Three by Dawn Crandall

I love it when authors ask me to review their books, and when Dawn Crandall's assistant asked me to review The Captive Imposter (Dawn's book three in her Everstone Chronicles series), I went to the links in the email to see what the book was about. With a title like Everstone Chronicles, I thought the books were going to be a fantasy series, not a romantic series. Then the deal was sweetened, in exchange for my review, I'd get the first two books in the series. I was in with both feet. Next I was given two dates for a blog tour. One was to be an interview with Dawn (that's to come), and the other was to be a triple-play review of the three books. Today's post is the triple play.

The Hesitant Heiress is Amaryllis' story. All she wants is to open a music conservatory where any girl, regardless of social class, can take music lessons. After she is expelled from the Boston Conservatory of Music (under false pretenses, as it turns out), she is told of her inheritance and the conditions she must meet in order to acquire it. She doesn't care about the money, except for how it would help her achieve her dreams.

Lawry and his friend Nathan Everstone come from Washington state to stay with Amaryllis' Aunt Claudine, where Amaryllis was also living. Nathan immediately is attracted to Amaryllis, but she can't believe he truly wants anything to do with her. She has a hard time believing he's grown up and become more than just a playboy.

The Bound Heart finds Lawry seeking the company of Meredyth Summercourt because he has loved her since they were children. Meredyth feels that her childhood crush on Vance Everstone must be played out to its logical conclusion even though she is falling in love with Lawry. Lawry has patience to wait for her and tries to get her to see her freedom in Christ, even though she won't believe in it.

The Captive Imposter finds Estella Everstone living as Ella Stoneburner, a lady's companion staying in an Everstone family hotel in Maine. When the dowager lady's granddaughter makes false accusations against Ella and she is fired from her position, she seeks refuge with the new hotel owner, Dexter Blakely. She feels betrayed when she finds out that her father sold this hotel to Dexter, but she can't help herself in noting his more than commendable qualities. The more she gets to know him, the more she starts falling in love with him. When her brother Vance's sins come home to roost, she has to reveal who she is to Dexter and his anger is more than she can deal with.

I think my favorite of these books is the first. It's not often that a debut novel can capture and engage the reader with such a relentlessness. Dawn creates a lyrical narrative that shows how true love can thrive and grow in the midst of hard circumstances, even in the midst of insanity. I finished the books in a few short days, completely captivated by the heroines and their dilemmas. I loved how all three stories built on one another, how the characters' lives overlapped, how the scenery in the books is indispensible to the pace of the plots, and how a mystery that rolls through all three books is resolved.

Five Stars, Two Thumbs Up, and a cup of tea to go with your book.

My thanks to Dawn Crandall for allowing me to read and review her books, and to participate in her blog tour!

Ebb and Flow

It's always a thrill to read books in a series all at once and in this case I was able to read two of the books in the series back to back. I will be posting later this week about a series I was allowed to read all in a row. Stay Tuned. But I digress.

Again, I'm reviewing a book from the MacDonald family trilogy by Carla Laureano. London Tides is what one of my friends would call a weeper, because there are definite times when tears are the most appropriate reaction to the happenings in the book.

Ian MacDonald is the eldest sibling in the family and the one who holds the most hurt inside his heart. He was engaged once and during the middle of the night ten years earlier, she packed up all of her stuff except the ring and walked out while he was asleep. He kept up with her through her photography in war torn areas of the world. Grace, the woman of his dreams and memories, is an award winning photographer who is able to get the nitty-gritty details of life into her photographs. When he spots Grace on the banks of the Thames while rowing with his crew, his world is turned upside down and sideways.

Grace Brennan would be the poster child for PTSD if there were such a thing. She's seen more in her young life than any woman or any person, for that matter, should, but Grace has seen it through the telephoto lens on her camera. Even more, she's seen her assistant killed by a blast and that was the straw that broke the camel's back. She still has flashbacks, panic attacks, and even loses time when these things happen to her.

I've spoken before about the formula for writing romances--boy meets girl, boy gets girl, boy loses girl, boy gets girl back. This fit the formula in a way, but not in a conventional way--and the way Carla weaves it together keeps the reader involved and engaged in the plot of the book. It is very hard to put down. I cannot wait for the third book in the series to come out. During James and Andrea's wedding, Carla introduces Malcolm as the manager of the family hotel. I am hoping he is the man for Serena--he takes his responsibilities seriously and loves each and every family member.

Five Stars, Two Thumbs Up, and a Pulitzer Prize winning photograph.

My thanks to David C Cook for allowing me to read and review this book.

Five Days

It certainly didn't take me five days to read Carla Laureano's first MacDonald Family book, but Five Days in Skye was all it took for Andrea Sullivan to fall in love with Scotland, and with James MacDonald--the famous chef/restauranteur. From looking over Carla's website, I get the idea that Carla usually writes inspirational fantasy, but this contemporary romance certainly has its own charm and inspiration.

Carla has given Andrea strength and talents that endear her to James, but Carla also wove in quite a bit of vulnerability and fragility. With James, he's got a reputation he doesn't really deserve, and his own baggage, but he really wants to help Andrea find hope and healing from the slings and arrows life throws. In the end, both of them find the healing they desperately need.

Andrea is a hospitality consultant for a company that helps make hotels and motels successful. She's good at what she does, she does her research well, and she takes no guff from anyone--evidenced by decking a client who assumed she provided services she just wasn't willing to provide. Instead of allowing her to take her Tahitian vacation, her bosses sent her to Scotland to acquire a contract with James MacDonald for the family hotel he wants to reopen.

After James meets Andrea, he makes it his goal to get her to fall in love with his beloved Scotland. He acts as tour guide and teacher about all things Scottish. A side benefit is that he's making Andrea fall in love with him--because he's falling in love with her. Something that is a bit bothersome is that everywhere he takes Andrea, there is someone there he's known or dated before, and that reinforces Andrea's idea of him as a playboy.

Here's what Carla has done right: The settings are an integral part of the story and Carla has done well in giving the details that make the settings stand out without detracting from the story. The characters are empathetic with honest feelings, easily relatable, and true to life conflicts. She also integrates spiritual ideas and tenets that are honest to the characters and make them more believable. The only criticism I have is that there aren't any recipes for some of the things James cooks for Andrea.

Five Stars, Two Thumbs Up, and a gourmet meal made by a professional chef.

Many thanks to David C Cook for allowing me to read and review this book.

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Harvesting Hope

Lauraine Snelling's newest offering is the continuing story of Blessing, North Dakota, and all of its residents. This is the second book of the fifth series about Blessing, ND, and there are many of the same characters, as well as a few newer ones. A Harvest of Hope reads more like a day to day sampling of events and people rather than a telling of the story of one couple falling in love.

Most of the time, I prefer that the novel I read center on the relationship of the couple featured in the romance, but Lauraine has made her method work and work well. The characters have been developed all through the series of series and their personalities are easy to like. I feel like there is a modicum of truth to these stories, that Lauraine is telling her family history through her novels. Maybe that is her goal, to bring the reader into the story and to make that reader feel part of the family's history she is telling. I was a bit upset about Lauraine's previous book because it was touted to be a telling of the romance between Miriam Hastings and Trygve Knutsen, but this book tells that story fully and still chronicles the ups and downs of daily life in Blessing, ND. There are hints of the next book in this one, the dentist and one of Miriam's nursing friends, also that Miriam's family will be moving to Blessing as soon as Miriam finishes nursing school.

The people who populate these Blessings novels are friends from the first meeting all the way through to the each novel Lauraine writes in the series. I feel that I can't really tell much of the story in my review, just suffice it to say that I feel this book is well worth the time to read it. The reader will feel that he/she has been with her best friends talking over tea and cookies. Five Stars, Two Thumbs Up, and tea and cookies with a friend.

My thanks to Bethany House for allowing me to read and review this book.

All's Fair

Last night, I got in bed to read for a bit, and my Kindle is set so that it tells me how much time remains in my book--and I had a bit over two hours, so I thought I'd read down to an hour and then call it a night. That didn't happen. I finished the book--I just couldn't put it down. Sorry, Betsy, but you kept me up late last night.

Betsy St Amant has taken a world of misunderstandings, a few episodes of sabotage, a cupcake baking contest, and two people very much in love but very much unable to say so; and she made those elements into a fast-paced, rollicking novel that grabs readers and won't let them loose.

To begin with, the major characters, Kat and Lucas, are both in love with each other, but they have the awkward dance down to a science. Kat is a cupcake baker working in her aunt's bakery with a desire to do more than plain chocolate, vanilla, or strawberry cupcakes. Lucas is a football coach who gets the benefit of trying out all of Kat's experiments. He enters Kat into the Cupcake Combat competition on the food station on television. When Kat gets tapped to participate, she makes Lucas go with her as her assistant. He wanted her to see how much he believed in her, how much he loved her; but the stress of the week's competitions kept Kat from seeing his love for her.

Some of the minor players in this dance of awkwardness are Piper and Amber who don't care how they win, just so that they do. To that end, Piper has decided that Kat is her major competition and does everything she can to sabotage Kat's cupcakes.

Thad is one of the judges who thinks Kat is hot, makes passes, and acts suggestively toward her.

Stella is Kat's sister who wins pageants and is the apple of her parents' eyes. Kat feels as though she has lived in Stella's shadow, and, in fact, even lost a fiance to Stella. Stella just seems to take these events as her right.

Maggie is the owner of Sweetie Pie's bakery and is Kat's boss. She's been quite ill lately and Kat has been keeping the bakery going. Kat's not quite sure how Maggie is going to keep the shop going while she's in Los Angeles on the show.

All of the characters and the action have added up to make a wonderfully enjoyable book. Five Stars, Two Thumbs Up, and a guilt-free cupcake.

Many Thanks to Zondervan for allowing me to read and review this book.

Whenever

Charity has a house under reconstruction and needs a quiet place to write. Charity's parents are in Europe for the summer, so her childhood home has become her refuge. When she pulls into their driveway, she finds the home next door owned by her high school classmate, Buck Malone. With a trip to the grocery store, Charity runs into Buck--literally. Charity's dog, Cocoa, takes Buck out in a slick move breaking both his right wrist and his right ankle. Feeling guilty, Charity offers to help out on Buck's horse ranch until he is back on his feet. The problem is that Charity is hiding a secret--a secret that is ten years old and still holds her captive, and she doesn't want any entanglements.

Robin Lee Hatcher has written a sweet novel about working through some issues, finding peace, and falling in love. The characters are believable, relatable, and likable. The plot moves at a fairly good clip and keeps the reader engaged in the story. I love reading Robin Lee Hatcher's books, especially when I want light, easy reads. Whenever You Come Around fits this bill quite nicely. To see how Robin worked out the conflict in Charity's life was a real treat--Robin shows in a real way that we can allow events in our lives to hold us captive when God wants a real freedom for us.

My one criticism is that there was no real resolution to Charity's secret, no fairness in what happened to her. I wanted to see something that would bring the perpetrator to justice. Four strong stars.

My thanks to Thomas Nelson for allowing me to read and review this book.