The fourth installment in the Karen Kingsbury’s Redemption series, Rejoice catches readers up with the lives of the Baxter family. While the authors do a great job in continuing the story of this family’s life, not much else occurs in this book. Rejoice is a quick read about an interesting family, but too much preaching…
When You Believe explores the topic of child sexual molestation in several ways, using the pain of different characters who experienced this kind of terrible violation. Unfortunately, because of Bedford’s underdeveloped characterization, the impact falls somewhat flat. Lydia Porter’s life is finally coming together. Though Lydia enjoys her job as Shadrach High School’s guidance counselor,…
The Bible contains any number of riveting stories, and my personal favorite is the story of Esther, wife of the Persian king Xerxes, known as the Purim story to those in the Jewish faith. This story has a little bit of everything in it: murder, treachery, palace intrigue, brave deeds, and love. Hadassah: One Night…
According to its press release, After the Rains is a novel of “rebellion and forgiveness.” The “rebellion” is a bit overstated, and by the time the forgiveness came about I was almost too tired of the characters to care. For this reader the book was less than successful. Natalie Camfield has a typical high schooler’s…
Chamomile Winter is the sequel to Terracotta Summer, a Mormon inspirational novel I reviewed last year. But it’s not so much a sequel as the second half of the story; neither book is really complete on its own. That said, this one is a slight improvement over its predecessor. Although I still don’t think either…
October Song is not a romance, and it’s not a novel. It’s an anthology of short stories about characters from previous books in Beverly Lewis’ Heritage of Lancaster County series. The back cover states that this book is for “readers who already love Beverly’s characters and for those who are about to.” Perhaps the first…
When Terracotta Summer arrived for review, I could see immediately that I was the obvious choice to review it. It’s a religious novel with mostly Mormon protagonists, and I am the lone Mormon at AAR. I wasn’t too far into the book before I realized that I was also the only person on the staff…
The Story Jar is a Mother’s Day offering of inspirational stories about mothers and their love. All three of the stories are told from a Christian perspective and involve a significant problem that a family must overcome. While the solutions to the problems occasionally seemed rather simplistic to me, I found these stories to be,…
Katrina’s Wings merges elements of several genres – inspirational romance, women’s fiction, and Southern fiction – without belonging wholly to any of them. While the story took time getting underway, I ultimately found this well-written tale and its unique central character to be very satisfying. At first the story treads well-worn turf: the coming-of-age of…
I am Catholic by religious upbringing and catholic in my reading habits. I love to read and read almost everything, but one category of books that I have never really enjoyed are non fiction inspirational books (the Bible excepted). However, like a lot of people I do sometimes feel the need to recharge the spiritual…