Month: January 2018

Did you receive any books for Christmas?

Bookish Question #39 | Did you receive any books for Christmas?

Happy New Year! I hope you all had a fabulous Christmas and are ready to jump into 2018. I am!

I’m making a couple of minor changes here on the blog. The main one you’ll notice is that I’m publishing a book review on Monday instead of my Bookish Question. And the Bookish Question has now become a Tuesday Book Chat, in association with Australasian Christian Writers. We’re hoping to get more people involved, and we’ll share a little more about that later.

Anyway, here’s our first question for 2018:

Did you receive any books for Christmas?

I gave some books. My mother asked for the latest historical novel from Alison Weir, which was easy. My children asked for the new edition of the Official Scrabble dictionary which includes words like “twerk”, “emoji” and “emoticon”. Sigh. And I bought my husband Artemis, the new novel from Andy Weir, author of The Martian. He isn’t a big reader but he enjoyed The Martian, so I hope he’ll like Artemis as well.

And I will admit to treating myself to a few Kindle books over the Christmas holidays. Weird story. I signed up for a free service called Down Notifier, which sends you an email if your website goes down—something that’s handy to know (says me, the victim of a hacker attack which destroyed my site a couple of years ago).

Anyway, Down Notifier emailed me and offered me a $20 Amazon US gift voucher for reviewing their service. It’s a good service, so posting a review was no problem. Sure enough, a week or so later, I got an email offering me the choice of a $20 Amazon gift voucher, or $20 via PayPal. I chose the voucher, and bought:

I also pre-ordered Surgeon’s Choice by Richard Mabry, which releases this week. But that only uses up half my voucher (thanks to pre-Christmas sales!).

So did you receive any books for Christmas? (And yes, buying yourself books totally counts!) Share in the comments!

Don’t forget to pop over to Australasian Christian Writers as well!

Quote from A Song Unheard

Book Review | A Song Unheard by Roseanna M White

Happy New Year! May 2018 be full of wonderful books to read! I’m starting out with a good one: A Song Unheard by Roseanna M White. I’ve read most of her books, and this is definitely the best yet.

An Excellent WWI Romance with Suspense Elements

Violin virtuoso Lukas De Wilde has escaped war-torn Belgium with his life and his Stradivarius, but without his family. He has to find Mamman and Margot and get them safely to England before the Germans find them … and the valuable cypher key.

Willa Forsythe is one of London’s best thieves, and her latest assignment from the mysterious Mr V is to befriend Lukas De Wilde and find the cypher key. Which means a trip to Wales and playing best friends with the wealthy Davies sisters, benefactors to De Wilde and his fellow musicians.

It soon becomes apparent that Willa and V aren’t the only people interested in the cypher key … and that finding it isn’t going to be as easy as Willa first thought. Especially when Lukas begins to express his interest in her as a fellow musician, and romantically.

A Song Unheard is a brilliant combination of romance and suspense in a unique historical setting.

It is set in London and Aberystwyth. I lived in London for ten years, so I love reading books set there (perhaps this is why I like Regency romance, because most are set in and around central London). I haven’t read any other books set in Aberystwyth, which is where I was born (although I’ve never lived there). It was great to see the city through the eyes of Willa and Lukas.

I was especially impressed by the research. I’d never heard of the Davies sisters and their World War One Belgian orchestra, so this was a fascinating plot device (yes, they were a real thing. I wonder if any of my Welsh relatives attended their concerts?). I’ve always been fascinated by codes and cyphers, so this element intrigued me, especially the connection with mathematics. And who knew that Mozart encoded messages into his music with cyphers?

Overall, A Song Unheard was brilliant—Roseanna M White’s best book yet.

That’s saying something, because A Name Unknown, the first book in this Shadows Over England series, was excellent, as were her earlier books (especially The Culper Ring series). Recommended for fans of Edwardian romance, and romantic suspense.

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

About Roseanna M White

Roseanna M. White pens her novels beneath her Betsy Ross flag, with her Jane Austen action figure watching over her. When not writing fiction, she’s homeschooling her two children, editing and designing, and pretending her house will clean itself. Roseanna has a slew of historical novels available, ranging from biblical fiction to American-set romances to her new British series. She lives with her family in West Virginia.

Find Roseanna M White online at:

Website | Facebook | Instagram | Pinterest | Twitter | YouTube 

About A Song Unheard

Willa Forsythe is both a violin prodigy and top-notch thief, which makes her the perfect choice for a crucial task at the outset of World War I—to steal a cypher from a famous violinist currently in Wales.

Lukas De Wilde has enjoyed the life of fame he’s won–until now, when being recognized nearly gets him killed. Everyone wants the key to his father’s work as a cryptologist. And Lukas fears that his mother and sister, who have vanished in the wake of the German invasion of Belgium, will pay the price. The only light he finds is meeting the intriguing Willa Forsythe.

But danger presses in from every side, and Willa knows what Lukas doesn’t–that she must betray him and find that cypher, or her own family will pay the price as surely as his has.

Find A Song Unheard online at:

Amazon | ChristianBook | Goodreads | Koorong