The Mistletoe Promise

The Mistletoe Promise by Richard Paul Evans
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The holiday season is soon approaching but Elise Dutton carries no excitement for what lies ahead. Guilt-ridden, Elise's past has jaded her to the beauty of Christmas. When a rather handsome stranger from her place of work approaches her with a proposition for the weeks ahead, Elise stiffly agrees with a sense of foreboding. However, the platonic relationship turns out to be fun until someone from her past appears..

*I believe the main goal of Evan's small Christmas novella is for people to stop judging others mistakes...that in reality a person carries so much crippling guilt and self-loathing from serious mistakes in the past...let us who is without sin cast the first stone...

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The Christmas Light

The Christmas Light by Donna VanLiere
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I look forward to reading Donna VanLiere's Christmas novella each year as we ready ourselves for the holiday/holy days soon approaching. This year's writing focuses on several hurting families in the town of Grandon, who are trying to get back on track and somehow enjoy Christmas. Jennifer De Luca is struggling to uncover the darkness for her six-year-old daughter Avery. Ryan Mazyck and his young daughter, Sophia, are moving for work reasons and are thinking of settling near his Aunt Gloria in Grandon. Sixteen-year-old Kaylee wants to believe that everything will be ok, but right now she can't see it beyond her expanding tummy. Stephen and Lily love their little church, Grandon Community, and are helping prepare for the Christmas Nativity. Each family is brought together by the power of love and faith.

There are two ways of spreading light: to be the candle or the mirror that reflects it.

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The Time Between

The Time Between by Karen White
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Eleanor's favorite times and worst times were on Edisto Island, where she grew up with the sweetgrass and salt marshes and memories of her loving, piano playing father. Eleanor's guilt holds her prisoner - guilt over her sister Eve's accident on Edisto...guilt over how she feels about her brother-in-law, Glenn. When Eleanor's boss offers her a job taking care of his Aunt Helena on that same island, she jumps at the chance to go back and relive her memories, not realizing that Helena carried her own guilt-ridden secrets.

I had forgotten how much I enjoy Karen White's writing. A favorite line from her book that Aunt Helena, who had suffered and lost so much says, "That adversity in life does not rob your heart of beauty. It simply teaches it a new song to sing."

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A Simple Christmas Wish

A Simple Christmas Wish by Melody Carlson
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

When the unthinkable happens, city girl Rachel Milligan must take her adorable seven-year-old niece to live with her Amish relatives in Ohio. But, Rachel can't bear to leave Holly with her new family who won't allow Holly to bring her toys and doll into their home. Fortunately a snow storm keeps her stranded at the Miller's farm, much to Holly's delight. Can Rachel turn away, leave the little girl, and head back to Chicago and her city ways?

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The Valley of the Shadow, Cornish Mystery #3

The Valley of the Shadow by Carola Dunn
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

For those who love "Cozy Mysteries" this read is a winner. This is the third Cornish mystery featuring retired widow Eleanor Trewynn who has settled in a quaint Cornish village with her sweet Westie named Teazle. Eleanor must use her super sleuthing skills to help her niece, Megan - a Detective Sgt. with the local police force - find clues about the young man they rescued from the water while on a hiking trip near the Cornish coast. The man is near death and can only whisper something about family and a cave before he loses consciousness. Can Eleanor and Megan find the missing family, possibly refugees, in time?

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A Wreath of Snow: A Victorian Christmas Novella

A Wreath of Snow: A Victorian Christmas Novella by Liz Curtis Higgs
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I so loved this little inspirational book that I read it twice - yep! I've always been drawn to
a. novels set in Scotland
b. 1890s, Victorian era
c. chivalry - excuse me, where is it now??
d. train stations
e. novels set around the Christmastide

Well, I could go on, but this little gem covers all the above bases and more. Gentle and lovely, set in snowy Stirling, Scotland, it's Christmas Eve and unfortunately Miss Margaret Campbell has fled her parent's small home, due to her injured brother's unreasonable demands and bitterness, and is ready to take the next train back to her lonely home in Edinburgh. When the train with all its passengers finally gets underway, all her plans are derailed when a huge snowbank blocks their way. Fellow travelers join together to help or carry the injured and children walk the several miles back to Stirling, including red-haired Mr. Gordon Shaw, a quiet, young newspaperman who had sorry Christmas plans of his own. When Margaret finds out who Mr. Shaw really is - can forgiveness be extended, especially since it's the Christmas season?

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Those We Love Most

Those We Love Most by Lee Woodruff
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Three normal but flawed generations of family, who are already close to splintering, are broken when one of the youngest is involved in a fatal accident. Can love and loyalty overcome even the deepest hurt?

Two favorite quotes:

"People always came out of the woodwork at a time like this, for good and bad. There was some need in human nature to insert yourself immediately, to take action, even if you knew the person only tangentially. The proximity to tragedy and sorrow caused an immediate evaluation of your own relative good fortune. The people who really understood, though, would hang back until the right moment, knowing that the real work began when all of the cars had left the driveway."

"Trust took such a long time to earn. And yet it could all come unmoored in an instant. She was smart enough to know at least that. People kept secrets. People built walls. It didn't mean they couldn't and didn't love with all their hearts. And so this was what she would have to make peace with: this was what she would have to hold close. Like the cross section of a tree, the bad period would be marked in interior rings, the years of drought, the blunt force trauma to the heart, all of it only visible after death. Maybe silence was a price we sometimes paid for loving so completely, the price we sometimes paid to protect those we loved most."

Lee Woodruff's main characters are well fleshed out and you will feel their families' gamut of emotions as heartbreaking events unfold.


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The Bridge: A Novel by Karen Kingsbury
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Charlie and Donna Barton have given their all to those who enter their quaint little bookstore in Franklin, Tennessee. It has been a meeting place for students, young lovers, and getaways for older married couples. When the 100 year flood rolls through and ruins their inventory, there is no money to restock the shelves and Charlie, especially, feels as though life is over. As he mulls over his future, Charlie realizes that he's worth more dead then alive and actually puts thought into planning an "accident." As his car begins to slip on the icy road home, Charlie is distraught over what Donna will go through after his death - but the car has already lost traction...

Karen Kingsbury writes another little inspirational book for Christmas, reminding me of the first wonderful little books I read of hers - the Red Glove series.

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Left Neglected

Left Neglected by Lisa Genova
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Three beautiful children involved in everything, one handsome, career minded husband, a busy, satisfying career for herself, a home in a prestigious neighborhood of Boston and a vacation home in Vermont’s ski country – Sarah Nickerson’s life is on full throttle. Sarah prides herself on her ability to multi-task to the nth degree, but everything comes to a full stop when she finds herself spinning out of control on wet pavement headed into work. When Sarah wakes up in the hospital, she doesn’t realize that she can’t see anything on her left – a real, neurological syndrome that occurs due to damage to the right hemisphere of the brain called Left Neglect. Sarah, revved to go back to work, doesn’t realize the long term therapy that may never get her back to the pre-accident Sarah. Slowly, she comes to understand that it may not be such a bad thing….

A book full of determination and tears, laughter and despair, definitely a fantastic read that I really enjoyed and couldn’t put down…


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The Touch

The Touch by Randall Wallace

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


Jones has an amazing gift - he has the touch - hands for surgery and saving people. He also has fallen in love with Faith, a woman who lives up to her name and who inspires Jones. When both are involved in a tragic accident on the way to their clinic in the mountains - Jones hangs up his own personal surgical instruments and teaches his fellow doctors to use their hands instead. At the same time a young woman named Lara Blair, who owns a biomedical engineering company, has been searching for a surgeon to operate the special tool she has designed to save lives. Jones, when discovered by Lara's team, wants nothing to do with surgery again and instead shows Lara the clinic in the Blue Ridge Mountains and the people who desperately need doctoring. When Jones also tells of Faith's anonymous acts of love, Lara begins to understand and believe in the selflessness and freedom of such an action.

An amazing novel of faith, belief, and the inner goodness of men. This author/producer/director is also the screenwriter of Braveheart and We Were Soldiers.



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The Best of Me

The Best of Me by Nicholas Sparks

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


Dawson & Amanda, two-star crossed sweethearts from high school, reunite when Tuck, an old friend to both passes away leaving instructions for them to carry out his funeral wishes.



As teens their love was doomed, opposites from the beginning - Dawson, poor, with only a renegade father and cousins and Amanda, from a wealthy, snobby family. Drawn together, they form an unbroken bond. But, as Amanda nears college, Dawson is wrongly accused of vehicular manslaughter, spending years behind prison bars. Fleeing the area upon release, he works on an oil rig down the coast. When they meet up almost 30 years later for Tuck’s funeral, sparks fly and memories are revived, even though Amanda is married with children. But, in the background still lurking are Dawson’s sadistic family of criminals bent on destroying both he and Amanda.



This review was difficult for me to write. Although I’ve always loved his writing style, I’m ambivalent on this particular Nicholas Spark novel. I can see that things are becoming a bit cliché even for me and it surprised me to see more violent characters thrown into the soup. Most of Spark’s novels are worth a reread, but not this one for me.





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The Orchard

The Orchard by Jeffrey Stepakoff

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


A sweet little story about a determined, workaholic woman and a lonely widower who grows the most aromatic apples. World traveler Grace, who lets nothing stop her from chasing down the finest ingredients in perfumes, falls in love with an apple. Into the mountains of Ellijay, Georgia, she follows her nose to an old fashion, chemical free apple orchard where she finds Dylan and persuades him to allow her to set up her instruments and recreate the wonderful apple flavor. Along the way, Dyland and Grace fall in love, but will they lose it when someone from the past appears?





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