Christian fiction

Book Review: In the Nick of Time

/ Kristi / Leave a comment

In the Nick of Time
McGee and Me! #10
by Bill Myers & Robert West

My rating: 4 / 5
Genre: Children’s Christian fiction

This is the first in what I always thought of as the “older Nick” additions to the series. I don’t know that I ever watched this one, so the story was unfamiliar to me. I really liked the suggestion of looking up before you look down, meaning look to God before you look at the difficult situation in front of you. There’s also a very good lesson in taking a mountain one step at a time (cue Psalty song to really hit the nostalgia), rather than getting anxious over the idea of tackling it all at once. Just do the next thing, then the next thing, etc. That’s good advice for anyone—young or old, Christian or not. As Nick gets older, though, it seems like McGee is much less part of his life (in fact, I’m not sure Nick “acknowledged” McGee more than once in this book), and so it’s all the more jarring that this obnoxious, egotistical imaginary character keeps popping in to have his own little adventures. Still, the main story is another good one. These books may not be easy to find anymore, but if you do have the chance to read this book or procure it for an 8-10-year-old child, I recommend it.

Find out more about In the Nick of Time

See what I’m reading next.

If you’ve read this book, or read it in the future, feel free to let me know what you think!

Book Review: Elizabeth’s Playground

/ Kristi / Leave a comment

Elizabeth’s Playground
Abby’s Letters #3
by Dana Romanin

My rating: 2 / 5
Genre: Christian YA romance

After losing her dad and then her mom and being lied to by her older sister for months about her mom’s death, Abby doesn’t have a lot of capacity for trust. She also can’t quite keep herself from shoplifting whenever she’s stressed and doesn’t feel worthy of love. But when she meets the new kid, Ian, she can’t stop herself from liking him any more than she can stop herself from snatching items off the store shelves.

I wish I had liked this book more. I think I get what the author was going for throughout, but it just didn’t really work for me. Though Abby has had some rough stuff in her life, I think she is more traumatized than makes sense to me. Yes, her mom was an alcoholic, but in the first book, we’re shown that Abby still had a decent relationship with her. That was the whole point of her letters that showed her older sister Jane that Abby and their mom were close, while Jane only thought of her mom as a mess. And yes, Jane lied to Abby for a while about her mom being dead so that Abby wouldn’t be taken away, but since then, Abby has been in foster care with a loving family. So why is she a prickly, self-destructive klepto who feels like she doesn’t deserve love?

Right off the bat, I didn’t care for the cliché of instant attraction between Ian and Abby (more on his side than hers, but hers wasn’t far behind), nor the cutesy nicknames they give each other and use almost exclusively throughout the book. In fact, the whole book feels like a lot of clichés or tropes mashed together, starting with Abby being really rude to Ian when they first meet, yet him being drawn to her because there’s “just something about her.” There is some light sexual innuendo I didn’t care for, and Abby’s friend Louisa has a sort of “wise older person” persona, despite being a fairly typical-seeming teenage girl otherwise. Then there’s the moment near the end of the book when Abby’s foster dad tells her that she needs to stop living for others and do something for herself, which led me to ask…when was she ever living for others? In the end, I liked the idea of this series of novellas more than I liked the execution, though I think that the middle book could stand alone as a decent read.

Find out more about Elizabeth’s Playground

See what I’m reading next.

If you’ve read Abby’s Letters, or read it in the future, I would love to hear your thoughts and experiences with this book.

Book Review: A Dream within a Dream

/ Kristi / Leave a comment

A Dream within a Dream
Coffey & Hill #3
by Mike Nappa

My rating: 4 / 5
Genre: Thriller/suspense, Christian

Private investigator Trudi Coffey and her ex-husband, ex-CIA agent, ex-private investigator, now Atlanta cop, Samuel Hill are separately pointed to a man known as Dream, who has knowledge highly prized by multiple different agencies. His well-being is in danger, possibly his life, and he is suffering from PTSD that has left him with holes in his memory.

This book delivers excitement, suspense, and intrigue like the other two in the series. The trend of involving writings of Edgar Allen Poe also continues, including another character in need who is named after a Poe work, this time the troubled and much sought-after Dream. He provides the first-person, present-tense perspective throughout this story as he relates to us various different events from his past that led to him being in his current predicament. The issue, though, is that these different events are jumbled together in the telling. This is indicative of the way he is processing his past and current events that bring up difficult memories, but I kept waiting for things to clear up and make more sense, and they never completely did.

Trudi and Samuel provide the other perspectives (3rd person, past tense), and while Trudi’s is familiar and provides the clearest narrative, Samuel’s is the other main reason I didn’t like this as much as I did the previous 2 books in the series. There’s just too much going on. The storyline about Dream and some stolen artwork was complex enough, to my mind, that adding a family from the Middle East coming after Samuel because he was involved in the death of one of their own was unnecessary. In the end, it seemed to only be in there to give us a particular ending, which wasn’t really my favorite kind of ending anyway. It doesn’t really leave it open for more books in this series, though some feel that it does and I’d certainly love to see more Coffey & Hill someday.

This book may not have quite held up to the high standard set by the previous 2 books in the series, but I still enjoyed it overall. And I am so glad I found this series in general, as it’s a new favorite for me. I definitely recommend it to fans of suspense and thriller novels, especially with a Christian leaning, and you don’t necessarily need to read them in order.

Find out more about A Dream within a Dream

See what I’m reading next.

If you’ve read this book, or read it in the future, feel free to let me know what you think!

Book Review: He Should Have Told the Bees

/ Kristi / Leave a comment

He Should Have Told the Bees
by Amanda Cox

My rating: 4 / 5
Genre: Christian fiction

When George Walsh dies and leaves his apiary to both his daughter, Beckett, and a complete stranger named Callie Peterson, it throws both of these young women’s lives into a whirlwind. Callie is in a difficult financial situation and could use the money from the sale of the farm, while Beck is afraid of losing the only place she’s ever felt safe. Both must learn difficult truths about their upbringings and secrets kept from them by those they loved while also trying to navigate the confusing joint ownership. 

Probably the most intriguing thing about this book was all of the various descriptions about beekeeping, which provide a sort of backdrop to the rest of the story. The author clearly knows her stuff, and I enjoyed the way Beck shared the beekeeping duties with Fern, a young girl spending the summer on a nearby farm. Like the beekeeping aspect, though, the traumatizing backgrounds of both main characters are not something I’m terribly familiar with (except for Beck’s agoraphobia—I may not be fully agoraphobic, but I have anxieties that sometimes seem similar). My mom had some major trauma in her life before she married my dad and had us kids, but much of this I only learned about after her death last year. So I could identify somewhat with what these ladies went through, but probably not as much as would have been helpful to become more invested in the story.

The Christian message in this book, though light (and I don’t mean that in a bad way—I don’t need a book to be preachy to count as Christian fiction), was appreciated. Trauma, abuse, and neglect are terrible things to go through, and I truly don’t know how anyone finds their way out from under the weight of these things without God. However, though I have nothing against therapy and counseling, those tools seemed to be pushed a bit more, and while perhaps the author meant the two to be entwined, I don’t recall the therapist that Callie sees referencing God much, if at all. Still, though this book was perhaps a bit slower-paced and more drama-filled than my normal preference, I’m glad I read it. I think there’s probably a better audience out there for it than me, and I do recommend it to anyone who is interested in Christian fiction with a focus on trauma and family connections.

Find out more about He Should Have Told the Bees

See what I’m reading next.

If you’ve read this book, or read it in the future, feel free to let me know what you think!

Book Review: The Regency Brides Collection

/ Kristi / Leave a comment

The Regency Brides Collection
by multiple authors (see details below)

My rating: 3.5 / 5
Genre: Christian historical romance, short stories

This book contains short stories from 7 different authors, taking place in England during the Regency period. My overall rating for the book is an average of my ratings for each story, shown below. Below the ratings is a brief review for each story.

“First Comes Marriage” by Amanda Barratt – 3 / 5
“Masquerade Melody” by Angela Bell – 4 / 5
“Three Little Matchmakers” by Susanne Dietze – 4 / 5
“The Gentleman Smuggler’s Lady” by Michelle Griep – 3 / 5
“When I Saw His Face” by Nancy Moser – 2 / 5
“The Highwayman’s Bargain” by MaryLu Tyndall  – 3.5 / 5
“Jamie Ever After” by Erica Vetsch – 4.5 / 5

“First Comes Marriage” (3 / 5) is a marriage of convenience story with a nice forgiveness angle, plus a focus on the change in a person that comes from following God. Overall, though, it didn’t stand out, and there was a major coincident near the end of the story that bugged me a bit.

“Masquerade Melody” (4 / 5) is well-written and sweet, with a romance that isn’t as overly obvious as they often are, especially in short stories. Though I think I may not be musical enough to enjoy this much as I could have, it was one of my favorites in the book.

“Three Little Matchmakers” (4 / 5) has Sound of Music vibes to it, with a grumpy father-figure and kids that end up endearing themselves to him. The kids’ constant eavesdropping bothered me a little (like, does no one watch or discipline them?), but it ended up being kinda cute. I also really liked Henry’s arc in dealing with his temper.

“The Gentleman Smuggler’s Lady” (3 / 5) was overall fairly simple and didn’t stand out to me. The female main character had this way of trying to convince herself to pretend things weren’t as bad as they were or pretend something she wanted was really going to happen—it’s difficult to explain, but it made her seem very immature to me.

“When I Saw His Face” (2 / 5) is the story of a widow who accepts a marriage proposal mostly out of obligation, and then starts to fall in love with someone else. I did not care for her at all or the terrible way she treated both of these men, especially the fiancé, with barely any consequences. The story in the end is too easy and too predictable, and was my least favorite in the book.

“The Highwayman’s Bargain” (3.5 / 5) was maybe a bit predictable, but it ended up sweet. I was a little frustrated with how long the female main character held out before letting her better judgment prevail. And I don’t particularly care for so much deception without consequences in a Christian setting, but overall, the story wasn’t bad.

“Jamie Ever After” (4.5 / 5) was my favorite story in the series, and no surprise, since the author has recently become my favorite author of this genre of novels. Her inclusion in the collection is the main reason I read it. I liked both of the main characters as individuals and the relationship that built between them. It’s a marriage of convenience story, and though there is a contrivance in it that caused the half-star detraction in my rating, it’s overall a very sweet story that left me very happy.

In the end, though my overall rating for this collection isn’t wonderful, I liked more than I didn’t, and I think that others who like Christian romance from this time period will enjoy the book even more than I did.

Find out more about The Regency Brides Collection

See what I’m reading next.

If you’ve read this book, or read it in the future, feel free to let me know what you think!

Book Review: The Captain’s Daughter

/ Kristi / Leave a comment

The Captain’s Daughter
by Jennifer Delamere

My rating: 3 / 5
Genre: Historical Christian romance

Chased to London by a false accusation of theft, Rosalyn Bernay soon finds herself without any possessions or a place to stay. A chance encounter lands her both a job and a friend who offers to let her stay at her small flat. The job is at a theater that is currently running the most popular show in London and also happens to be where Nate Moran is working as a stagehand. Nate is recovering from an injury, after which he intends to return to his army unit in India. Meeting Rosalyn has made him question the plan to return, but he is determined not to let her shake his resolve.

In a lot of ways, this book checked boxes that normally make a book in this genre perfect for me. However, I think the plot may have had too much going on for my taste. The focus on the theater and Rosalyn beginning to find a passion to perform herself was interesting, and it probably would have provided enough plot on its own. But add to that Nate’s stubborn insistence that he must return to India to make up for a mistake he made there before he left and the brothel owner that Rosalyn runs afoul of when she first comes to London, and there are side plots that aren’t resolved well enough for my taste. The false claims that chase Rosalyn to London in the first place to have a satisfactory conclusion, at least.

I do like that the romance is overall pretty subtle, and I appreciated Nate’s family—full of kind, wise, fun people. I don’t know that I really understand the choice of title, in that Rosalyn’s father being a captain is a pretty small part of the book. But I do wonder if I might have gotten more out of the story in general if I actually knew anything about the opera that’s being staged in the theater throughout the book (H.M.S. Pinafore). Though the next book in the series has a considerably higher rating on Goodreads, I don’t plan to continue this series. However, if it sounds interesting to you, please do check it out.

Find out more about The Captain’s Daughter

See what I’m reading next.

If you’ve read this book, or read it in the future, feel free to let me know what you think!

Book Review: A Lady’s Guide to Marvels and Misadventure

/ Kristi / Leave a comment

A Lady’s Guide to Marvels and Misadventure
by Angela Bell

My rating: 5 / 5
Genre: Christian historical romance

A failed engagement leaves Clara playing protector to her family of eccentrics, lest her ex-fiance have them committed as insane. When her grandfather takes in an apprentice for his clockmaking shop, a broken vagabond with a false name, Clara is certain he’s a spy sent by her ex-fiance. Then her grandfather takes to the skies in a flying machine he invented, bidding both Clara and Theodore, his apprentice, to follow his clues in a scavenger hunt across Europe. As Clara attempts to find her grandfather before the wrong people do, she may just have to let go of the idea that protecting everyone she loves is entirely up to her.

This book has everything I love in this genre and then some. Both of the main characters are complex, well-crafted characters. Side characters are colorful and fun. There’s adventure, symbolism, and romance that doesn’t take over the story. Though perhaps the heavy burdens that both Clara and Theodore carry throughout much of the story is a bit overdone, they both separately culminate in ways that I loved. There’s one scene in particular on Theodore’s side that brought tears to my eyes. There is quite a bit of Christian-related content in this book, but to me, it’s not the amount of references to God or the Bible that can make that content feel forced or preachy but the way it’s used, whether it’s well-infused with the story being told or not, and I felt Bell did a great job of having it all work together.

What really made this book fun and adventurous was the side characters, namely Clara’s mother (lovingly denoted “Mrs. S.” by Theodore), with her penchant for collecting abandoned or broken critters, and Clara’s grandfather (“Grand” to her and “Drosselmeyer” to Theodore), who isn’t present for much of the story overall, but drives the plot with his scavenger hunt and words of wisdom about Clara’s tendency toward self-reliance. I don’t know how realistic Grand’s automaton inventions were for that time period (or for modern times, even), but I truly do not care. They appealed to my escape-room-loving heart and added so much whimsy to the story.

I’m a fairly picky reader, but I loved this book and recommend it for fans of historical Christian fiction. If you enjoy this book, I strongly suggest checking out the author’s contribution to The Lassoed by Marriage Romance Collection, a book of short stories by different authors. Her story was my favorite in that collection (and also involved automatons) and what led me to look for other writings of hers just in time to read this debut novel, and I’m so glad I did!

Thank you to Netgalley and Bethany House for providing me a copy of this book to review.

Find out more about A Lady’s Guide to Marvels and Misadventure

See what I’m reading next.

If you’ve read this book, or read it in the future, feel free to let me know what you think!

Book Review: Embers in the London Sky

/ Kristi / Leave a comment

Embers in the London Sky
by Sarah Sundin

My rating: 4 / 5
Genre: Christian historical romance

While fleeing the Netherlands that has just been invaded by the German army, Aleida’s abusive husband sends their son with strangers, shortly before losing his own life to the Germans. Once in London, she starts a long, difficult search for her son. There, she meets Hugh Collingwood, a BBC radio correspondent trying to inform the public and boost morale while reporting on the Blitz. When his uncle and friend are murdered, it looks like the bombs falling on the city every night aren’t the only danger.

In a way, this book almost seems like two different stories. The first is a combination of Aleida searching for her son while also trying to shine light on the way some of the kids are treated as they’re evacuated out of London during the Blitz and Hugh trying to maintain integrity in his reporting while struggling against the threat of censorship. This main part of the story kept me engaged, and I liked seeing these different sides of London during this part of history. Then the book turns into a murder mystery as Aleida and Hugh, both apart and separately, try to solve a series of murders. I’m a fan of mystery, and the rest of the story was interesting enough that I didn’t need the mystery angle to be expanded on. Still the pacing of the mystery being in the background for a long time to then suddenly jump into the foreground threw me off just a little. 

I appreciated the development of the relationship between Aleida and Hugh and that it didn’t come across as the main point of the story. I prefer a subtle romance, and Aleida and Hugh developed a great foundation of friendship first. Though some of the drama involving their relationship felt too much like it was thrown in there just to prolong the inevitable declarations of love. I look forward to the next book, which appears to be about Aleida’s cousin, who is still in the Nazi-occupied Netherlands, and I recommend this one to anyone who likes historical fiction from this time period in the Christian romance genre.

Thank you to Netgalley and Revell for providing me a copy of this book to review.

Find out more about Embers in the London Sky

See what I’m reading next.

If you’ve read this book, or read it in the future, feel free to let me know what you think!

Book Review: Bee’s Gift

/ Kristi / Leave a comment

Bee’s Gift
Abby’s Letters #2
by Dana Romanin

My rating: 4 / 5
Genre: Christian YA romance

A one-time mistake changes Lindsey Bartley’s life forever during senior year, and she has a lot of difficult decisions ahead of her. Though Richard Hendrick, the man that Lindsey is forever linked to by two lines on a pregnancy test, doesn’t know it yet, his life is about to change for good as well.

I liked this book more than the previous in the series, mostly due to the main character actually being a bit more interesting and dynamic and the loss of the love triangle that permeated the first book. However, though we have moved on to a different character, we don’t move on enough. Part one of two, so half of the book, takes place at the same time as the events in the previous book, and though we see a different side of the story (Lindsey was a side character in the first book with no POV parts), she connects with one of the POVs in the first book (Clark) enough that several scenes are literally re-hashed, word-for-word, from the first book. To be fair, there are minor differences amongst the repeated sentences, though, since a different perspective is shown on the same scenes, but I really think the author should have figured out a way to have a completely fresh take on this second story.

That being said, Lindsey’s character arc, especially her newfound faith in God, drives the first half of the story pretty well. She struggles to decide what to do about her pregnancy, from keeping or discarding, telling the father or not, telling parents or not, etc., and it all felt pretty realistic to me. Except for the way that Lindsey picked up on “church lingo” and prayed fluently for someone else who was struggling, after only attending youth group for a few weeks. There didn’t seem to be much in the way of a learning curve, and it seemed like it could be a bit intimidating for anyone reading the book that is a new believer themselves.

Then part two of the book shifts focus completely from Lindsey to Richard, who was part of the love triangle in the first book. This second half of the book takes us past the time period covered in the first book, into the first summer after graduation for all of these characters, and to a brand-new setting. In a way, it felt like a whole different book, and I wonder if the author perhaps could have started the book here instead. I enjoyed Richard’s arc in this second half, as he grapples with an uncertain future and what his responsibility really is in the life of an unborn child that he has no reason to feel connected to. In the end, the story ends well, probably not much different than one might expect, though there is a bit of a twist thrown in in what feels like an obvious attempt to add drama or excitement. Overall, this book was more enjoyable than I expected it to be, after the first one, and though I’m not sure how accessible it is, I would recommend it for older teens and Christian parents of teens.

Find out more about Bee’s Gift

See what I’m reading next.

If you’ve read Abby’s Letters, or read it in the future, I would love to hear your thoughts and experiences with this book.

Book Review: The Juliet Code

/ Kristi / Leave a comment

The Juliet Code
Frederick & Grace Mystery #3
by Pepper D. Basham

My rating: 3 / 5
Genre: Historical Christian mystery

In Italy for their honeymoon, Lord and Lady Astley, Frederick and Grace, become entangled in an investigation involving stolen art and a purported treasure that can only be found by deciphering a code in the missing artwork.

Due to my issues with the first book in this series, I went into this one really uncertain about how it would go. I did like it a little more than the other, mostly because the mystery was a little more involved. Though Grace is ready to dive head-first into the case, Frederick drags his heels a little bit before accepting that their usefulness could be needed by their detective friend who has been brought in to investigate. This may have provided the most enjoyable parts of the story, but overall, Grace’s character was just too immature and silly for my taste. The mystery is convoluted, with so many people involved and suspected, so many different times when people get hurt and the motive is uncertain, that it was difficult for me to follow. When the truth is revealed, it’s a bit anti-climactic for me.

The first book in the series is super steamy for a Christian book, and I was worried about how one would go. It’s maybe toned down a little, but there are still a lot of references to them enjoying each other and teasing each other for later. Then at about 80% into the story, another romance sort of starts to develop, but it’s almost completely about physical attraction as well. This section of my review alone is enough for me to say I have no desire to read any other books in this series, and I’ll be cautious about other books by this author in the future. If you are interested in the genre and aren’t bothered by the issues mentioned, please check out the link below to see what others thought. You certainly might like it more than I did.

Find out more about The Juliet Code

See what I’m reading next.

If you’ve read this book, or read it in the future, feel free to let me know what you think!