romance

Book Review: In the Light of the Sun

/ Kristi / Leave a comment

In the Light of the Sun
by Angela Shupe

My rating: 3 / 5
Genre: Historical fiction

Rosa and Caramina Grassi, Italian Filipinas, are both extraordinary singers. Rosa, the older sister, lives in Italy with their grandmother, who was also a famous singer in her time, and attends a music school to develop her gift. Younger sister Caramina is only 14 and still at home in the Philippines, but dreams of one day following her sister to Italy. But as war comes to both Italy and the Philippines, both sisters are forced to re-examine their priorities and fight just to survive.

I don’t think I have a lot to say about this book, good or bad. It was just kind of okay, to me. Both of these angles of WWII are fairly fresh—I especially have never read a book set in the Philippines when the Japanese invade. The horrors they endured there were no less horrible than what was going on in Europe, and the author did a good job of showing some of that without getting too dark or graphic. However, the overall pacing is really slow, which might have been partly to do with the fact that the book covers a few years. But I think the author also focuses on details now and then that just aren’t that important to the story. Though each of these stories could have been interesting on its own, I’m not sure the choice to go back and forth between the basically completely disconnected sisters was the right one. The sisters are fairly similar in personality and actually even experience some very similar situations, so some of it felt really repetitive. There is even some romance involved, but it’s all so broad-scope, I found that I didn’t particularly have much interest in it. Overall, I could see a lot of people really loving this book. The writing is smooth and easy to read, and I really liked some of the side characters. If you’re interested in these less-explored aspects in WWII fiction and don’t mind a slower-paced book, I encourage you to check this out.

Thank you to Netgalley and WaterBrook & Multnomah for providing me a copy of this book to review.

Find out more about In the Light of the Sun

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 Final Gambit

/ Kristi / Leave a comment

The Final Gambit
The Inheritance Games #3
by Jennifer Lynn Barnes

My rating: 4 / 5
Genre: YA mystery, romance

Spoiler notice: The following review may contain some spoilers for the previous books in the series, starting with The Inheritance Games.

Avery Kylie Grambs is now only weeks away from inheriting the huge estate left to her by a stranger, but not only does she still have to live at Hawthorne House for the rest of that time in order to inherit, she has to survive. When a stranger shows up asking for help, Avery Kylie Grambs may not trust her, but she can’t stop the Hawthorne brothers from forming their own opinions—opinions which may or may not lead to destruction. A very risky gamble.

I wasn’t a huge fan of the first 2 books in the series, but I pressed on for my daughter, who considers this one of her favorite books series ever. That is mostly because I was not a fan of the love triangle/romance angle in the first 2 books, which was based way more on physical attraction than I prefer and involved Avery Kylie Grambs toying with the hearts of 2 brothers. In the first couple of books, I assumed Avery Kylie Grambs was going to end up with Grayson Davenport Hawthorne, if only because of romance tropes I’m used to, so I was surprised that she “chose” Jameson Winchester Hawthorne by the end of book 2. I thought that would mean that there would be a lot more angsty romance stuff in this book, but fortunately, it wasn’t as bad as I expected (not that there wasn’t some, though, including weird flashbacks to a scene that I figured I must have forgotten in book 2 but turned out to not actually be in book 2 and eventually, after teasing us about it several times, was shown in its entirety in book 3). But that means that I was able to enjoy this third book more for the puzzles and investigation, which were always the main draw of this series for me.

Though this ended up being my favorite book of the series, I still didn’t love it, and that has a lot to do with the fact that I started to strongly dislike Avery Kylie Grambs in this book. And Grayson Davenport Hawthorne. Though I liked Jameson Winchester Hawthorne more, so I guess the brothers part evens out some. (I still think they’re all ridiculous though). Xander, who has been my favorite Hawthorne brother throughout the series, retains his place and actually has an arc in this book that was one of my favorite things about the series.

Here at the end of the main series, I have to say that I am not much of a fan of Jennifer Lynn Barnes’s style. Both her prose style and her overall plotting style. In my review of the previous book, I mentioned that we seem to get an answer for why Tobias Hawthorne left his entire estate to Avery Kylie Grambs, who was a complete stranger to him, making it a very risky gamble, but in the 2nd book, we’re given a different reason, but with half the book to go, we find out that that actually isn’t the reason either, and by the end, I didn’t know if any answers given in that book were “final” or not. Yeah, no, they’re not. It’s one thing to let a story or mystery stretch over 3 books, but it’s a whole other thing to give “fake” answers along the way that are discounted in the next book. I just do not care for that. As for her writing style, if you were at all confused or annoyed by my usage of full names throughout this review, then you understand my feelings. This is not the only time I’ve seen/heard full (either first and last or even first-middle-last) names used in what is supposed to be a romantic setting, and I’d heavily dispute whether there is actually any romance in that. But here, it’s used all through the story, including by the villain, and I’m sure that’s not supposed to be romantic. Even besides that, Barnes has a tendency toward repetition, with phrases, scenes, etc. Like “a very risky gamble” being overstated to death by the end of this book.

I haven’t decided yet if I’m going to continue with the series that follows this one or the bridge book. Part of me feels like it could be better, because the love triangle will be behind us and Avery is in them less, but part of me feels like it could be a waste of time if my other issues with these books persist. I’m interested in one of Barnes’s earlier series, so I may read some of that to see if I can handle reading her books outside of this trilogy. As for this book and series though, I think most people probably won’t be bothered by the same things as me and would enjoy this more than I did. But if you struggle with high-angst love triangles or a love triangle involving siblings (or the normalcy of people who barely know each other sleeping together, which I didn’t even get into in my review), you might want to pass on the story.

Find out more about The Hawthorne Legacy

See what’s coming up.

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

Book Review: True Life in Uncanny Valley

/ Kristi / Leave a comment

True Life in Uncanny Valley
by Deb Caletti

My rating: 1.5 / 5
Genre: YA contemporary

Eleanor has grown up with a single mom and always knowing that her dad is a wealthy, powerful tech/AI genius that doesn’t want anything to do with her, her sister, or their mom. But Eleanor can’t help but be obsessed with her dad and stalks him, both virtually and physically. When an opportunity comes up to work as nanny to her dad’s toddler son (her half-brother), Eleanor sort of falls into the job, but without revealing the truth about her identity and her connection to her charge or his father.

In case it’s not clear from my rating, I didn’t particularly enjoy this book. Humans are messy and creative and AI can never fully replicate them. That is the lesson that this entire book boils down to, which should be obvious to most of us. Of course, Caletti’s view of “messy” humans is downright terrible. Besides Eleanor’s deadbeat father, her mother is no peach either, fat-shaming Eleanor’s slightly chubby stomach, telling her how stupid she is, and making it clear that she’s always been an inconvenience. Eleanor’s older sister basically follows her mom’s lead, yet Eleanor often assures the reader that, “I know they really do love me.” I’m not buying it.

But on the plus side, Eleanor has two best friends who are basically perfect and perfect for her. The three of them have formed a book club through which they look down their noses at almost everyone else’s reading or book-reviewing habits. Seriously, I’m pretty sure that if I ever met these three, they’d absolutely hate me, and that’s considering that most of the specific things that Eleanor mentions the book club disliking aren’t even necessarily habits of mine. For example, they hate terms like “sickening thud” and seem to dislike half-star ratings (take that!) and constantly point out things that they think are cliché or tired tropes. Well, Soggy Bottom Book Club, to you I say that the inclusion of 3 best friends who don’t seem to ever fight and always understand each other perfectly is a cliché (and that!).

The main bright spot in this story is Eleanor’s connection to her little brother and even his mom, but even that comes with downsides. Like the fact that Eleanor is basically perfect as a nanny almost right away, despite some internal panic moments about really never having taken care of kids much in her life. And the fact that everyone is lying to everyone about everything pretty much through this entire book! (Except her best friends, because they’re perfect and always tell each other the truth.) There’s also a romance, which is nice at first, but then they start to make out all over Mexico and then there’s the super awkward sex scene—awkward meaning both that the characters are awkward and that I was incredibly awkward, because there are suddenly some very graphic descriptions. Though maybe it wasn’t as sudden as I thought at the time, considering the parade earlier in the book that I guess involves naked people and is just casually attended by people of all ages? Is this some Seattle thing I just don’t know about (and don’t want to know about)? I was also really thrown off by Eleanor saying (in the narration) that people of older generations, which in this case includes everyone from the toddler’s 30ish-year-old mom to Eleanor’s grandma’s age, were all about sex, but Eleanor’s generation isn’t…really? Really? 

On top of all of that, I didn’t really get along with the writing style, which is basically like stream of consciousness. For 400 pages. And Eleanor is obsessed with a comic book heroine named Miss Fury, Miss Fury’s author, and the villainous creator of Wonder Woman—a man who stole ideas from his wife. And by obsessed, I mean that she sees Miss Fury as inspiration, something to aspire to in her own life, and almost every situation she’s in, she thinks of how she’d act if she were Miss Fury. I learned way more about the creator of Wonder Woman (William Moulton Marston) than I would have ever wanted to know, especially while reading a fictional story.

This review has gone on quite long, but I think that, if nothing else, it showcases another problem with this book—there’s just TOO MUCH going on. I didn’t even touch on the AI aspect, beyond what I said at the beginning of the review. Eleanor seems to have far too little understanding of AI for her—you know what, no. I think I’ve said enough. If you’re still interested in reading this book, please check out the link below to see other reviews, though for once, I’m not as much in the minority in not enjoying this book too much, if that tells you anything (though yes, others did like it at least a little more than me).

Thank you to Netgalley and Random House Children’s for providing me a copy of this book to review.

Find out more about True Life in Uncanny Valley

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 Wedding Bond

/ Kristi / Leave a comment

The Wedding Bond
by Lee Tobin McClain

My rating: 2 / 5
Genre: Contemporary romance

When 29-year-old Kaylee publicly declares that she plans to be married in one year, despite not having had a long-term relationship in her entire adult life, she thinks that pretending to be in a relationship with the man who broke her teenage heart might help her be ready for marriage. After all, Phelan will only be in town for a month, so it’s safe, right? But Phelan has a big secret that threatens even a fake relationship, not to mention the feelings that are being rekindled by being close to Kaylee.

So much about what I expected from this story is not what I got. I wouldn’t say that “fake dating” is a normal preference of mine, but for whatever reason, I still decided to pick up a story that supposedly contained it. However, the fake relationship didn’t start until far into the book and was overall a very minor aspect. I can live with that, since I’m not necessarily a fan anyway. But the relationship in general was far too fast-burn for my preferences. Kaylee and Phelan had a history that turned out to be actually a little less involved than I thought, though that doesn’t stop them from being super attracted to each other as soon as they see each other again and practically unable to keep their hands off each other. I was certain this relationship was going to end up in bed—heck, I was certain they must have had a physical relationship back when they were teenagers, until the author casually drops that they hadn’t slept together when they were younger.

The book is billed as Christian romance, but to me, it could be called clean romance at best. Characters attending church “as often as they can” does not make a book Christian any more than attending church makes a person (in real life) a Christian. These characters do not make their decisions based on what God would want, what the Bible says, anything like that. One of them does get advice from a pastor (or priest? I was a little confused on that), but he ignores the advice. I guess it’s something that he later acknowledges that he should have followed the advice, but even that is mostly just because ignoring it caused a rift between him and the woman he wanted to have his hands all over. Then near the end of the book, Kaylee has suddenly started to rely a little more on God, which comes out of nowhere and is explained too quickly, almost like an afterthought.

The one star I gave this book (yes, I rated it 2, but because Goodreads doesn’t allow a 0 rating, that makes 1 star the worst possible rating, thus 2 stars is giving a book 1 more than 0) was mostly due to the story arc involving Phelan’s twin brothers and the deadbeat dad he was trying to track down. In the end, it may have been a little too convenient, but sometimes convenient can be nice. Outside of that, though, neither of the main characters or their arcs really stood out to me as anything interesting or different. And I just…didn’t really care if the ended up together or not (not that there’s much suspense involved in a story like this).

This is not a series or an author that I will read any more of, and I really don’t recommend it to anyone—it would probably be too “Christian” for people who don’t like Christian fiction, and though others who do like Christian fiction might not be as bothered by the physical aspect of the relationship as I was, I still wouldn’t recommend it for other reasons.

Find out more about The Wedding Bond

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 Hawthorne Legacy

/ Kristi / Leave a comment

The Hawthorne Legacy
The Inheritance Games #2
by Jennifer Lynn Barnes

My rating: 3 / 5
Genre: YA mystery, romance

Spoiler notice: The following review may contain some spoilers for the previous book in the series, The Inheritance Games.

Avery Grambs is still trying to understand why a complete stranger, Tobias Hawthorne, left her his vast fortune when he died, and a recent development has left her, and other members of the Hawthorne family, reeling. Never truly knowing who is friend and who is foe, Avery and at least some of the Hawthorne brothers attempt to unravel the mystery about the presumed-dead, long-lost Hawthorne son.

Like with the previous book, I kind of had to try to push aside my annoyance with the “romance” angle in this book. It’s based way too much on physical attraction for my preference, though I will at least say that there was a little deeper connection happening here than the previous. Still, Barnes’s idea of romance is not at all the same as mine, and some of her decisions on how she wrote that side of the story and then how things stood at the end made me scratch my head.

Fortunately, I was much more into the mystery side of this book than I was in the previous, at least for a while. Because Avery has already had time to get past the initial shock of the inheritance, meeting the family, and learning how crazy the house is, there’s more going on in the search for answers. But I should have been suspicious when major answers seemed to come way too early in the book. “What could the rest of the story be about?” I found myself wondering. Oh, if only I were less trusting…. One of my biggest grips about the plot of the previous book was that there weren’t really any solid answers about what I thought the main mystery was (why did the old man leave his fortune to Avery?). There was an answer, but it was weak and didn’t seem to be all of the story. I was much happier with how things started to pan out during this book…until Barnes basically undid everything she’d set up by the end. And this point, I don’t know if the “new” answer at the end of this book is any more the “real” answer than what we ended the last book with, or if the next book will start with Avery or one of the Hawthorne brothers unearthing a clue that starts them on the hunt to the real “real” answer. Maybe the intention here has always been for the mystery of the unknown heiress to stretch across the entire trilogy, but Barnes’s way of keeping that going is to pretend to give us an answer, then go, “Fooled you! That’s not the real answer; you have to keep going!” And I don’t particularly care for that kind of story. Subversion is one thing, but this is giving me mental whiplash.

I would definitely stop reading here, not remotely caring enough to see how Avery finishes her required year living in Hawthorne House, but my daughter, who loves this series, wants me to finish it out, so I will do it for her. It’s still difficult for me to recommend this book to anyone, but if you read my review and don’t feel that what bothered me would bother you and you’re interested in the story, you might consider trying it out yourself (it’s a continuing story, though, so you definitely need to start with the first one).

Find out more about The Hawthorne Legacy

See what’s coming up.

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

Book Review: The Collector of Burned Books

/ Kristi / Leave a comment

The Collector of Burned Books
by Roseanna M. White

My rating: 3 / 5
Genre: Historical Christian romance

When the Nazis invade Paris, they also take over a library full of books that were banned in Germany. The man sent to catalogue and update this and other libraries in Paris is Christian Bauer, who is only a Nazi officer as a means for survival. Corinne Bastien, a neighbor of the library and regular frequenter, makes herself a target of Christian and some of his Nazi compatriots when she sneaks into the library to try to recover some secrets she’d left behind. But Christian doesn’t want to cause problems for her any more than he does anyone else. Will he be able to stay true to his beliefs when his superiors push for destruction?

I was excited to read this book, because I read and loved White’s The Imposters series, set in Edwardian England, and I enjoy WWII fiction. However, it felt a little off to me. Corinne was a pretty terrible resistance worker, leaving evidence sitting around and drawing so much attention to herself. By the end of the book, the Nazis involved felt a little too much like an idealized version of what I’m used to, both in fiction and non-fiction. I actually hoped for information in an author’s note explaining why White made some of the choices she did—factual evidence or anecdotes to explain why most of the German soldiers and authorities in this book are, frankly, more polite and forgiving than how they’re usually portrayed, but there was nothing. It just felt somehow like the stakes and consequences were lower than they should be, given the setting.

On the plus side, Christian is a very sympathetic male hero. My favorite moments in this book are related to his story. I appreciate that his faith and devotion to his homeland require him to walk a thin line between going along with the Nazi Party and doing what he believes is right. And yet, he questions whether he is sinning when he lies to protect a life. I’m not sure I would agree with the line drawn here in answer to that question, but I also can readily admit that none of us knows for sure what we would do in this kind of situation. The main characters in the book are Catholic and observe various practices that are extra-biblical at best. This is probably not the best platform to go into detail or start a debate, but I think some people would appreciate knowing this information in advance. Overall, the book fell short of my expectations, but I think many people would easily overlook the things that brought the rating down for me.

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

Find out more about The Collector of Burned Books

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: Cloaked in Beauty

/ Kristi / Leave a comment

Cloaked in Beauty
by Karen Witemeyer

My rating: 2 / 5
Genre: Historical Christian romance

Scarlett Radcliffe is heir to a fortune left to her by her late father. But her father’s brother wants the inheritance for himself and is willing to kill to get it. To keep her safe from her uncle, Scarlett’s mother sends her away from the age of 6 until her 21st birthday, when she will be able to fully inherit the fortune and hopefully give her uncle no more cause to pursue her. When that time comes, Pinkerton agent Philip Carmichael is sent by Scarlett’s mother to bring her home safely.

It was difficult to find much to like about this book for me. A lot of it is personal preference, the most glaring one being that the romance was far too big a part of the plot and steamier than I prefer, especially in Christian fiction. I’ll address that last part first for others who are like me and want to know about this kind of thing before deciding to read a book. Other reviewers will call the romance sweet and clean, and I’m not disputing that there was nothing graphic or even all that physical involved. But the bulk of the plot seemed to consist of the author finding ways to put the two main characters (physically) close together so they could “notice” each other and have flutterings and such. I’m not going to go on at length about this, but I will just say that I was left with the feeling that the author really wanted to write mainstream romance but was stuck writing Christian romance for whatever reason and so skirts as close to the line as she can get away with. This may seem harsh and is probably completely untrue, but some scenes are close to the line, at least in my view. And even beyond those issues, physical attraction is not the same as romance. To me, it usually just means that the author doesn’t really know how to write real chemistry and connection between two characters and has to resort to physical sparks and even lust.

Now for the rest—the plot was fairly predictable and the characters were one-dimensional. I’d be hard-pressed to tell you a single flaw that either of the MCs had, other than maybe them both being stubborn, but even that trait is shown more as a strength than a weakness. The villain is ultimately an unnecessary, replaceable cliché, and I think that, had more time been spent on the rest of the plot and less on the time the two MCs traveled together, the story and characters could have been more fleshed out. This book, and the series it’s part of, is billed as a fairy tale retelling. I don’t read a lot of retellings, and I did see a lot of allusions to the two fairy tales mentioned (“Little Red Riding Hood” and “Sleeping Beauty”)—though much more the former than the latter—it didn’t seem like what I’d call a retelling. That didn’t bother me or affect my rating, but I thought it was worth mentioning. 

I don’t like to write reviews like this, and I did give the book 2 stars, mostly because the characters do trust God pretty unwaveringly in the story and because it just doesn’t feel like a 1-star book. But I was fairly bored during most of the middle and ended up doing a LOT of skimming. I wouldn’t personally recommend this book, but if you are not bothered by the things I mentioned in my review, please check out the link below to read the positive reviews and decide if this is a book for you.

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

Find out more about Cloaked in Beauty

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: Night Swimming

/ Kristi / Leave a comment

Night Swimming
by Aaron Starmer

My rating: 3.5 / 5
Genre: YA fantasy romance

After graduating high school in 1994, Sarah and Trevor decide to swim every pool in their small town, without permission, in an effort to make the last summer before they move on with their lives last as long as they can. Then they hear about a natural pool in the woods that they know they need to check out. And what they discover there might just turn their dream of making the summer last into a reality.

The premise of this book was fairly vague but intriguing, so at only around 240 pages, I decided to give it a try. The book is fairly straight-forward for a while—Trevor likes Sarah, but she has an on-again-off-again boyfriend and keeps him at arm’s length. He goes along with her plan to swim all of the pools as a way of spending time with her, though he understandably begins to get annoyed with her flirtation, since she’s not ready to let go of her boyfriend yet. Then when they get to the mysterious pool in the woods, the story takes a turn. It becomes more of an introspection on life, romance, youth, and moving on. It’s a little slow overall, a little bizarre, and has an odd, yet not unsatisfying, ending. It’s interesting, but I don’t really feel like it added a lot of value to my life, especially since there’s a fair amount of emphasis on alcohol, drugs, and sex as normal parts of life for teenagers (even in the 90s). I am not sure what kind of reader to recommend this to, so I’d just say that if the premise sounds interesting to you, by all means check it out.

Thank you to Netgalley and Penguin Young Readers Group for providing me a copy of this book to review.

Find out more about Night Swimming

See what’s coming up.

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

Book Review: The Inheritance Games

/ Kristi / Leave a comment

The Inheritance Games
by Jennifer Lynn Barnes

My rating: 2.5 / 5
Genre: YA mystery, romance

When Avery Grambs finds out she’s been named in the will of a recently deceased billionaire, it turns her world upside-down, especially considering that she’s been practically living out of her car. On top of that, in order to be eligible to inherit, she has to live in Tobias Hawthorne’s massive estate for a year. The only problem is that the rest of his family still lives there, and for the most part, they aren’t happy with this young usurper. It doesn’t help that no one knows why the fortune was left to Avery at all. But one of Hawthorne’s grandsons explains his grandfather’s love of puzzles and suspects that Avery is just another puzzle to solve…if only she can survive long enough.

I went into this book expecting to be bothered by the teenage drama. I liked the idea of the mysterious inheritance and puzzles and such, but I’d read enough reviews to decide that it would probably be too angsty for me. Then my daughter got it for Christmas and read it and loved it, so…well, now I had to at least give it a try. And yeah, I got about what I expected. The story isn’t bad, but it’s so bogged down by the “romance”/love triangle. Every time Avery is in a room with one of the two middle brothers, she practically quivers. There is no chemistry or romance, really, just…way too much physical attention and tension for my preference. So since the actual story of why Tobias Hawthorne left everything to Avery takes a backseat to an aspect I didn’t like at all, it’s understandable that I didn’t enjoy the book as much as I could have.

Then the resolution to the mystery was incredibly lackluster—one might even say non-existent—so that detracted from my enjoyment even more. I think that some of the issue is that I thought the answer to why Avery was given the entire Hawthorne estate was the story goal for this book, but really, it turned out to be discovering who is behind some attempts on Avery’s life. But that means that either the set-up isn’t done very well, or I just didn’t follow along very well. I plan to keep reading the series, not so much because Barnes hooked me with this first book but because my daughter loves the entire series and says some of what I didn’t like about this one gets better later. For now though, it’s difficult for me to recommend this book to anyone, but I do think I might have liked it more if I’d read it as a teenager. And if you read my review and don’t feel that what bothered me would bother you and you’re interested in the story, you might consider trying it out yourself.

Find out more about The Inheritance Games

See what’s coming up.

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

Book Review: When Tides Turn

/ Kristi / Leave a comment

When Tides Turn
Waves of Freedom #3
written by Sarah Sundin

My rating: 3.5 / 5
Genre: Historical Christian romance, mystery

Tired of only being used as a saleswoman in her job and wanting to be useful to the war effort, Tess Beaumont joins the newly established Navy WAVES program for women. She knows her tendency to be outgoing and peppy makes her look shallow to someone like Lt. Dan Avery, a deeply serious man who hopes to make admiral someday. Unfortunately, he’s been taken off the sea and assigned to a position that he doesn’t feel is as helpful to the Navy or to his own career advancement. As both Tess and Dan struggle to make themselves more useful, they also struggle to not be distracted by each other.

I’d put this book somewhere between the first (3 stars) and the 2nd (4.5 stars) in the series. Tess is a fun, energetic character, though difficult for me to identify with, since she’s far more outgoing than I am. I appreciated her desire to be known as more than just a pretty face (though again, I can’t identify, because that’s not an issue I’ve ever had) and actually be useful. Dan drove me crazy for a while with his strict workaholic ways, but I think that just made his character’s progression in the book that much more satisfying to me. I liked the emphasis on rest and integrity in his arc.

The mystery in this book was less engaging than the mysteries in both of the previous books. I think that was at least partly because it’s really just Tess alone working it out. Dan helps a little when he’s on land, but I like the way the mystery stretched across both MC’s stories in the previous book, and that didn’t happen here at all. In fact, after a while, I tended to start skimming during the scenes when Dan was at sea. I struggled to understand or frankly care about the work being done to help the Allies be able to find and combat German subs–not that that wasn’t super important work during WWII, but I’ve known Sundin to make history much more interesting in the past than this book did. That’s probably just personal preference though.

Overall, this is not my favorite of Sundin’s books or series. Still, I think many others wouldn’t be as bothered by those things that detracted from the book for me, so I do recommend it for fans of Christian romance, especially those set during WWII.

Find out more about When Tides Turn

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!