Arms of Love

Arms Of Love by Kelly Long
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This is a work of romance with many facets - it's Christian fiction, Amish fiction, and it's also historical fiction - the Patriots and the British are at war and danger is aplenty. The Amish are belittled by the Patriots for not joining their ranks and fighting for their home and country.

The story opens in William Penn's Woods in the late 1700s, Adam Wyse, a young Amish man is in love with his beautiful neighbor, Lena Yoder. Alas, before Lena's mother dies in childbirth with her youngest child, she requires a promise from Adam that he will set himself free from his harsh, ungiving father before taking Lena as his wife. Lena, feeling cast off and not knowing Adam's promise, turns to his older brother, Issac, who is studying to be a bishop and also his father's favorite son.

Adam has horrible flashbacks to an unnamed fearful time when he was young. His flashbacks compel him to leave the Amish fold and enlist - to get away from his father and make a life of his own, therefore fulfilling the promise to Lena's mother.

Not just for readers of Amish literature (I do not often read Amish fiction but it is extremely popular), I enjoyed getting to know the characters, seeing their flaws and strengths, and watching their faith be tested and grow from inner and outer turmoil. I also liked Adam's British acquaintance, a family man named Major Dale Ellis, who became a good, kind friend to Adam, despite their many differences. At the end of the book Kelly Long has not only included Reading Club questions but also a four-week bible study.


Joyce Lamb from USA TODAY writes:
Kelly Long knows a thing or two about the Amish. She grew up in the Allegheny Mountains of Pennsylvania, where the Amish roadside vegetable stands made a big impression on her as a child. She says that her new release, Arms of Love, "traces the Amish to their first roots in America" and also deals with post-traumatic stress disorder. .... what draws her to the Amish culture and how the Amish struggle with the same problems that everyone else does.

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The Tiger's Wife

The Tiger's Wife by Téa Obreht

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


Read on my Kindle Fire, The Tiger's Wife is such a lovely story, set in the Balkans years after the war, with almost a ethereal, old world feel - Natalia Stefanovic, a young doctor, traveling across the border with a co-worker/doctor and meds to help an orphanage, has just found out that her beloved grandfather, also a doctor and her mentor, has died. As she tries to piece together the last moments of his life and deal with her grief, Natalia remembers all the stories her grandfather has passed on to her - mystical stories of his childhood in a lonely village outpost in the mountains where he met a tiger and the tiger's wife, stories of meeting Death's nephew - the Deathless Man - not once, but three times, stories that connected them and helped her understand why he carried The Jungle Book in his coat pocket and visited Shere Khan in the nearby zoo. Magical....

Several favorite quotes:
"He sat up, pushed his chair away from the table and rubbed his knees. 'When men die, they die in fear,' he said. 'They take everything they need from you, and as a doctor it is your job to give it, to comfort them, to hold their hand. But children die how they have been living--in hope. They don't know what's happening, so they expect nothing, they don't ask you to hold their hand--but you end up needing them to hold yours. With children, you're on your own. Do you understand?'"

“When your fight has purpose—to free you from something, to interfere on the behalf of an innocent—it has a hope of finality. When the fight is about unraveling—when it is about your name, the places to which your blood is anchored, the attachment of your name to some landmark or event—there is nothing but hate, and the long, slow progression of people who feed on it and are fed it, meticulously, by the ones who come before them. Then the fight is endless, and comes in waves and waves, but always retains its capacity to surprise those who hope against it.”


I love the connection between Natalia and her grandfather - I had a wonderful, loving relationship with my paternal grandfather and dearly miss him to this day...and I remember many of the stories he told me of his childhood years on the farm...



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The Maze Runner

The Maze Runner by James Dashner

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


What an on the edge of your seat, dystopian page turner! I read this on my Kindle late at night and actually had a nightmare about it. My son woke me up wondering if I was trying to get away from someone!

Thomas can not remember the past, only his name. He is in a dark moving thing as it ascends. Above him doors seem to open and light comes flooding in, blinding his eyes. Other boys unknown to him, some younger, some older help him out and suddenly Thomas is surrounded and even more afraid. Where is he - what has happened to his memories? What is this place - the Glade - where walls move at "night" and terrifying things outside the walls, called Grievers, roam at will....

#2 The Scorch Trials
#3 The Death Cure





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A Wandering Heart

A Wandering Heart by Thomas Kinkade

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


Book 3 in the series, An Angel Island Novel, is another sweet read by the team of Thomas Kinkade and Katherine Spencer, where island folklore told of angels that helped a community of residents near death. Actress Charlotte Miller, who covers a world of past hurts with a beautiful smile, has come to the island to stay at the inn with a movie crew, all set to film her new and upcoming with co-star Nick Dempsey. When a rogue wave tumbles the troubled Charlotte into the ocean, it is fisherman Colin Doyle who jumps in and rescues her. As the two form a quick attachment, Charlotte knows that the attraction can not last and sadly breaks it off. Meanwhile, goat farmer and cheesemakers Audrey and Rob are having heartaches of their own - will they have to give up their beloved Gilroy Farm in order to move to Boston for fertility treatments....

The world lost a beloved artist on April 6 - the Painter of Light and author Kinkade passed away at his home.



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The Gilly Salt Sisters

The Gilly Salt Sisters by Tiffany Baker

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


Two sisters many thought of as witches. Eerie salt marshes with secrets. Salt that not only changes the taste-buds but foretells the future. What is magic and what is real?

Jo, burnt and scarred from a barn fire, is the hardworking daughter of a salt marsh farmer - who was considered a witch herself. Her sister Claire, younger, burnt and broken from high-school romance, hates the salt and is willing to do almost anything to get away. Both fall for the same man, Whit Turner, whose family has run up against the Gillys since the town of Prospect had been founded and settled generations ago. All three are surrounded by secrets and possibly curses of the salt which once brought to light can never be hidden again.

"If she knew anything, Claire thought, it was simply that though our time on earth was short, our lives were long. They seeped and spread, watery and wide, moving in unexpected directions...If she had to atone for her sins, she figured, so be it, she was ready, ice pitted in her bowels, frost gathered in her hair, and salt scattered painful beneath the papery skin of her feet - for as it was in the beginning, she suspected, so would it be forever in the end."





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The Limit

The Limit by Kristen Landon

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


How embarrassing - while at the local store, Matt's family exceeds their credit. But wait, it's much worse than just teenage embarrassment - Matt is only 13 and is sent away to a workhouse to pay off his family's overspending. Good thing he's almost a genius - Matt is allowed to live on the top floor where the brains live and work on contracts for the government and large corporations. Things seem good at first - he makes new friends, the rooms are cool, big TVs and computers to play with and a swanky pool to swim in. But then, while cracking into the workhouse files, he finds that his sister has also been taken and has been living on a lower floor for days. She, for some reason, is also getting headaches and seizures. His family has been ultra careless, overspending on all kinds of things they don't need and he also discovers that anything he has ordered, such as clothes, food, and even living on the top floor has been put on the bill - Matt will never be ever to pay it off.

How easy it is, with credit, to slap a few extra "needed" items on the conveyor belt every time we visit a store.....an easy good read for teens.



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The Paris Wife

The Paris Wife by Paula McLain

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


An interesting work of historical fiction on the lives and marriage between golden boy writer Ernest Hemmingway and his first wife, Hadley. Quiet, lonely 28 year old Hadley never thought she could interest a man, let alone a handsome, younger fellow by the name of Ernest. But Hemmingway loves her honesty and steadiness and both are swept off to Paris in the roaring, turbulent 1920s - where all the artists are gathering, making a name for themselves. As their circle become larger and wilder, Hemmingway becomes more popular, and their marriage, once so strong, becomes strained and unravels.





I was never a huge fan of Hemmingway, although after reading The Paris Wife, I believe I just may reread a few of his writings.



Read on my Kindle Fire.



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The Scent of Lilacs

Ann Gabhart wrote that this book was her first attempt at inspirational writing and it is the beginning of a series set in a small town in Hollyhill, Kentucky in the 1960s. A much simpler time and way of life but people faced the same distractions, temptations,and problems as now. Jocie, at only 13 and daughter of the local pastor, prays for her sister to return and a pet dog to love. Her father also is a newspaper editor and Jocie hangs out at the shop and helps out by taking pictures of local events and writing stories. They both share their home with Jocie's stern Great Aunt Love, who loves to quote scripture and handout chores. When Jocie was a baby her mother left in the middle of the night, taking with her Jocie's older sister, Tabitha, finally settling in California and never returning. One night at the beginning of summer, the family returns home from church to find someone sitting on the porch in the dark, waiting for them.

The main characters are so well written and your heart will break for sweet Jocie and the secrets that will change her summer and her life.

Chasing the Sun

Set in the 1863, Texas has taken sides during the War Between the States. For those settlers that fought for the Union, their lands and holdings were confiscated and given to supporters and helpers of the Confederacy. Hannah Dandridge and her family, formerly of Vicksburg, have settled on a ranch that once belonged to the Barnett family. When young, injured Union fighter William Barnett returns home alone, he finds Hannah, her younger brother and sister, and some of his ranch hands struggling to keep things running. Although William wants his land back, he can't help but admire the strength and faith of the Dandridge family, but is also afraid to admit that he had fought in Vicksburg, the same town that Hannah lost her brother and now possibly - her father. When outside forces again threaten the safety of all in the little homestead, Hannah and William try to work through their differences....

Times were so unsettled in Texas in the 1860s, not only were the Confederates and Yankees fighting, but the Native American tribes were unsettled - hope and faith were the only things keeping people looking forward to another day - to fall in love, raise their families, and work and run their homesteads...