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: Lost and Found by Kendra Fletcher

A Fascinating and Disturbing Read

Lost and Found provided a fascinating insight into one woman’s disturbing experiences within the US purity culture and homeschool movement. It shows how Jesus can be lost in a church bubble where doing things “right” is the most important thing, where grace was forgotten in the quest for performance. As she says:

It’s easier to follow a checklist and check off all the correct boxes than to listen to the gentle, faithful leading of the Holy Spirit.

But something was missing for me. The book description promised to show me *how* God used these events. I couldn’t see the how. I saw the what—the almost unbelievable (and ungodly) control present in her previous church, and the three health crises.

I saw the result, but I don’t see how she got from A to B. How did God speak to her? What caused her to change her view? How can others in similar situations use her experiences to get closer to God, to understand our freedom in Christ? We can’t imitate her journey—no one in their right minds is going to recommend running over a five-year-old as a way to get right with God.

Despite these gaps, Lost and Found was a fascinating read, and shared a message many Christians need to hear. I don’t live in the US, and Lost and Found highlighted theological superiority issues within the US church that may well have always been there, but which the omnipresence of social media now highlight for us all to see.

It seems to me that a lot of these views and actions are the opposite of a good Christian witness—as Kendra Fletcher illustrates so well. This book should be read as a challenge to the US church to focus on obedience to Jesus rather than on internal differences over theological trivialities.

Thanks to New Growth Press, Litfuse Publicity and NetGalley for providing a free ebook for review. Which is ironic: I reviewed an electronic copy, but there doesn't appear to be an ebook version on sale.

Clash of the Titles: Four New Spring Reads

Clash of the Titles presents four new springtime reads! 
Peruse the images, read the blurbs, 
then vote on your favorite in the survey. 
I know which one is my favorite.

Enjoy, dear readers!

~~~~~

He's a nature photographer returning to make amends, and she's a camera-shy naturalist seeking privacy. Their love for a boy brings them together, but the camera could drive them apart.

~ ~ ~

Lifestyle magazine editor Heather McAlister was in the wrong place at the wrong time, witnessing a crime that shakes the roots of the town’s power brokers and sends her life into a tailspin. Previously burned by love, Detective Kyle Taylor has spent his entire adult life protecting his hometown, but now he’s protecting a woman he’ll risk everything to save.

~ ~ ~

She’s ready to fly free of a life-long cocoon; he’s looking for anything but Raine. Can Paradise Pines find a miracle for two unwilling hearts?

~ ~ ~

When a homeless man rescues Glorilyn Neilson from violent assault, he's not the man he seems. What powerful secret keeps him on the streets?

VOTE BELOW!

If you have trouble viewing the entire survey Click Here to load a dedicated page to the survey. 

Review: Season of Miracles by Alexa Verde

Faith, but No Murder

Lana Smith is a visiting nurse in Rios Azules, Texas, having escaped from a rough upbringing being moved from home to home as a foster child, then from the shallow Los Angeles party scene. Arturo De La Vega is a star running back with the Houston Storm, home temporarily to visit his sick grandfather … and where he meets Lana.

Most of Alexa Verde's novels are romantic suspense, as promised by her tagline: Faith, Hope and Murder.

I’ve read and enjoyed some of her romantic suspense novels, but I’m sorry to say I didn’t enjoy this nearly so much. The writing was fine, but the plot didn’t seem as developed as in her other novels. There was little external conflict, and the internal conflict was too understated—by the time I realised Lana’s real problem, she’d solved it. And, strangely, I didn’t find the romance as convincing as in her earlier novels. I never got the impression either character really "saw" the potential in the other.

Write What You Know

I also wasn’t convinced by Arturo—and this might come down to the fact that Verde admits she knew little about football before writing Season of Miracles. It shows. While there is no on-field action to highlight her lack of knowledge, I did question Arturo’s constant visits to Rios Azules, a five-hour-drive from his Houston home. It might have made sense if he was injured, but he was playing each weekend—so how did he come to have so much free time? Didn’t he have training sessions to attend each day?

Thanks to the author for providing a free ebook for review. You can find out more about Alexa Verde at her website, and you can read the introduction to Season of Miracles below.

Review: To the Farthest Shores by Elizabeth Camden

Not Her Best

I’ve read most of Elizabeth Camden’s novels, and haven’t had a bad one yet. She avoids the more common time and place settings for historical fiction/historical romance, and her novels often feature women in unusual settings and occupations. To the Farthest Shores is similar, set in turn-of-the-century San Francisco, and featuring a civilian nurse in an Army hospital as the main characters.

But the beginning of To the Farthest Shores was shaky in comparison with Camden’s earlier novels, and I found it took a long time to settle. The story starts with Jenny Bennett and Lieutenant Ryan Gallagher professing their undying love as Ryan is about to be sent to fight in the Philippines in 1898. But he doesn’t come back … and when he does—six years later—he has a daughter in tow. And he’s pretending not to know Jenny. And lying to her. We soon find out what happened in the intervening years (through a big pile of backstory), but Jenny doesn’t find out until much later in the book.

There were a lot of secrets, and that annoyed me because it disobeyed one of my felt’ rules of fiction—that we can trust our point of view characters, that they have no secrets from the reader. I love the tension that comes from a novel where the reader knows something one of the main characters doesn’t know, and we’re then waiting with baited breath for the character to find out. When will they find out? How will they react? So much room for tension … that’s removed if the reader doesn’t know what the secret is (in Jenny’s case) or even that there is a secret (in Ryan’s case).

The story included references to early military intelligence, the search for the ability to culture pearls, and even a reference to the still-present conversation around equal pay. The research seemed solid, and never overpowered the story. The one glitch I did find was mercurochrome—something I’d never heard of, so looked up. The Kindle dictionary told me was a trademark for a disinfectant, dating from the early 20th century. In fact, it was first discovered in 1918, which means Ryan was unlikely to be using it in 1904. He was clever, but not that clever.

Overall, the story showed promise and ended well, but I found Jenny and Ryan’s secrets—and the fact they both hid them—took away a lot of the tension and therefore took away a lot of the power of the story. The story lacked in any Christian content, a trend I’m not altogether happy with, and not what I expect from a major Christian publisher like Bethany House.

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