"Shadows of the Valley" by Britt Howard

I have been looking forward to this book for months and months!  I very much enjoyed the first McCade Family Novel, Song of the Valley, when I read that a couple of years ago, but I liked Shadows of the Valley even more!

This is a suspenseful story with a modern western setting and a slow-burn romance. Kasey Carter is a retired military veteran who has suffered severe wounds, both physical, emotional, and spiritual.  When her younger half-sister begs Kasey to hide and protect her children for a while, Kasey agrees, but reluctantly.  She ends up guarding them in a remote cabin in the Montana mountains near the small town of Cascade Valley.  There, she encounters Dean McCade, a local rancher who senses she's guarding more than a few secrets and tries repeatedly to help her. 

This book is a lot more serious than the first book in Britt Howard's McCade Family series, but it features the same beautiful scenery, courageous and compassionate McCade family members, and a message that real answers and truth can be found only in Christ Jesus.  

If This was a Movie, I Would Rate It: PG-13 for mentions of spousal abuse, memories of military violence and trauma, small children being put in danger, and some violence on-page.  No cussing, no smut, and no gore.

"Of Clockworks and Daggers" by Sarah Everest

This is the second book in the Games of Greed and Ruin series -- the first was One Must Die, which Sarah Everest co-wrote with five other authors.

Of Clockworks and Daggers follows the adventures of Zenith, a young assassin-for-hire whose beliefs about his entire existence are challenged when he meets a mysterious fellow assassin who has a dangerous offer for him.  Zenith has been trying to live an honest life ever since the events at the mysterious sky mansion in One Must Die.  He's also been trying to help support the orphanage run the Jessie, the young woman he is falling in love with.  But he gets sucked back into his old life, and more is jeopardized than just his relationship with Jessie. 

This book ponders some pretty deep issues, like being the adult child of abusive parents, how to deal with the wrong in your past when you want to change for the better, and personal sacrifices big and small. It starts a little slowly, but builds to a really thrilling climax.

I really like the steampunk world of this series, a sort of Dickens-meets-H.G. Wells vibe with some fantasy twists here and there.  I'm looking forward to more of this series, including the next book, which drops in October!  

Particularly Good Bits:

Something about the pretentiousness of lawyers who live a life bending the law to fit the needs of their benefactors makes them believe they're untouchable.

If This was a Movie, I Would Rate It:  PG for some violence, memories of child abuse, thieving, and a scary sequence involving fire.

"Deep in the Heart" by Gilbert Morris

I picked up this book and its two sequels on a whim at a used bookstore a couple months ago.  I can remember my mom reading Gilbert Morris books when I was a teen, but I hadn't read him before.  

On a whole, I liked this first book in the Lone Star Legacy trilogy pretty well. I loved Clay and I liked Jerusalem Ann.  I liked most of the characters, actually.  And the history of Texas always fascinates me.  Though that ended up getting in my way a bit here.

Morris sets this during the time leading up to the Texas Revolution in the 1830s, and he has a whole lot of scenes where real-life people like Colonel Travis and Jim Bowie discuss why they are trying to separate Texas from Mexico.  Scenes that really have nothing to do with the book's characters.  They're just there to explain things.  It wasn't necessarily a bad way to explain Texan history... but it also made the actual story come to a screeching halt every now and then, especially in the last third of the book.  And, you know... if I, who love Old West history, got increasingly annoyed by having history lessons inserted that way, I am betting most readers were downright vexed.  

I can see what Morris was trying to do, but it would have been way more effective and enjoyable to have the book's main characters themselves discuss these things!

So, that left me feeling like this is a four-star read.  I'll try the next book, which I suspect won't have that issue so much because the Texas Revolution should be over pretty early in the book.  We'll see.

Particularly Good Bits:

"I wish things would go wrong one at a time, but they never do" (p. 214).

"I found out one thing after all these years.  And that's never to run away from problems.  As sure as you do, a worse one will meet you" (p. 350).

If This was a Movie, I Would Rate It: PG-13 for allusions to men consorting with prostitutes, drunkenness, a family with illegitimate children, women worrying about being captured by Native Americans and assaulted, and scenes of frontier violence.

"The Summer of Yes" by Courtney Walsh

While I wouldn't really call this "Christian Fiction" (though it is marketed as such), it's certainly clean and uplifting.  Characters do vaguely mention the Bible and praying a couple of times.  But for it to be Christian Fiction, I would want to see a lot more active faith on the part of the characters, and that should somehow be involved in their character arcs.

However, it's a really fun book the way it is. Kelsey is a wannabe book editor working as an assistant at a big NYC publisher, and getting hit by a car one morning completely changes her life.  Not because she is injured -- she's basically fine -- but because she briefly shares a hospital room with Georgina, a middle-aged Girl Boss who just wants to be left alone to die of kidney failure in peace.  But Kelsey is bad at accepting "no" for an answer, and a buddy comedy ensues.  The kind where the main characters don't like each other very well (think Lethal Weapon, with Danny Glover as Georgina and Mel Gibson as Kelsey) but end up bonding over a lot of mishaps that the audience finds very funny.  

Also, there's a romance, because Georgina's estranged son is hot, and Kelsey is cute, and this is a cute summer book.  But the main focus is the reluctant friendship between Kelsey and Georgina. 

I didn't love this book, but I enjoyed it a lot and will be hanging onto my copy.

Particularly Good Bits:

My life rolls out in front of me like an art film that nobody understands (p. 14).

Independent doesn't have to mean alone, right? (p. 34).

She's practically bouncing up and down, wearing her excitement like a fancy new party dress (p. 85).

But then it occurs to me that where one lives so often determines how one lives (p. 157).

"If you learn nothing else from my life, learn this.  Don't wait to love the people you love" (p. 363).

If This was a Movie, I Would Rate It: PG for discussions of dying, kidney dialysis, the car accident and resulting injuries, etc.  No cussing or smut or violence.

"Follow the Lonesome Trail" Releases Today!

It's here!  The wild west anthology Follow the Lonesome Trail releases today!

This brand-new collection boasts stories by Allison Tebo, Hannah Kaye, A. Hartley, Emily Hayse, Elisabeth Grace Foley, and Rachel Kovaciny (aka me).  

My short story in this book is called "Safekeeping," and it's a story of second chances and hope.  A loner learns that he's inherited a poke of gold, but it's in the clutches of a greedy bartender, and he has to come up with a creative solution to get what's rightfully his.  Along the way, he helps out a whole lot of other people and just might find himself a place to belong.

Here's what one reader had to say about it:

You can buy Follow the Lonesome Trail as a paperback and ebook today!  And you can check out more reviews (and review it yourself once you've read it) right here on Goodreads.

If you're on Instagram, I invite you to join me there at 1pm (CST) for a live video chat where I will read the first scene from "Safekeeping" aloud to you -- and I might have time to answer a few questions, too.

If you want to know more about the other books I've written, you can check out this page on this blog or my author website.

Happy reading!

"Chase the Legend" by Hannah Kaye

Chase the Legend by Hannah Kaye is a fantasy retelling of Moby-Dick by Herman Melville.  It's about a young woman signs on with a crew hunting a legendary dragon.  She makes new friends, faces new and old fears, and finally comes to terms with the fact that she's been fleeing her future as much as her past.  

It's a good shipboard adventure story, and the characters are unique and entertaining... but I never quite connected to any of them.  That might be just a me thing, as I have come to realize that I often just don't like extremely obsessive characters, and everyone in this book has some kind of obsession, obvious or not,  damaging or not.

Particularly Good Bits:

The lights of Edgewater floated in the fog like lost ghosts, wandering the night with no hope of shelter (p. 35).

"But you can't love someone hard enough to convince them they're worthy of love, not if they refuse to believe it themselves" (p. 152).

If This was a Movie, I Would Rate It: PG for scenes of peril and some scary moments.

"The Code of the Woosters" by P. G. Wodehouse

My teens and I listened to The Code of the Woosters while on a family road trip this summer, and howled our way through the whole thing. Jonathan Cecil is an absolute delight when it comes to reading the Jeeves and Wooster books.

If you are curious, this is the book involving an antique cow creamer.  Someone buys it.  Someone else wants it.  Bertie agrees to steal it.  Bertie decides not to steal it.  Various friends of Bertie's get engaged, break of engagements, attempt to steal the cow creamer... it's extremely convoluted.  And hilarious.  But not in a way I can explain.  Wodehouse really is one of those authors that you just have to read yourself -- and if you find him funny, you find him very funny, but if you don't... you probably think people who are laughing over the antics and hijinks in his books are very odd.

If This was a Movie, I Would Rate It: PG for a sprinkling of old-fashioned cuss words here and there.

This is my 42nd book read and reviewed for my fourth Classics Club list.