Hannah G
This is a delightful little love story, told by a very spirited young lady who does not like her Southern ancestors nor the expectation that she live up to their perfect record, instead following her own desires to be on the newspaper staff in her hometown. There is plenty of wit and a great ending.
Probably should be rated about three stars, but I added one for enjoyment. This is not high literature, but it was fun, and it had a good Christian message about duty.
Short book (130 pages) dealing with the settling of Guthrie, Oklahoma.
I liked the storyline and the characters.
Things that would have earned it another star: a bit more in-depth feel of the settling of the town (whole weeks got skipped over...being a history lover, I like plenty of authenticity to the scenes...this felt sometimes like I wasn't quite there. Also, a good go-over by a final editor. There was some missing punctuation, a few run-on sentences, and a couple of wrong verb tenses.
Otherwise, a sweet and pleasant short read.
The book itself was very well written. The story of the main character was very good.
But the ending was not what I wanted to happen! And the tile of the last chapter is misleading enough that it kept my hopes up for no reason.
It is written in the style of many WW1 novels, with a blended sort of Christian spiritualism. The people longed to believe that the war was nothing more than a purging of the population's worst and would result in the utopian paradise they longed for. Evidently their philosophy was never fulfilled as they wished! And the children whose birth they welcomed so gladly, thinking of a rosy future for them, would instead be the next generation of soldiers fighting off the atrocities of the Germans.
This novel is very religious, in a sort of religion that one cannot put in a box and call by a certain name. Dogs recognize things by instinct, such as the passing of souls; one character uses fortune cards; an Episcopal priest with unorthodox views figures prominently; and there is a strong belief in a perfect future, with an extended sort of life after death in which the joys and ills of the world are relived.
It is historically significant, because the characters really might have felt and believed these things, given the times. It is realistically written.
What a delightful book! It was a really upsetting day for me today, and to come home and enjoy this little gem was just what I needed. The friends and family of a blinded war veteran try to make Christmas happy for him again.
I read this when it came out on Project Gutenburg a few weeks ago. It's a quick read. It's not exactly perfectly written; it reads more like a nonfiction memoir of sorts. The timeline seems to jump a little more than regular fiction ought to. Still, it's a sweet story about a child who is taken from her parents to become a travelling singer.
What a wonderful book! It is so sweet and so delightful. It reminds me of a Kate Douglas Wiggin Christmas story in the flavor and pathos of the writing. It's my first book to read by this author, and I am adding her other books to my to read wish list!
What drew me to this book was the beautiful cover. What kept me reading was the delightful story of the two little boys learning to trust again. For me, the subdued romance was a side story; how Irene bonds with her two stepsons and creates a warm home for her new family was absolutely endearing.
Innocent and pleasant story. A woman attempts revenge, setting a man up to marry a woman who he thinks is his ideal but who has an unknown stain in her lineage. He is proud and believes he must sacrifice his bride and his heart to uphold the purity of his own race...is there any hope for them? Perhaps they will both die of disappointment...unless the woman who deceived them with the false grounds for their union in the first place might have been mistaken in the past of the young wife...will justice be done?
About a 3.75 for me. The ending is really sweet, though!
At first I wondered where the book might be going, because at the beginning there was a lot of potential for cliche, and I was relieved to find plenty of surprises along the way. Pamela Griffin has a few problems along the way with misplaced modifiers and a twisted sentence a couple times, but her storytelling ability doesn't suffer. This pulled me in, and I really enjoyed the heroine Myrna.
This is a powerful story of what a good woman does for a helpless child, and how her love protects him from everything, even his shameful birth. She gives up the life she could have lived to give him a name and a future. Will it be all to him that she hopes? Or will cruel hands steal her gift from him just as it matters most, in his young manhood?
I couldn't put this one down!
This is really a bit of fluff and not an improving sort of read...shabby plot wise....but enjoyable just for the sake of most things coming out okay in the end. I will probably read Mrs. Miller again, despite the plot weaknesses and contrivances, simply because there's a certain charm to her writing. Doubt any of her writing will become a new favorite, but they're fun and there isn't anything objectionable.
These books were originally serialized in 1882 and 1883. They are some of Mrs. Miller's better writing, though some jumps between past and present tense are aggravating.
Solid 3.5. I liked this, despite its melodrama.
Pretty Nita is despairing and ready to throw herself into the river when an old miser offers her riches if she will marry him; when she hesitates, he agrees to give her a full year to do as she pleases before he claims her. She little dreams how much will happen in that year, especially not that she will fall in love with a good young man who is ready to do anything to win her. And she little knows why the miser has sought her out for that favor in the first place...for why should a miser be so ready to give away his gold in the first place?
Enjoyable plot... But there are some places where characters change with a suddenness...a few extra words here and there would make the changes much smoother. 3.5 stars. I especially enjoyed the story of Lora, the main character's sister. Though her tale happens side stage, so to speak, it is satisfying.
This is my first time to read a book by Mona Hodgson, and it's been a pleasure. We have a heroine with a physical flaw–failing eyesight–and a hero with a emotional flaw–trying to live down the day he walked away from his bereaved mother-in-law and baby daughter after his wife's death. He has played the part of a coward to his family, and yet has survived the harsh years of the Civil War without losing even an arm or leg, when so many men did not return at all.
It seems that Maren is Wainwright's only ally as he seeks to reconcile with the family he abandoned and to prove himself all over again. But Maren is determined to return to her family in Denmark before her eyesight is completely gone. Can the two of them find happiness and home before it is forever too late?
I loved the family values in the story and the profound, concise life lessons. Mistakes are so easy to make and so often too hard to rectify. It's a pleasure to read about characters willing to do that hard work to make their lives clear before God and their fellow-men. Most definitely recommended.
I received a free review copy from NetGalley.
A suspenseful little story, better written than some of Mrs. Miller's works. The plot is still fairly predictable, but I really enjoyed this one.
A very clean children's story...great lessons, very Christian message, and nobody dies. Would definitely recommend.
This is a very good book about young men and the consequences of rash behavior. A group of college friends decide to take on a freshman dandy, and reap some fairly hefty consequences as a result. Will they ever regain their friendships and status as scholars?
At first the characters seemed a bit flat, but once the author got into the tale, it grew better. It's a moralistic tale, but the reader is left to draw their own conclusions; the author does not presume to preach about why the consequences happened. Yes, hazing might be fun for a moment, and the haters might even feel justified by the insufferable attitude of the victim...but sometimes the worst can happen.
This was a quick and fast-paced tale of college life in the early twentieth century, but the lesson could definitely resonate today.
A quick read and nice, clean, moral story.
I didn't realize this was from a series when I started reading, so there were several confusing spots because of that. Also, there are some simplistic plot devices used that might disappoint today's readers; but the children were so real that I felt like I knew them right away.
I grabbed this at the library during the CFD retellings challenge and just now got around to finishing it. For the most part I really enjoyed it, once I got past the first few chapters, and near the end I liked how the author gave such a subtle and appropriate scene of how the heroine walked into the room and the hero was so overcome by loving her that he dropped a book, and she just thought he was clumsy. But, the same night, the heroine accidentally got spiked punch...and not just kissed the hero, but made out with him on the sofa, pulling him down on top of her and liking the feel of his weight on her body and only getting stopped by her mother coming downstairs looking for her.
That's just totally inappropriate. Drunk or not. And the hero certainly wasn't drunk.
I liked the writing and I liked the characters. My copy was well edited and I had a hard time putting it down once I got into the story. But I may or may not read more of this author because of that scene. The book is a four-star, but I'm taking off two stars because of having a make-out session that was considered just fine in a Christian book. One star for the making out, one star for not even feeling the need to excuse it or be embarrassed by it.
I loved that it was loosely based on/inspired by a true-life lighthouse couple. It also had a great Christian message and was impossible to put down and excellently written. The only drawback is that the biggest focus was the romance, so I'd not recommend it for young girls.
Delightful little bit of classic melodramatic fluff. The cover's pretty bad–not even a try at a portrayal of the petite blonde heroine–but the story easily held my interest.
Laurel Vane's father died quite suddenly (we are not told the cause), leaving her with one last article he'd written before his last illness; the money is needed to pay for his burial. She goes to his publisher, Mr. Gordon, to turn in the article and receive payment; but Gordon is away in the country. However, pretty young Beatrix Gordon overhears the desperate girl asking after him and goes to her, paying the money needed for the article and getting the grateful orphan Laurel's promise that she will do “anything in gratitude.”
Laurel is turned out of her New York boarding-house and insulted by an unscrupulous man within the next few days, and feels as though Beatrix's summons a few days later is her only hope. Beatrix is engaged to a young businessman, and her parents are sending her to the countryside to live with an old friend of her mother's (whom she has never met) in an attempt to get her away from young Wentworth. So Beatrix sends Laurel as herself, along with her maid Clarice, while she herself runs away and marries the man she loves.
To young Laurel, now known as Beatrix, the quiet country home is a wonderful haven. But of course nothing in such a deception can be simple...
The ebook is available from Project Gutenburg.
Half tragedy, half romance, and a very hard tale to rate well. The writing is good and the narrator is excellent. Evelina Adams creates a garden and devotes her life to it after a crippling disappointment in love. Her young cousin Evelina Leonard, her namesake, comes to live with her when she is past seventy, and instantly it seems that young Evelina is fated to have the exact same type of disappointment, with the son of the man the elder Evelina had loved. Will her fate be the same?