Category: Book Review

Book Review | Lizzie & Jane by Katherine Reay

Excellent Foodie Fiction

Book coverElizabeth 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 home to an older sister who’s undergoing treatment for breast cancer, the same cancer that killed their mother.

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. 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—one of the first romance novels I ever read.)

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, and you can read the introduction to Lizzy and Jane below:

Book Review: Shattered by Dani Pettrey

Shattered by Dani Pettrey

I recently purchased Dani Pettrey’s first book, Submerged, from Amazon. I really enjoyed it, so I was very pleased to find a review copy of Shattered, the second in the Alaskan Courage series. I really enjoy Christian Romantic Suspense, and think the Alaskan Courage series is as good as anything else available today.

The books deal with the McKenna siblings from the (fictional) small town of Yancey, Alaska. Submerged was the story of Cole, the oldest McKenna brother, and Bailey Craig, an expert in Russian history and antiques who returns to the island after her aunt is murdered. Shattered follows Piper McKenna as she works to prove that Reef, the youngest brother, is innocent of murder.

Things aren’t looking good for Reef.

There are two witnesses who saw him holding the knife over the victim, and the District Attorney has a particular grudge against the McKenna family. Piper is determined Reef is innocent. So she drags Deputy Sheriff and long-time family friend, Landon Grainger, into her investigation. Landon isn’t so sure about Reef’s innocence … and is struggling to come to terms with his changing feelings for Piper.

I really liked the way the Shattered followed on so well from Submerged in terms of taking the Landon/Piper subplot and turning it into the main plot. I can also see how Shattered has set up future books in the series, which I will certainly want to read. The novel was well-written, with a fast-paced and exciting murder plot, a sweet romance subplot, and a cast of interesting characters.

I was particularly impressed (especially in Submerged, but also in Shattered) with the way the Christian elements were integrated into the plot. These characters face the same questions and temptations as we face in real life, and they respond in realistic (if sometimes flawed) ways.

Shattered can be read as a standalone novel, but readers will enjoy it more if they read Submerged first. Recommended for fans of Dee Henderson, Irene Hannon, Diann Mills, Susan Page Davis and Susan May Warren.

Thanks to Bethany House and NetGalley for providing a free ebook for review. You can find out more about Dani Pettrey at her website, and you can read the introduction to Shattered below:

 

Book Review: The Heir by Lynne Stringer

Have you signed up for my Newsletter? If so, you’ll already have received my entirely biased list of 50 novels from my favourite Christian authors. If not, sign up on the right!

Today I’m reviewing The Heir, the debut novel from Australian author Lynne Stringer. The Heir is the first in her Verindon science fiction trilogy for young adults (and older adults). The must-read sequels are The Crown and The Regin.

The Heir by Lynne Stringer

Sarah is a normal American teenager.

Well, mostly normal.

She goes to a fancy private school where all the other kids are rich, her dad is an inventor who never quite seems to get it right, she’s being stalked at school by a creepy boy, and her English teacher is always picking her for class debates even though she hates them. Apart from that, she’s just a normal kid. She loves art, tries to survive high school and has a secret crush on Dan, her best friend’s kind-of boyfriend.

But things are not what they seem. When tragedy strikes and Sarah’s life changes overnight, things start to get even stranger. Melting tables, windows that don’t open, eyes in the bushes …

The story started slowly but there was a growing sense of foreboding and rising suspense. I soon realised this wasn’t the predictable Young Adult coming-of-age kind of story it started out as (but I’m not going to spoil the surprise by saying too much). Strange things started to happen and there were a few left-field comments from Sarah’s friends that made me think I was missing something. I was. So was Sarah. And when we got the big reveal it was both a huge surprise and not, because it answered all those niggles.

The Heir is told entirely in the first person, from Sarah’s point of view (which I know some readers don’t like). But she’s a strong character who can carry the story without being so perfect as to be annoying. She’s a realistic teen, with strong likes and dislikes, hopes and fears, a secret crush, and a secret history even she doesn’t know about…

I really enjoyed The Heir.

The Heir was well-plotted with good foreshadowing (but without making it obvious) and good characters. The ending was satisfying in the way it completed the current story, but left me wanting more.

An excellent debut novel. Recommended for those who like authors such as Kathy Tyers, or those who enjoy YA dystopian or science fiction.

Thanks to Wombat Books for providing a free ebook for review. You can find out more about Lynne Stringer at her website, or in this interview, and you can read the introduction to The Heir below:

Book Review: Mistaken by Karen Barnett

If you’ve signed up for my monthly Newsletter, you’ll already have received my entirely biased list of 50 novels from my favourite Christian authors. If you haven’t, sign up on the right!

Today I’m reviewing Mistaken by Karen Barnett, an original historical romance with echoes of Pride and Prejudice.

Excellent Debut Novel

Cover image: Mistaken by Karen Barnett
Laurie’s brother is involved in a local gang running illegal booze from Canada during Prohibition, and the new man in town, Daniel Shepherd is involved as well. Laurie hates the business the effect alcohol has had on her family, and she hates the fact that all the men in her life seem to be controlled by alcohol.

Yet she finds herself attracted to Daniel.

Things get complicated when another new face arrives in town: Samuel Brown. Brown is a handsome federal agent working to eliminate the illegal trade in alcohol, and he’s also interested in Laurie. Although her head says Samuel is the better choice, her feelings are conflicted, not least because of her brother’s involvement in rum-running.

We get a hint of one of the main plot conflicts in Mistaken’s subtitle:

First Impressions Are Never What They Seem.

Literary buffs may recall that the original title of Pride and Prejudice was First Impressions, and there is something of the Lizzie Bennett in Laurie Burke (not merely the initials). Like Lizzie Bennett, Laurie is embarrassed by her family: in her case, by her alcoholic father. Her initial impressions of people are incorrect, and she makes other errors of character judgement in the same way as Lizzie did. I’ll let you figure out the other similarities yourself.

Mistaken is Karen Barnett’s debut novel, and it’s excellent.

I find that a lot of Christian fiction, especially historical fiction, starts to get repetitive in the themes, plots, characters and settings. Mistaken is set in a small coastal town about twenty miles south of the Canadian border. It’s set during the Prohibition era, so alcohol plays a major role in the story. It’s an original time setting, and an original plot, and I liked that.

And the author doesn’t shy away from the problems alcohol causes and the effect it has on family members. Her writing is more challenging than most Christian fiction, as Laurie has to negotiate some difficult moral choices with no black and white answers. The characters are real, facing problems in a world where the right thing to do isn’t the easy thing to do. And while this is Christian fiction and Laurie’s faith ultimately helps her in finding the answer to her conundrum, the Christian aspect is very understated.

Recommended.

Thanks to Abingdon Press and NetGalley for providing a free ebook for review. You can find out more about Karen Barnett at her website, and you can read the introduction to Mistaken below:

Book Review: Illusion by Frank Peretti

If you’ve signed up for my monthly Newsletter, you’ll already have receive my entirely biased list of 50 novels from my favourite Christian authors. If you haven’t, sign up on the right!

Today I’m reviewing Illusion by Frank Peretti, who practically invented the modern Christian speculative fiction genre with This Present Darkness.

Illusion

Mandy’s death in a car accident means the end of her forty-year career in magic.

Or does it? Because Mandy is not dead. She’s nineteen again, but nineteen in 2010, not the 1970 she remembers. Mandy struggles to adjust to modern life, trying to practice her father’s advice: when life hands you lemons, make lemonade. Meanwhile, husband Dane is struggling to adjust to life without his wife … until one day he sees a young magician who reminds him of a young version of Mandy.

As is typical of a Peretti novel, nothing is what it seems. Characters that appeared harmless at first then appear to have some ulterior motive. There is Mandy’s new manager, who helps her get a valid social security number. There is also the mysterious Mr Stone and Mr Mortimer, who appear at Mandy’s funeral, then follow Dane to his new home in northern Idaho to spy on him.

And underneath, there is the mystery of how a dead woman has suddenly appeared again, forty years younger. It’s like there is more than one Mandy, but she is real because she eats and sleeps and talks. And other people talk to her, so it’s not like she’s a ghost – just a teenager in 2010 who only knows the sixties songs and slang.

I try not to read other people’s reviews before I read a book for review, because I don’t want to be influenced by someone else’s ideas. But I did happen to glimpse a couple of reviews before starting to read Illusion, and one commented that they found the beginning of the book confusing.

Well, yes, it was. But I think that was the intention.

Just imagine it. One moment you’re nineteen and enjoying the County Fair with your friends. You sit down to eat lunch, and the next thing you know, the Fair has vanished, everything that is familiar is gone, and people are talking into small plastic boxes and telling you it is 2010 when you know it is 1970. What’s not to be confused about?

So, yes, Illusion was confusing.

It was also engaging and intriguing and I wavered between trying to work out who was who and exactly what was happening, and just wanting to read more and read faster so I could find out for myself. And weird things keep happening. Illusionis not a spiritual warfare novel like Peretti’s early Darkness novels, but it is a fast-paced thriller with a touch of science fiction, albeit from a Christian point of view. I was reading at night and found it hard to keep my eyes open, but even harder to stop reading. Recommended.

Thanks to Simon & Schuster and NetGalley for providing a free ebook for review.

Review: Five Days in May by Ninie Hammon

If you’ve signed up for my monthly Newsletter, you’ll already have receive my entirely biased list of 50 novels from my favourite Christian authors. If you haven’t, sign up on the right!

Today I’m reviewing Nine Days in May by Ninie Hammon. I also interviewed Ninie, and you can read our conversation here.

Five Days in May

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—who know nothing. The reader knows what’s coming, but the characters are tied up in their everyday lives. There is no warning of the coming disaster.

There are four main characters.

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

The characters are excellent. Princess 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—their relationship 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.

These rules 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. Rather, it added 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. These themes underpin 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:

And you can read the beginning below:

Book Review: Secrets She Kept by Cathy Gohlke

If you’ve signed up for my monthly Newsletter, you’ll already have receive my entirely biased list of 50 novels from my favourite Christian authors. If you haven’t, sign up on the right!

Today I’m reviewing Secrets She Kept by Cathy Gohlke.

Secrets She Kept

Goosebump Good

I was a little apprehensive about reading Secrets She Kept. I was one of the three judges who awarded Cathy Gohlke the 2015 Inspy Award for General Fiction, for her novel Saving Amelie. After reading a book as good as Saving Amelie, I’m always a little worried that the author’s next book won’t meet my high expectations.

Well, Secrets She Kept blew Saving Amelie out of the water. Yes, it was that good. Goosebump good.

It’s a split timeline story—the modern story is set in 1972. Hannah Sterling’s mother has just died, and Hannah finds her mother was never entirely honest with her. For starters, Lieselotte wasn’t Austrian . . .

No. Lieselotte was German, living in Germany during the rise of Hitler and during World War II.

The past story is Lieselotte’s, during those life-changing war years. It’s not a happy story, but as we journey with both Hannah and Lieselotte, we discover what made Lieselotte the distant mother she was. It was the secrets she kept.

The writing, the research, the characters, the plot—all were outstanding. It’s one of the few split timeline stories I’ve read where the past and the present stories were equally compelling. Recommended.

Thanks to Tyndale House Publishers and NetGalley for providing a free ebook for review. You can find out more about Cathy Gohlke at her website.

You can read the introduction to Secrets She Kept here:

Book Review: Dangerous Passage by Lisa Harris

If you’ve signed up for my monthly Newsletter, you’ll already have receive my entirely biased list of 50 novels from my favourite Christian authors. If you haven’t, sign up on the right!

Today I’m reviewing Dangerous Passage by Lisa Harris.

Dangerous Passage

Excellent Romantic suspense.

Atlanta Detective Avery North has just been called in from her day off to investigate a murder. The victim was a young Asian female with a magnolia tattoo. It’s similar to a recent unsolved crime, and Avery wants to solve this murder before another girl suffers the same fate.

She is assisted by her partner, Mitch, and by Jackson Bryant, the associate medical examiner for the force. Avery has recently started dating Jackson. He’s the first man she’s had more than one date with since her husband died three years ago.

Avery also has family issues. Her father has recently retired from the police force, her brother was murdered four months earlier, and his killer is still at large. She struggles to balance the competing demands of God, family, a full-time job and now dating, and this felt very real.

Dangerous Passage is the first book in the new Southern Crimes series, and I’ll certainly be keen to read more in the series.

It’s got everything I look for in Christian romantic suspense: intelligent and likeable yet imperfect characters, a strong plot with plenty of suspense and a developing romantic subplot, good writing, and an underlying Christian theme.

It deals with big issues—modern slavery—but manages to do it without getting too graphic. Recommended.

Thanks to Revell and NetGalley for providing a free ebook for review. You can find out more about Lisa Harris at her website.

You can read the opening chapter here:

Book Review: One Last Thing by Rebecca St James and Nancy Rue

If you’ve signed up for my monthly Newsletter, you’ll already have receive my entirely biased list of 50 novels from my favourite Christian authors. If you haven’t, sign up on the right!

Today I’m reviewing One Last Thing by Rebecca St James and Nancy Rue.

One Last Thing

An Exceptional Tale of Contemporary Issues

Tara Faulkner is marrying Seth Grissom: her brother’s best friend, the son of their pastor, and the guy she’s loved for ten years. But they have a strange argument three weeks before the wedding, and when she returns to discuss it with Seth, she finds him doing something awful.

He promises he’ll change and never do it again, and she wants to believe him. After all, the alternative is cancelling the wedding. But when she finds he lied, she does just that—but he makes her promise not to tell anyone why. This leaves her dealing with all the fallout, not least two families blaming her for the cancellation.

One Last Thing is written entirely in first person point of view from Tara’s viewpoint. This normally only works for complex characters, and Tara wasn’t complex, at least not in the beginning. She was the perfect pampered Southern princess, and while she hasn’t lived an entirely sheltered life, her family is financially stable and she’s always been given the best of everything. She attends church with her family, but there was little indication she had any personal faith: something that’s normally a must in Christian fiction, especially Christian romance.

At first I was a little frustrated that Seth, a Christian man who worked for a mission organisation, was planning to marry a woman who had little or no personal faith of her own. But as the novel progressed, Tara began to search for God … and it explained why Seth was prepared to be “unequally yoked”.

The explanation was misogynistic or hypocritical or possibly both, but it worked. And it worked without making me feel as though my emotions were being manipulated.

That’s strong writing.

The more Tara digs into Seth’s issues, the more she finds out, and the more secrets she has to keep from her friends, her family, and from Seth’s family. The only person who has any sympathy for her is Seth’s younger sister—who’s seen as a troublemaker. She is helped in her troubled journey by a disparate group of ladies she meets while working in a local coffee shop—her first-ever job.

Tara slowly discovers Seth’s issues, and strangely, this allows us to move from repugnance to sympathy for his problems while still acknowledging Tara did the right thing. Seth acknowledges that he has to take responsibility for his own actions, especially when they have hurt others. This is as a positive thing.

Publisher Thomas Nelson has caught some criticism recently for publishing books with inappropriate content for a Christian novel. I suspect they’ll catch a little more over One Last Thing, from people who would like to believe this kind of thing never happens to “proper” Christians.

I wish it didn’t, but it does, and 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.

Thanks to Thomas Nelson and NetGalley for providing a free ebook for review. You can find out more about Rebecca St James and Nancy Rue at their websites.

You can read the opening here:

Book Review: God’s Daughter by Heather Day Gilbert

If you’ve signed up for my monthly Newsletter, you’ll already have receive my entirely biased list of 50 novels from my favourite Christian authors. If you haven’t, sign up on the right!

Today I’m reviewing God’s Daughter by debut author Heather Day Gilbert. This review was previously published on my blog, Iola’s Christian Reads.

4.5 Stars for a Unique Historical Novel

It is 1000 AD, and Gudrid is one of the few women on a Viking expedition to upper North America, to rediscover Vineland and bring great wealth back to Leif Eiriksson, their chieftain. She is the wife of Thorfinn Karlsefni, the expedition leader, mother to Snorri, the unofficial leader of the small band of women on the expedition—and the unwilling object of the affections of several of the men.

Gudrid stopped worshipping Thor when she was a child and the capricious god demanded her mother as a sacrifice to guarantee a good harvest. As an adult in Iceland, she learned of the one true God from the monks, and she now follows Him.

God’s Daughter is a character-driven family saga, told entirely in first person from Gudrid’s point of view, and in the present tense—an interesting choice for a story set 1,000 years in the past, but one that’s strangely effective. Her voice is understated, deliberately downplaying the everyday struggles for survival in Viking society, a culture that still worships Thor and where life includes many pagan rituals.

It is obvious that a huge amount of research has gone into God’s Daughter, and while that research comes out in the depth of the narrative around the people, culture and lifestyle, it’s never overbearing and it never gets in the way of the story (although the names were a little difficult at times, because they were so unfamiliar).

The distance of time makes it impossible for us to really know what life was like in the Viking camp of Straumsfjord or the village of Brattahlid in Greenland, but the majesty and the savagery both come alive in the excellent writing. I came away feeling I had a real understanding of Viking life (certainly more than enough to be thankful I live now!).

God’s Daughter is recommended for readers who enjoy well-researched historical fiction set in less well-known times and places, from author such as Iris Anthony (aka Siri Mitchell) or Sharon Penman.

Thanks to the author for providing a free ebook for review. You can find out more about Heather Day Gilbert at her website, and can read the opening of God’s Daughter below: