Really Woolly Nighttime Lullabies

Book Review:  Really Woolly Nighttime Lullabies, Bonnie Rickner Jensen, Thomas Nelson, 2015

This is an absolutely charming little children’s story book.  It is a board book which I am always thrilled to find because it allows the children to have the book in their hands and enjoy it. 

There are colorful pictures on every page illustrating this little lamb in all kinds of situations from sunsets to picnics, snuggled in a comfy chair or playing by a pond.  He is a great little character for children to see just before bedtime. 

The book is really setup to read one story or poem at a time, rather than trying to read the whole book to a child in one sitting.  The poems are fairly long for a child’s attention, but they have great rhythm and are fun to read and easy to hold the child’s attention.

I am happy to give Really Woolly Nighttime Lullabies five stars and to strongly recommend it to you.

Thomas Nelson, the publisher for this book, supplied a copy for this review.

Book Review:  Finding Me, Kathryn Cushman, Bethany House, 2015

I am so thrilled to share with you my thoughts about Kathryn Cushman’s Finding Me, a novel of Christian Fiction which skillfully combines mystery, romance and women’s issues in a contemporary setting.

Finding Me opens with Kelli Huddleston tragically losing her father and step-mother in a car accident.  However, as she cleans out their house, particularly the study which she was always forbidden to enter, she finds the father she adored and who doted on her was keeping secrets not just about himself but about Kelli as well.  This sends Kelli to a small, Tennessee town to meet people she thought were long dead.

Kelli’s father has taught her that she doesn’t need God or church, she only needs to be the best person she can.  As his secrets unfold, she begins to question just how good he was and that opens her heart to hearing the gospel as shared by her new friends.  That is perhaps the point I most enjoyed about the book - the plan of salvation is clearly presented both in the life and worship-styles of the people she meets in Tennessee, as well as being clearly spoken to Kelli.  We don’t see Kelli accepting Christ as her savior within the text of the novel, but that didn’t trouble me for isn’t that so often the case that we see someone open to the Word of God and hearing it but we don’t always see the fruit often simply because life moves us all along.  I loved that Allison and Beth seem to understand their only requirement is to witness to her – then they’ve done their part.

Mrs. Cushman presents us with characters along a wide spectrum of humanity from Kelli who has grown up with a wild step-mother and loving father on the West coast to Allison, the sweet and loving Southern mother-type.  She also presents Kenmore who is gruff on the outside but kind and loving once you get to know him; he’s been quietly taking care of his best friend’s widow for the past twenty years.  Then there is Beth who is so full of energy that my reading pace accelerated anytime she was talking; she is the person whom I expected to be the most pushy evangelizing but even she left the Holy Spirit to do his work in her new friend.

This is a bit of a mystery and there are questions left unanswered.  Again, I felt that was such a realistic approach for we never really get all of the answers in life, do we?  Had the author tried to wrap up every detail, she would have risked the book running much longer and tiring the reader.  As it is, I was enthralled until the very end and left wishing there were a few more pages. 

I am am giving Finding Me five stars and want to encourage you to read it.

Bethany House, publisher of Finding Me supplied this ebook for the purpose of a fair review.

Book Review: A Faith of Her Own, Kathleen Fuller, Thomas Nelson, 2015

A Faith of Her Own is an Amish Romance novel presenting four different couples who are in very different phases of both life and relationships.  Initially, Jeremiah and Anna Mae are presented both as the best of friends in childhood and then leading separate lives and adults.  Jeremiah left the Amish community to pursue higher education and a professional career.  He left everything behind, including Anna Mae.  She neither admits nor even realizes is, but Anna Mae has been waiting for him for six years.

Caleb and Bekah are adversaries in every situation; everything about each one annoys the other.  Yet his brother is married to her sister so they see each other quite often and everyone around them sees clearly that they are meant for each other. 

Caleb is living with his brother Johnny and sister-in-law Katie who have been trying to start a family for years without success.  We see them very much in love and glimpse that relationship.

Abandoned by his wife years ago, David has developed a hardened demeanor that shuts out the whole world.  When a widow, Judith, moves in next door and begins to care for him and his disabled son she grows to care about them and she feels strongly God has work for her to do in that family.  Now she is challenged to remain focused on that work and not allow her feelings for David to get out of hand.

A Faith of Her Own presents a very different Amish community than we normally see in Amish novels.  They are clearly more progressive since they have coolers and bathrooms in every house.  We never meet the bishop nor do we know how strictly he rules this congregation.  Jeremiah and Anna Mae are the two characters who walk the closest to the English world, but neither has been baptized into the Amish church and therefore do not risk the shunning that is often described in these stories.  While there is conflict when this couple does not make the traditional choices, we never hear any ruling from the bishop or any chastisement on the families for maintaining relations with them.

The Amish doctrine isn’t addressed, but all of the characters are very focused on doing God’s will – on following his particular plan for their individual lives.  Again, this is a different perspective than we usually get in Amish fiction where we are led to believe that The Ordnung guides individuals’ lives and plans.  This concept of God knowing the plans he has for me is widely accepted in our evangelical circles, but I found it a fresh concept in this sort of writing.

The large cast of characters made the beginning of the book slow for me, but once I got into the swing of each of their stories, I enjoyed this novel.  Mrs. Fuller wraps up each story very nicely and a happy ending for all is always welcome.

Book Review:
The Bracelet, Dorothy Love, Thomas Nelson 2014

A Faith of Her Own is an Amish Romance novel presenting four different couples who are in very different phases of both life and relationships.  Initially, Jeremiah and Anna Mae are presented both as the best of friends in childhood and then leading separate lives and adults.  Jeremiah left the Amish community to pursue higher education and a professional career.  He left everything behind, including Anna Mae.  She neither admits nor even realizes is, but Anna Mae has been waiting for him for six years.

Caleb and Bekah are adversaries in every situation; everything about each one annoys the other.  Yet his brother is married to her sister so they see each other quite often and everyone around them sees clearly that they are meant for each other. 

Caleb is living with his brother Johnny and sister-in-law Katie who have been trying to start a family for years without success.  We see them very much in love and glimpse that relationship.

Abandoned by his wife years ago, David has developed a hardened demeanor that shuts out the whole world.  When a widow, Judith, moves in next door and begins to care for him and his disabled son she grows to care about them and she feels strongly God has work for her to do in that family.  Now she is challenged to remain focused on that work and not allow her feelings for David to get out of hand.

A Faith of Her Own presents a very different Amish community than we normally see in Amish novels.  They are clearly more progressive since they have coolers and bathrooms in every house.  We never meet the bishop nor do we know how strictly he rules this congregation.  Jeremiah and Anna Mae are the two characters who walk the closest to the English world, but neither has been baptized into the Amish church and therefore do not risk the shunning that is often described in these stories.  While there is conflict when this couple does not make the traditional choices, we never hear any ruling from the bishop or any chastisement on the families for maintaining relations with them.

The Amish doctrine isn’t addressed, but all of the characters are very focused on doing God’s will – on following his particular plan for their individual lives.  Again, this is a different perspective than we usually get in Amish fiction where we are led to believe that The Ordnung guides individuals’ lives and plans.  This concept of God knowing the plans he has for me is widely accepted in our evangelical circles, but I found it a fresh concept in this sort of writing.

The large cast of characters made the beginning of the book slow for me, but once I got into the swing of each of their stories, I enjoyed this novel.  Mrs. Fuller wraps up each story very nicely and a happy ending for all is always welcome.

Book Review:
The Bracelet, Dorothy Love, Thomas Nelson 2014

The Bracelet is an historical fiction novel set in Savannah, Georgia in 1858.  Dorothy Love beautifully combines family drama and romance with mystery in a book that compels the reader to reach the end and learn the secrets of the Browning family.

Many years ago, the Brownings suffered two tragedies in their home, followed by weeks of gossip.  Now an opportunistic newspaper reporter dredges up the scandal in hopes of selling newspapers and books.  Hurt by the judgment of her society friends, and hoping to protect her father and cousin, Celia Browning begins her own search for answers.

Our lives are rarely occupied by a single issue and The Bracelet certainly reflects that.  The tensions that were building in southern Georgia just three years before the outbreak of The Civil War must have overshadowed every relationship and every decision in 1858.  In that cauldron of stress, Celia welcomes home the man she’s loved for years and hopes to marry.  She continues charity work and social engagements while alternately ignoring the coming storm and resolving to live normally despite it. 

According to the author’s note at the end of the book, each character was based on a real historical person and I believe that authenticity resounds in each one.  However, there are no slave characters in the book and Love explains that not all Southerners owned slaves or made their living on cotton plantations.  The big Browning town home is kept by a single, Irish housekeeper while a freeman serves as their driver.  Since the Brownings are listed as one of the wealthiest families in Savannah, it seems unlikely that their home would be so scarcely furnished with servants and that they would not have owned even one slave.  I couldn’t help but feel the treatment of the slave issue was more twenty-first century political correctness than it was historical accuracy.  While Mr. Browning may have held a personal conviction against the institution of slavery, he seems to have made a fortune shipping cotton from slave-holding plantations and that discrepancy is never addressed.

The novel wraps up very nicely.  It is a happy ending, especially since is ends still two years before the war.  Just as we rarely experience in the real world, not every question from the Browning family mystery is answered, still every storyline is very nicely resolved. I would have enjoyed more details about the future of Cousin Ivy, but perhaps that would be addressed in a future novel. 

I would certainly recommend The Bracelet to you and am happy to give it a four-star review.

Thomas Nelson, publisher of The Bracelet, supplied a copy of this book for the purpose of this review.

Book Review:  Where Trust Lies

Janette Oke has sold millions of copies of dozens of book titles and I have enjoyed many of those titles.  Most of her work that I’ve read in the past has been set in nineteenth century western North America.  She writes Where Trust Lies along with her daughter, Laurel Oke Logan, and sets it in 1920’s Eastern Canada.  The change of setting was a pleasant surprise when I began the book because sometimes when an author that writes exclusively in the same era and area their work can begin to feel formulaic.  Oke and Logan did a good job portraying the time period, affectively capturing the cultural change of the era and the cross-generational conflict it sometimes caused. 

The book opens with Beth Thatcher’s train ride home after teaching in a small, western town for a school year; she’s returning to her wealthy Toronto family having left a new love behind.  Her family has planned a coastal cruise for vacation.  Beth is conflicted about leaving with them because her beau has promised to telephone her and she also wants to wait for correspondence that will invite her to return and teach the school again in the fall.  Ultimately, she does travel with her family where she becomes re-acquainted with her sisters comes to truly know her mother for the first time.  They share the cruise with a trio of opportunistic criminals who ultimately prey on the Thatcher family.

While Beth Thatcher is the protagonist, a fair amount of the drama ultimately involves another sister so that the focus of the book is not the dramatic criminal activity, but rather Beth’s reaction to it and her growing relationships as the drama unfolds.  Again this was an unexpected approach, but pleasantly so. 

As we’ve come to expect in Mrs. Oke’s books, her characters are well developed and captivating.  You can see the story building and sense that a twist to the plot is approaching long before she unveils the details of it. She and Mrs. Logan present the criminal element so thoroughly that I had an uneasy feeling in every scene where they were present. 

The only distraction to this well written novel is the complex setting.   The Thatcher family cruises along the St. Lawrence and the eastern coast of Canada and the United States.  It was fascinating to imagine making such a journey and Oke and Logan give rather detailed descriptions of many of the landmarks and ports.  I really enjoy books that give me details of the setting, I enjoy building that mental image of the characters interacting there.  However, in this case I found it a bit overwhelming to envision each new port of call, hotels they stayed in and attractions they visited. It was unlike a journey by train or stagecoach in which the changing landscape is viewed and perhaps described as the characters pass through it while the story unfolds within the confines of the car or coach.

Overall, I greatly enjoyed Where Trust Lies and am happy to recommend it to you.

The publisher supplied this book in return for a fair review.

Where Trust Lies, Oke & Logan, Bethany House Publishers, 2015

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