, Brook and Justin from The Lost Heiress, and Brice and Rowena from The Reluctant Duchess (it was less good to revisit some of the evildoers from previous books, but they were equally important as characters). But the main reason I enjoyed the Ladies of the Manor series was the way each novel was a standalone romance, but there was the mystery of the Fire Eyes underlying each of the three novels.

I’m also continually impressed by the way Roseanna White brings out truths about human nature and about God without ever descending into preachiness:

Ours is a God who delights in providing for His children, who charges us to be whole, complete, to find joy in all our circumstances through Him.

And:

It only takes a moment to marry someone, but an entire lifetime to have a marriage with them. Faith is like that. It takes one moment to confess it, and a lifetime to live it out.

And sometimes her writing is just plain funny:

It was terribly cliché to be attracted to a man just because he was a good father … and handsome … and clever … and charming. And Ella hated to be a cliché.

Roseanna White also demonstrates a solid understanding of human nature. Ella says:

Some women like the challenge of a man who needs saving. Others see the potential hiding under the layers of the world, and it is that they love.

Yes, too many women (and men, perhaps) fall for the person who needs saving, and find themselves in difficult or abusive relationships (naming no names, but too many popular novels perpetuate this lie). Ella goes on to clarify her own view, a lesson too many women still need to learn:

Fall for a man in need of saving and you will be sorely disappointed to find you are no savior. Fall for a man who is only potential, and you shall be constantly disappointed that he doesn’t live up to it. No, I prefer gentlemen who already know redemption and who have sloughed off the ways of the world.

All in all, A Lady Unrivaled is a novel unrivaled. I’m sorry to see the end of Ella and her friends and family.

Thanks to Baker Publishing and NetGalley for providing a free ebook for review. You can find out more about Roseanna M White at her website.

Review: The Name I Call Myself by Beth Moran

I've just reviewed the brilliant The Name I Call myself on my author website.

Click here to read my review!

Review: The Long Journey to Jake Palmer by James L Rubart

Outstanding

Jake Palmer is a management trainer who makes a living encouraging others to read what’s on their label rather than believing lies about themselves. But following a horrific incident, he finds himself on a journey to read his own label—to believe the truth about himself instead of the lies he’s been fed by the people he loved most, to the point he’s forgotten who he was.

The Long Journey to Jake Palmer is excellent. Excellent writing, excellent characters, excellent plot, and an excellent message about learning and believing the truth about ourselves, not the lie. It’s a novel of spiritual and emotional healing, subtly making the excellent point that the physical healing so many people search for is secondary to spiritual healing.

The metaphor (and I truly can’t believe I’m writing that in a book review!) of forgetting who we are is apt: I read an article yesterday which said most five-year-olds have creativity at near-genius levels. But we lose that as we get older until we become merely average. It’s the same message as Rubart shares with Jake Palmer’s story: we forget who we are, and we need to rediscover ourselves.

This is easily one of the best books I’ve read this year. Recommended—although at over $10 for the ebook, you might want to treat yourself to the paperback.

Thanks to NetGalley for providing a free ebook for review. You can find out more about James L Rubart at his website, and you can read the introduction to The Long Journey to Jake Palmer below:

Review: Married 'til Monday by Denise Hunter

Not Your Typical Christian Romance

Ryan and Abby McKinley divorced three years ago, but Ryan is still in love with his wife. A chance telephone call from her parents provides him with the perfect opportunity to spend time with Abby and try to find out what went wrong. He and Abby embark on a road trip to visit her parents for their wedding anniversary … with Ryan tagging along because Abby never told her parents she was divorced. Hmm …

It’s tempting to think Ryan is too-perfect. After all, he’s the perfect gentleman, a strong Christian, loves and supports his family, and spends hours working with his high school football team to teach them about both football and life. But he has one fault: he takes everything at face value and doesn’t see beyond the obvious (something I’ve found is common to the male of the species). This is illustrated early in the book when he’s thinking his younger sister, PJ, “had always led a charmed life”: anyone who has read the earlier books in this series will know that’s not exactly true. As we find out, you can’t take everyone at face value in life or in marriage.

Abby first appears to be normal, but as she takes her unplanned and unwanted road trip with Ryan, we (and Ryan) gradually discover that her normality is a façade that’s so well constructed even Abby doesn’t understand it’s there. It’s a powerful story with lessons for all couples, married or not, and I especially liked seeing a Christian romance novel showing that love and romance is about more than the wedding—it’s about the marriage, and the baggage and brokenness we each bring into that relationship.

I’ve been looking forward to reading Married 'til Monday since I finished the third book in The Chapel Springs Romance Series and realised the fourth story was going to reunite Ryan and Abby. It didn’t disappoint me. I’ve enjoyed all four books, but I think my favourites are this and Dancing with Fireflies, because they both step out of the Christian norm in terms of plot, while still delivering a strong Christian message. Recommended.

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

This book counts towards my 2015 Reading Challenge as A book I can finish in a day. Yes, that's most good books, but I picked this because I was so keen to read it, and it more than lived up to my expectations. 

I'm Reviewing at Australasian Christian Writers!

Today I'm over at Australasian Christian Writers, reviewing Feast for Thieves, the debut novel from bestselling non-fiction author Marcus Brotherton.

Click here to read my review.

Or just click here to buy the book. It's that good. 

Review: Finding Me by Kathryn Cushman

2015 Reading Challenge: Based on a True Story

When Kelli Huddleston’s father and stepmother die in an accident, she is left with nothing and no one—or so she thinks. When cleaning out the house before it sell, she finds an old envelope containing newspaper clippings about the presumed drowning of David Waters and his infant daughter, Darcy, from the small town of Shoal Creek, Tennessee. But the photo is of her…

Kelli travels from California to Tennessee to see if she can meet the surviving members of the Waters family, Alison and her two children, Max and Beth. She wants to know if there’s a reason her father left—and decide whether she introduces herself as their long-lost sister/daughter, or whether she leaves them to go on with their lives. She also meets her father’s ex business partner, Ken Moore, and his son, but finds the trip raises more questions than answers, and forces her to re-evaluate her life in more ways than one.

Finding Me is the first novel I’ve read by Kathryn Cushman, but it won’t be the last. I liked her writing, especially the subtle way she wove Christianity into the plot in a way that made it central and realistic without being intruding. I thought the plot was an excellent combination of mystery and romance, and the subplots did an excellent job of supporting the main story, Kelli’s dilemma.

Kelli was faced with a difficult decision where there was no right choice, which made her a fascinating character. I thought it was a convincing portrayal of how someone would act in such a situation, where everything they’ve been told while growing up turns out to be a lie, creating huge cracks in the memory of a perfect childhood. Going deeper, it also shows us how difficult it is to break those beliefs we are raised with—and the need for forgiveness. Recommended.

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

Finding Me counts towards my 2015 Reading Challenge as a book based on a true story: Kathryn Cushman says at the end it is actually inspired by two separate true stories. I don't know what's inspired by truth and what is purely fiction, but the result is an excellent novel. Recommended. 

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One Last Thing by Rebecca St James and Nancy Rue

Today I'm reviewing One Last Thing over at Australasian Christian Writers. Click here to read my review.

Here's the book description:

Tara had always imagined her happily ever after. But her fiancé’s secrets are changing this story into one she doesn’t even recognize.


Tara Faulkner and Seth Grissom grew up next door to each other in Savannah’s historic district. Their parents are best friends. They finish each other’s sentences all the time. Their fairytale wedding is a foregone conclusion . . . until Tara discovers another side to Seth three weeks before the wedding.

Reality has crashed in on Tara’s fairytale—but hope will lead her to a future she couldn’t have planned for herself.

This isn't an easy read, but I think it's the best book I've read so far this year. One Last Thing does an excellent job in sensitively fictionalising a growing problem in society. It’s not easy reading, and it’s not nice. But it is real. Unfortunately.

My Top 10 Reads of 2014

Today I'm at Australasian Christian Writers, sharing my Top 10 fiction reads of 2014. To pop over and join in the discussion, click this link: Top 10 Reads

Review: Lizzy and Jane by Katherine Reay

Excellent Foodie Fiction

Elizabeth is the head chef at Feast, a chic New York restaurant. But she’s losing her touch, and when her boss brings in a celebrity chef/marketing expert to restore Feast’s reputation, Elizabeth decides it’s time for a break. She heads to Seattle, Washington, to a home and a father she’s barely seen since she left sixteen years ago. And she heads to an older sister who’s undergoing treatment for breast cancer, the same cancer that killed their mother during Lizzie’s senior year in high school.

Katherine Reay’s debut novel, Dear Mr. Knightley, was nominated for a Christy Award, nominated for two Carol Awards, and won the 2014 INSPY Award for a Debut novel. I read it, and while I thought the writing and characterisation was excellent, I did wish Reay had written an original story (Dear Mr. Knightley is a contemporary retelling of the Jean Webster classic, Daddy Long Legs).

Like Dear Mr. Knightley, Lizzy & Jane has links to Austen, in that sisters Jane and Elizabeth are named for the heroines of their mother’s favourite novel. Unlike Dear Mr. Knightley, Lizzy and Jane is a fresh story, not a retelling of a classic (or if it is, the retelling is unobtrusive enough that I couldn’t see what was coming in the way I did with Dear Mr. Knightley. As a result, I enjoyed it a lot more. It wasn’t that I didn’t enjoy Dear Mr. Knightley, more that I always found the ending of Daddy Long Legs a little contrived, and the ending of Dear Mr. Knightley was even more so.

Lizzy & Jane was different, in a good way. It had all the strong writing and characterisation of Dear Mr. Knightley, with the added bonus of an original and compelling plot. Elizabeth has some deep-seated resentment towards Jane, who was never around while their mother was dying. While Elizabeth is in Seattle helping Jane face her health crisis, Elizabeth is also facing her own personal crisis, a crisis of identity and self-belief around her cooking. It’s the one thing she’s always excelled at, yet even that talent seems to be failing her.

There are touches of romance and an underlying Christian theme, but Lizzy & Jane is very much women’s fiction, Lizzy’s story of personal, professional (and spiritual) rediscovery. Recommended.

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

Review: Five Days in May by Ninie Hammon

Highly Recommended

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—and it’s typical of tornados that there is no warning. The reader knows what’s coming, but the characters are tied up in their everyday lives.

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

The characters are excellent, especially Princess, who 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—Mac’s relationship with Joy 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 which 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 at all. Rather, it added considerably 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 underpinning 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:

Review: The Hesitant Heiress by Dawn Crandall

Excellent Historical Debut

It is 1890, and Amaryllis Brigham is a talented musician, but a slanderous letter from the rich influential Bram Everstone ends her study at the Boston Conservatory of Music, and sends her to the home of her Aunt Claudine. Here she is reintroduced to her childhood friend, cousin Lawry Hampton, and his friends, Jay Crawford and Nathan Everstone … Bram’s son.

Amaryllis discovers she is a rich heiress, but she must marry in order to claim her inheritance. She has no desire to marry, yet the money would enable her to return home to her beloved Whidbey Island, Washington, and establish a music school. Logic would dictate that the handsome Jay would make the ideal husband, as he’s a preacher in search of a wife to accompany him to fulfil his call to preach in Washington. Yet Amarillys finds herself attracted to Nathan, the son of the man who has ruined her life in more ways than one.

The Hesitant Heiress is written in the first person, which is an unusual choice for a historical romance, but it works. So many of the characters are hiding secrets, and first person enables the reader to uncover those secrets slowly, and means they have the same element of surprise to us as they do to Amaryllis. I liked that, as it added to the suspense.

This story has it all—fascinating characters, secret love, obsession, suspense, loads of romantic tension, and a few rather fabulous kisses. I thoroughly enjoyed The Hesitant Heiress. The only thing I didn’t like was the teaser for the sequel, because now I’m going to have to wait months to find out what happens. Recommended for fans of historical romantic suspense from authors such as Colleen Coble.

Thanks to the author for providing a free ebook for review. You can find out more about Dawn Crandall at her website.

Review: With Every Breath by Elizabeth Camden

Elizabeth Camden has done it again

Elizabeth Camden is fast becoming one of my favourite authors. She’s won well-deserved RITA and Christy awards with her previous novels, and she just keeps getting better.

Kate Norton lost her chance to go to college in 1879 when Trevor McDonough won the scholarship they were both competing for. She has worked as a statistician at the census bureau since then, but is now offered a new opportunity working for Dr T M Kendall at Washington Memorial Hospital, analysing data and predicting trends in health. She is shocked to find Dr Kendall is her high school nemesis, but soon finds there is more to him than she knew.

Trevor is attempting to find a cure for tuberculosis, an infectious and misunderstood disease. He’s convinced that rest, good diet and sunshine are key, but a series of malicious newspaper articles bring the project under scrutiny, and he and Kate have to work together.

I thought everything about With Every Breath was excellent—the characters (especially the brilliant but socially awkward Trevor), the plot, and especially the writing, which was a masterful exercise in restraint in the way so much was happening beneath the text. With Every Breath is Christian fiction, although the faith elements are understated.

The information around tuberculosis gate a poignant and bittersweet note to With Every Breath, because I knew Dr Kendall wasn’t going to discover the cure. My great-grandfather, a postman, died of pulmonary tuberculosis and exhaustion on Christmas Day 1925, and Her Daughter's Dream by Francine Rivers (and based on her family history) featured a character suffering from the disease in the early 1950’s. Reading this made me thankful for the men and women like Kate and Trevor who have dedicated their lives to finding cures for horrible diseases over the years. Recommended.

Thanks to Bethany House and NetGalley for providing a free ebook for review. You can find out more about Elizabeth Camden at her website.

Review: Too Pretty by Andrea Grigg

Too Funny!

Gabrielle Paxton is a missionary kid who grew up in Papua New Guinea before returning to Australia when she was fourteen. That was when she discovered people judged her more for her looks—and while that didn’t always work to her advantage, it didn’t make her immune from judging others based on the way they look.

Nathaniel Watson catches her attention immediately, but he’s got that restrained dentist look going on, and she’s not interested in the medical professions. No matter. He doesn’t seem interested in her either, and she’s just decided she’s not going to date for six months:

I want to allow God to fill up those spaces, not boyfriends or even my family.

It seems easy until a chance meeting with an old school friend brings her face to face with Nathaniel …

I couldn’t completely relate to Gabrielle (not having been a teenage blonde bombshell myself!), but I could understand her problem and admire the way she decided to seek God first. We live in a society where people judge based on outward appearance, and we all need to learn to allow God to fill that void inside us, rather than relying on a boyfriend, career, or family. What was interesting about Too Pretty was that it wasn’t only Gabrielle who needed to learn this lesson.

Too Pretty is Andrea Grigg’s second novel. I thought the first, A Simple Mistake, was excellent, which made me a little nervous when reading Too Pretty . What if I didn’t like it? But I did. It’s fun and funny and romantic and thought-provoking, with a great set of characters and a strong Christian message. And such a cool cover!

Recommended for fans of contemporary romance from authors like Victoria Bylin, Carla Laureano, Mellissa Tagg and Becky Wade.

Thanks to Andrea Grigg and Rhiza Press for providing a free ebook for review. You can find out more about Andrea Grigg at her website, or read our interview.

Review: A Woman of Fortune by Kellie Coates Gilbert

Outstanding! (And you know how often I say that)

Claire Massey has it all. The mansion, the Maserati, the Jimmy Choo’s. The billionaire husband, the perfect son, and the daughter who is engaged to the man poised to become Texas’s youngest senator. Then it all goes wrong, when her husband is arrested as the mastermind behind a Ponzi scheme, a fall to rival that of Bernie Madoff.

It’s natural to not want to like Claire. After all, she has everything, yet it was all built on smooth talking. That mind of success just isn’t normal. How could she not have known? Yet she doesn’t come across as the spoilt little rich girl (although her daughter, Lainie, certainly is). She’s honest, sincere, and hard-working, and believes in her husband against all the odds. Claire is one of the strengths of A Woman of Fortune. It’s tempting to not feel any sympathy for a woman who is left with a mere half million, yet somehow I did.

Another strength is Margarita, Claire’s housekeeper. While the Massey family are churchgoers, none of them show any evidence of a real Christian faith. Margarita does. In fact, all the characters are strong (they’re not all likeable, but that’s kind of the point).

A Woman of Fortune is a fascinating insight into the problems faced by a family who lose everything – money, reputation, friends – and have to navigate a range of unimaginable personal and social situations. It's a strength of the novel that I actually sympathised with Claire, and even with her spoiled daughter, despite all the reasons not to.

Recommended.

Thanks to Revell and NetGalley for providing a free ebook for review. You can find out more about Kellie Coates Gilbert at her website or watch the trailer:

Review: Hacker by Ted Dekker

Outstanding YA Sci-fi

Nyah is seventeen, brilliant, and has lost everything. Her father and brother died in a car accident which left her mother brain damaged. She’s been accepted into a medical trial which is going to cost $250,000—money she doesn’t have. She has a plan, but is left running for her life after it goes horribly wrong.

Nyah teams up with Austin, the only person she’s ever met who is smarter than her. Austin’s dying of a brain tumour, but he’s got a plan … which is a cross between Fringe and The Matrix. He’s trying to find a mysterious person known as the Outlaw, as Austin believes the Outlaw will be able to heal him. In order to find the Outlaw, Austin is hacking into the most complex computer on the planet: his own brain.

The plot is fast-paced as the danger grows ever closer to Nyah. The characters are excellent and the writing outstanding. Dekker is one of the few authors I’ve read who have managed to pull off the combination of first person and third person point of view (first person from Nyah, third person from Austin and other characters). It shouldn’t work, because it’s a technique that reminds us we are *only* reading a book. It shouldn’t work, but it did.

This is only the second Ted Dekker book I’ve read. I like suspense, especially romantic suspense, but the previous Dekker I read (Three) was so full of psychological suspense I didn’t think I could put myself through that again (the only other book that’s come close was Abomination by Colleen Coble). Anyway, while Hacker was full of suspense, it was a mixture of physical and psychological, and I was better able to cope with that (although there was one scene where I closed my eyes. I don't like drills). I still don’t know if I’m brave enough to read Dekker’s older books, but I certainly enjoyed this one.

Hacker is the fourth book in The Outlaw Chronicles, but is easily enjoyed as a standalone novel. I wouldn’t call it Christian fiction—Dekker’s presentation of life and death in Hacker seems to only allow for a pleasant afterlife. Despite this possible drawback, it’s excellent YA science fiction, recommended for teens who enjoyed tech-based Sci-fi.

Thanks to Worthy for providing a free ebook for review. You can find out more about Ted Dekker at his website.

Review: The Miracle Thief by Iris Anthony

Something Different for Historical Fiction Lovers

Yesterday Iris Anthony talked about her writing. Today, I'm reviewing her new book:

The Miracle Thief is a historical novel following three women as they seek God’s will in France in the early 900’s:

Sister Juliana escaped to Rochemont Abbey many years ago, seeking to atone for her biggest sin. She serves in the shrine of St Catherine, helping the many pilgrims who come to pray for healing by the saint’s relics.

Anne is the newly-orphaned daughter of an impoverished noblewoman. With no home, she has little option but to obey her mother’s dying request and undertake a pilgrimage to St Catherine’s shrine to seek healing.

Giselle is the illegitimate daughter of a king, raised as a princess and about to be forced into a political marriage against her will. She asks to take a pilgrimage to the shrine of St Catherine to seek God’s will.

The Miracle Thief is an unexpected gem. The characters are real (really. It’s historical fiction based on real people and real events), and were brought to life with all their flaws and foibles. The plot moved steadily, and although (as with real life), the ending wasn’t necessarily what I’d have chosen, it was historically accurate, and it was from a time and place in history that hasn’t been done to death by other authors (*ahem* Tudor England).

Anthony has done an excellent job of melding historical fact with the creativity of fiction. I never felt I was being ‘dumped’ with historical facts or that the story was being manipulated to stay true to history, yet the note at the end shows the degree to which the story has been researched and is true to the historical record (which, admittedly, has a lot of holes).

Although The Miracle Thief is a general market book, there was still a strong underpinning of Christian faith (albeit featuring some very un-Christlike “Christians”), and it meets CBA standards in that there is no inappropriate language. It left me feeling grateful to live in a time and place where I have freedoms and choices women like Juliana, Anne and Giselle never had. Recommended for historical fiction fans looking for something a little different.

Thanks to Sourcebooks and NetGalley for providing a free ebook for review. You can find out more about Iris Anthony at her website.

Review: Circle of Spies by Roseanna M White

Outstanding

It is 1865, and young widow Marietta Arnaud Hughes will shortly come out of mourning, and it is expected she will then marry her brother-in-law, Deveraux, who has been in love with her since they first met. Marietta is an odd combination of believable and fantastic. Her foibles and weaknesses are both familiar and relatable, but she has a gift, a photographic memory, and can remember every conversation she has ever had and every page of every book she has ever read.

A visit from her grandfather reveals a long-standing secret: that the family is a network of spies, and they need her help, both because of her special gift, and because they believe Deveraux is a leader in a secret organisation trying to undermine the government. But help is at hand, in the form of Slade Osbourne, a Pinkerton agent working for the family rail business. Unfortunately, he’s also too attractive for his own good, and Deveraux is a jealous suitor …

I really enjoyed Circle of Spies. The one fault is I thought there was too much male point of view—we got scenes from the viewpoints of Deveraux, Slade and Walker. While each character and scene did add to the overall plot, it just felt a little male-dominated at times (although that was probably a fair representation of the times!).

This is the fifth book in the Culper Ring series, following two novels and two free novellas, all following the Lane family and the activities of the Culpers at different times in American history. All have been good, but this was excellent. The research is excellent (but doesn’t overpower the characters and the story), the story is well-plotted with plenty of twists and turns, the characters are strong yet fallible, and there is a solid Christian message without being preachy. Recommended.

Thanks to Harvest House and NetGalley for providing a free ebook for review. You can find out more about Roseanna M White at her website.