Hannah G

Olivia needs a little peace in her life, so she decides to escape the scandal her father sparked in the newspapers before his death by going to spend some time sorting through things in his secret beach house. Except…someone most definitely wants her to keep her nose out of the beach house! And the good-looking firefighter who shows up claiming to have rented the house is either a slick deceiver or her only hope to solve the crimes and stay alive.

Kinda has elements of a locked-room mystery as a tropical storm has the island bridge closed and no one can come or go from the mainland for a few days. They’re trapped in a small town as the bodies pile up…

Absolutely lovely story about a single mom looking for her adult purpose by exploring filmmaking, and a missions pastor seeking to make sense of watching the church and job he loves crumble around him.

Both characters engaged me easily and deeply, but while I identified more with Val personally, I identified fully with Miles’s job woes, because I work in a church that’s had more than its fair share of change in the past two years. The words from the wise counselors in the story, especially Rev, Trisha, and Nurse Charlotte, are reminders we should all have about the importance of even the “smallest” bits of ministry.

Recommended for everyone, and maybe especially for stuffy church employees who read little more than weighty theology tomes. :)

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for a free reading copy. A favorable review was not required.

What a scrumptious old-fashioned novel! I love Warner’s work because you get so entirely absorbed in the characters and in their lives, plus you get to learn more about God along with them. Warner’s faith wasn’t any everyday set of rules...it’s about a living, daily, step-by-step with Jesus. Her characters get to learn this and to grow closer through the story.

This one’s delightfully lengthy, too! So many of hers are 500+ pages and it just makes my book-lover heart happy.

I ended up reading each story pretty independently of the other ones, since I've had nearly zero time for reading this summer. All three were really enjoyable and kept me guessing as to who was after the MCs and wanting to get them killed. There were some of the better short stories I've read in awhile, as each one stands on its own and doesn't require other books from each series to complete the picture--although knowing the characters and history is helpful, of course.

I think the last one was my favorite.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for a free reading copy. A favorable review was not required.

I use this volume all the time, especially with adult students and older children. Irma great for teaching how to handle the bow and the fingers. I generally introduce it in Suzuki book 3, though with one student I started a few measures at a time while in book two.

One tip:
It is not always necessary for most of the pieces to force a student to learn perfectly the entire thing...sometimes I assign a few lines and make sure the basic concept has been learned, then move on to another. My teacher did require each piece to be learned perfectly, but in tandem with Suzuki, I have found that often this book parallels quite nicely, and to be quibbling over tone in a piece meant for bowing technique can defeat the purpose of using this book to aid and assist the regular material.

A nice twisty thriller with strong lead characters. Most of the content is focused on finding the killer and it gives a nice trail of clues so I felt like I was alongside Charlotte and Austin while they worked to find the killer on a very tight deadline. I'll definitely be reading more from this author.

1. A heroine who suffers from Too Stupid To Live syndrome, from not wanting to let anyone help her to driving her car into a waist deep river crossing (but somehow the guy’s pickup truck makes it across??)

2. A hero who recklessly mixes up known dangerous personal business with a woman already in the run

3. A story line that contradicts itself

Since this is a known reliable author, I’m going with “crammed on a deadline and skipped the editor” on this one.

This whole series was five stars for me. I really enjoyed having the characters carry through the whole series rather than get to know a new couple in every book, and it made for a lot more depth to their friendship-to-more status. This one featured a human trafficker and his hitman trying to escape from the law while the witness they want gone is in Tess's neck of the woods. Of course, this causes a great deal of mishap and mayhem, along with the trouble of having a poacher on the loose, with a cold-blooded killer trying to invade their town and find his quarry.

I'd love for Cantore to write another trilogy of Tess and Oliver someday, so we get to see more of them. There's definitely plenty of story left to tell about their life.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for a free reading copy. A favorable review was not required.

Twisty mystery that kept me guessing all the way through. Max's sister is in the hospital fighting for life after an attack by a vicious boyfriend, and as he's visiting her while on a short leave from the military, he finds out her social worker Tara is in grave danger from a stalker. Through the story, they are trying to find the violent boyfriend as well as figure out Tara's stalker.

4.5 stars

Excellent suspense, a follow-up to the Rock Harbor series and the first in a new trilogy about Annie. I found it easy to land back in the familiar scenes of Rock Harbor and its people. Annie works with Sheriff Kaleva and is good friends with Bree.

There's a ton of stuff on Annie's plate as a single mom. She lost her husband and parents in a boating accident the year before and has been trying to keep her parents' cabin rentals in business while working as a ranger and mothering Kylie.

I truly enjoyed the relationships between Jon and Annie and how he tries so carefully to win Kylie over. I can't wait to read the other books in the series and see what happens with their family, including Annie's missing sister.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for a free reading copy. A favorable review was not required.

Fluffy little story that's half just blow by blow of their kisses, which left the story feeling unbalanced, and little in the way of plot to fill the gaps. It's supposed to be a Christmas story but that seemed to mostly be forgotten past the cover. There were some cute scenes like him coming to help out at the bakery, but for the most part it's just drama and kisses.

Truly loved this exciting chase as our heroine is trying to escape bad guys who are determined to find evidence she didn't know she had, and are willing to hurt her or her little boy in order to get it. There's a massive twist at the end that was really well done.

Sweet, short retelling of Cinderella. The story has some good twists, especially after the halfway mark, leading to a happy ending. I would have liked to see a bit more character development, but that would be hard in this amount of space. I disliked two story choices: the three-year gap seemed odd and jarring; and the scene with her best friend in the room with her bathing was ick.

A lovely story about a family and a young paleontologist. There's a strong suggestion of romance between Leo and Jennie, but it's not the only element of the story and it's very chaste. We also get the POV of her mom Etta and see how Etta longs for her husband's purpose in life to be restored, as he's been trapped in crippling melancholia for years.

I especially appreciated how Leo wishes to find anthropology that supports the Biblical narrative and that there's a clear message that Christians don't need to fear going to work in sciences that may be viewed as unfriendly to Christianity–because if we follow God, true science won't contradict His word. It's a bold and truthful point to make, and I loved it.

Excellent story that will be suitable for all ages.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for a free reading copy. A favorable review was not required.

Quickie cozy read, mostly just romance but not too cloying even though there's not a distracting subplot. It's just a novella, but it sets up the story well for the two younger siblings' stories, which appear to both be full-length novels. Adam was my favorite character, followed by his meddling little sister.

The saga of the Deadeye Gang continues in this second book of the series, and this time there's a witness. One man, shot several times, has against odds lived long enough to get to the doctor. He's too critically injured to be of much help, but he does give them several clues. However, that only stirs a hornet's nest, and Nell is right in the middle of it. Not only Nell, either–handsome homesteader Brand Nolte and his three daughters are mixed up too. Of course, Nell's not looking to remarry after a bad marriage; but it does make sense for them to stick together for this–right? And she can enjoy herself making dresses for the girls in the meantime.

I liked this story better than the first book and really enjoyed seeing Brand's daughters bond so easily with Nell. Brand was a very layered character himself, and I enjoyed spending page-time with him also. He's quiet but very ready to stand up to protect his friends and family.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for a free reading copy. A favorable review was not required.

Just a fun escapist sort of clean romance, perfect after a very long week. Couldn't put it down while seeing how much wrong the jerk would do before the true prince manages to win the girl's heart. Definitely has memorable and interesting characters and several plot twists to reveal just how bad the baddie really is.

A lovely historical novel that I accidentally put off reading for far too long. Mellie is trained as a lady but after her family falls on hard times, she has to seek a job to try to keep a roof over her sister's, niece's, and nephew's heads. When the mills don't pay as much as the person who convinced her to come work there led her to believe, she has to take on an evening side hustle: the silhouette-cutting of the title.

Meanwhile, Morgan, the hero, has much on his plate. He's getting involved in the family business and wants to learn the mills from the bottom up. There's some intrigue for him both from his parents' reckless choices and from a new bag-weaving design that they don't want other mills to get wind of before they can get it into production.

I truly enjoyed the unique sort of story and found both leads easy to like and root for. The ending was rather abrupt and I'd like to have had an epilogue to see how they did, to find out if her sister got a better home, and to see what happened to her mill friends Cora and Clara.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for a free reading copy. A favorable review was not required. This review is based off a final copy read via KU.

Logan and Darcy might have a second chance at love—if they can stay alive long enough. But who's shooting at Darcy and her aunt and stalking them through the woods? Which woman is the target, and why?

A quick read that I'd have liked to have had expanded into a full length novel. There was so much more I wanted to find out about these characters. :)

Another darling installment in the series. Looking forward to the next one!

4.5 stars, rounded up
Excellent second installment to Tess's story. I loved seeing the further growth of her character. I was a little surprised that nemesis Horace popped back up so quickly, since I thought he might be last-book material, and now I'm curious who her final showdown will end up being with, in the next book. There were several twists I didn't see coming, to be honest. It was good to spend more time with exemplary pastor Oliver MacPherson and see his humble attitude of service to his community.

I'll definitely be reading book 3 soon to find out what the ending of their story is.

Lovely story about May and Lee and their romance. There's an interesting angle to the story from the racism prevalent in the area during that time period, with too many townsfolk hiding behind misquoted scripture to pretend that they didn't have a Christian mandate to love all races equally or to consider them capable of being saved. This part was very well written and was a growing issue at that time period (early 1900s).

I really enjoyed how both characters have decent families (Lee's) or good families (May's). It seems like so many stories out there at present have either dysfunctional or dead parents, and it was refreshing to have both characters with both sets of parents.

One minor historical error: Lee claims that “It's rare our state allows marriages between races, and most ban it” when actually most interracial marriage laws, except for a handful of states, actually date from the 1920s when eugenics became all the rage.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for a free reading copy. A favorable review was not required.

I wish I'd known this book was from a series, because there's nothing on it that tells me that. I'm behind reading Laura's books and didn't read the previous because I hardly ever pick up Amish novels. However, it seems that the first half of the story is in that book.

I did enjoy the action/suspense part of them being on the run, but I definitely missed out on “the rest of the story” and I also wished to have gotten some sort of firsthand sense of why her father is such a great guy; everything about him is told, except just a few short sentences. The two MCs are pretty much the only fleshed-out characters.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for a free reading copy. A favorable review was not required.

The story had a lot of good points, but it also left me feeling very distant from the scene because of the writing style. It's clear she did her research on historical setting, but apparently not on historic names or speech, and it was jarring to keep trying to force my imagination back to 1838 while in the midst of scenes with such strongly 1970s/1980s names as Sherry, Cathy, Jace, Maddie, Paige, Alison, and Doyle; and terms like “the kids at school” and so on. Otherwise it's a sweet story and I will be continuing the series.

Hard one to score, so I'm going for the middle. I loved Georgie as a character and wanted to root for her and her son Sam as some mysterious threat closes in around them. The mystery is detailed and kept me guessing as to how it would turn out. I also appreciated that there's no x-rated cussing. However, I also had a lot of objections too.

18+ only

First off, it's from a supposedly Christian publisher, but it contains three sex scenes (one pretty explicit about them doing it in an alley against a wall...) Yes, we know married folks have sex but we absolutely don't need to be in the room with them when they do it, and we don't need to enter the shower with them either.

Second, there was zero faith. The son has some mention of bedtime prayers, but they don't go to church and there's no turning to God in any way for hope or wisdom during repeated serious life crises. But we know about a former neighbor's devout Tibetan Buddhist decor and we hear about the Iraqis being depended on for compass direction in their daily prayer life. Why is a woman in serious crisis NOT looking for some sort of faith connection? When literally everyone in her life has betrayed her in some form or fashion?

Last, the story is very dark in many ways. So little hope, so many murders, so much death and loss and betrayal. It even ends on Halloween with Dracula and Elvira costumes taking a hand in a crumbling bungalow scene in the very nail-biting ending showdown.

So—brilliant concept, fast-paced plot, and sympathetic lead; but so much missed opportunity for any sort of spiritual message, and a depressing air about the whole story.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for a free reading copy. A favorable review was not required. This review is based on a final published copy.