"Secrets of the Revolution" by Megan Soja

This second book in the Harbor of Spies series by Megan Soja did not disappoint!  It builds upon the first book, Spark of the Revolution, but could also be read as a stand-alone.  (But you do find out how the first book ends, if you care about spoilage.)

This book centers around William Abbott, older brother of the main female character of the first book.  His plans for the future entirely change with the receipt of a single letter, and he wholeheartedly embraces the Patriot cause as a result.  He stays in Boston and becomes a spy.

Along the way, he meets Hannah Pierce, who runs her aging father's apothecary shop.  Not only is she keeping her father's failing health and mind a secret, but she becomes involved in the growing Patriot spy ring as well.

And, of course, William and Hannah fall in love.

I especially enjoyed how many real historical people, places, and events Soja includes in this series.  And I appreciate how the Christian faith of both main characters grew and changed over the course of the book.  I liked book two even better than book one, and I'm glad I'm only halfway through the series, because that means I still have two books to look forward to!

Particularly Good Bits:

Silence hovered between them, begging to be filled (p. 29).

"Perhaps many memories hold a touch of the bittersweet, but I believe that makes them all the more precious.  They remind us of the experiences that shaped us.  And in recognizing how fleeting and fragile life is, they spur us on to fully live each day that God gives us" (p. 91).

It was not a failure to close one chapter of her life and begin another (p. 276).

If This was a Movie, I Would Rate It: PG for sweet romance including lightly described kisses, plus some descriptions of mild violence.  No cussing or smut.

This has been my 7th book read for my #RevolutionaryWarReads challenge!

"Honeysuckle Breeze" by B. R. Goodwin

Do you read multiple books at once?

If you do, does that ever cause you to finish two or three books about the same time?  And does that then cause you to develop a giant backlog of books you need to review, usually right when you have almost zero time to blog?

Or is it just me?

Anyway.  I swear it was still springtime at our house when I read Honeysuckle Breeze, the springtime book in the Sugartree Romance series by B. R. Goodwin.  It was May.  I finished this book a little over two weeks ago.  And two others at the same time, and two more right after that, and and and... I'm catching up at last, but yeah, it's kind of been a struggle.

About the book!  It's really cute and funny... but also drove me a little nuts in the middle because the main characters were avoiding talking to each other instead of just saying, "Hey, what is going on with you?  I am confused" like... well, I was going to say "like adults," but what I actually mean is "like I wanted them to."  However, I am particularly allergic to the miscommunication/non-communication trope, so that probably won't bother other people.

Honeysuckle Breeze picks up shortly after the end of Southern Snow, but focuses on a different Remillard sibling.  And a different Lovett sibling.  This time, it's Kindergarten teacher Caroline who is trying to figure out her complicated feelings for Griffin, who was her best-friend-with-flirting-benefits until they kissed each other at Christmas, and now he is ghosting her entirely... and then suddenly returning to her life and turning it upside down.  I do love second chance romances, so this book was overall a hit for me :-)

If This was a Movie, I Would Rate It: PG-13 for discussions of single-parenting and the decisions that led to that, lots of flirty banter, lots of thinking about being attracted to another person, and some lightly described kisses.  No smut, no cussing, no violence.

"Of Pastries and Vengeance" by Amber Lambda and Lydia Mae

Another great addition to the Games of Greed and Ruin series!  Of Pastries and Vengeance focuses on one character from the first book, One Must Die, plus adds a new character, while also expanding the world in which the series is set.

If you read One Must Die, you probably remember Maple, the sweet baker whose peach scones gained her several friends, though they didn't convince quite everyone in the deadly Sky Manor game that she was a good person. As I recall, several people were sure she was not as pure and uncomplicated as she wanted to appear.

And they were right.  Maple has a big secret: she may bake delicious cinnamon rolls and peach scones and other bakery delights now, but she was once a notorious and feared member of the city's underground no-holds-barred prize fighting circles.  Not only that, but she believes her father was murdered during one of those illegal fights.

Maple meets Rory Evander, a brand-new law enforcement officer who is intent on capturing a killer.  No matter who that killer may be.  Rory and Maple team up, albeit with reluctance on both their parts, and begin hunting for clues.  And start to develop feelings for each other in the process, as you might expect.

Since I love a good murder mystery, I really enjoyed this.  There were enough surprises to keep me guessing and enough clues to keep me satisfied.  I look forward to seeing where these two characters end up in the next book.

Like the other books in this series, this is Christian fiction, though the Christian themes are maybe a bit less overt in this than in some of the books.

This book WILL make you hungry...

Particularly Good Bits:

I cringed.  This guy was going to stick out like a burnt tea biscuit (p. 31).

If This was a Movie, I Would Rate It: PG-13 for scenes of hand-to-hand violence and non-gory descriptions of murder.  No smut and no cussing.

"On Living Stone" by Heather Kaufman

Another breathtakingly good book from Heather Kaufman!  Are we surprised?  We are not.  Are we happy?  Ecstatically so!

On Living Stone tells the story of Salome, mother of Jesus's disciples James and John.  Like the first two books in this series, Up from Dust and Before the King, this book focuses on a real woman who appears in the Biblical record, but imagines what her life could have been like.

Salome's mother died when she was young.  Her father was a skilled stone mason, but grief drove him to become an alcoholic for a time, though an accident brought him to his senses.  Through all of that, he was a kind and loving father, however.  Salome's mother's best friend tried to help guide the preteen girl toward becoming an upright woman, but Salome's own grief often made her desperate to get away from everyone and be alone in nature with only her beloved dog as a companion.  She resents her mother's best friend at times, and struggles to find her own friends and a sense of belonging in her world.

Eventually, Salome has to grow up, whether she wants to or not.  Like the rest of us.  She marries Zebedee, a strong and gentle fisherman she has known all her life, and they have two sons, James and John.  Salome struggles with motherhood at times, especially while enduring what we would not call post-partum depression, but she is overall a fiercely loving protector for her sons.  When her sons begin to follow a new rabbi named Jesus, she has many reservations, but eventually comes to believe that Jesus is who he says he is: the Messiah.  

Like all the best Biblical fiction, On Living Stone doesn't seek to try to replace the Bible in readers' minds, but rather shows us the world in which the Biblical accounts take place so we can better understand the people, places, customs, and lifestyles in the Bible.  Heather Kaufman masterfully opens that world to readers while always pointing them to the Bible as the ultimate authority on everything to do with God and his saving grace.

(From my Instagram)

Particularly Good Bits:

We follow a rabbi whose steps extend beyond the grave (p. 10).

He wrapped long arms around me until I was completely surrounded by his sturdy embrace.  He was the steady beat of a drum, a warm cloak on a dark night, a spoken word of comfort into a lonely heart (p. 64).

"God alone knows the future.  He only asks that we walk uprightly in the present day" (p. 83).

"Salome, I may not understand what you're going through, but I don't have to understand in order to love you" (p. 121).

If This was a Movie, I Would Rate It: PG-13 for some scenes of non-gory violence, discussion of depression, and gentle mentions of a husband and wife anticipating or enjoying the marital bed.  No smut; no cussing.

"A Name to Remember" by Hannah Hood Lucero

This is my first Hannah Hood Lucero book, but it definitely will not be my last!  Wow.  I get the hype now, fam.

Compelling and befriend-able characters?

Check.

Alluring North Carolina small town setting?

Check.

Horses?

Check.

High, yet believable, stakes?

Check.

Suspenseful climax?

Check.

Made me cry multiple times for happy and poignant reasons both?

Check.

Made me laugh aloud?

Check.

Yup, I'm a fan :-D

(I've actually met Hannah, and she is a whimsically maniacal delight to hang out with, so I was already a fan of her as a person before this, but now I am a fan of her writing as well...)

High school senior Isobel Lee gets recognized everywhere she goes, but not for a happy or fun reason: her Army medic dad recently died in combat overseas, and strangers and acquaintances alike all want to either thank her for her family's sacrifice or tell her all the reasons they disagree with American military operations like the one that killed her dad.

Isobel and her mom move in with her grandmother in a small North Carolina town.  Gran owns horses and is a sass-master extraordinaire, but also sweet and kind and warm and everything a grandma should be.  

Her first day at her new high school, Isobel makes friends with Hank Olsen, though she doesn't realize who he is when she befriends him.

Hank Olsen is also famous in their small town, but not for good reasons either.  His dad went to prison for murder and his mom is a druggie, and Hank is considered to be trailer trash just like his parents.  But that's not what Isobel doesn't realize about him -- she doesn't realize at first that he is the sweet boy she got an instant crush on five years earlier, when she and her parents were visiting Gran one summer.

Isobel and Hank both feel sparkage toward each other, but they first build a solid friendship before moving on to holding hands and kissing and inviting all the warm fuzzies of young love into their lives.  They both have some emotional issues to grapple with, and some real-world problems as well.

This small NC town is plagued with fires every winter, and the fires all seem linked to Hank somehow.  Most of the town suspects he's a firebug, and when new fires break out, soon there are people calling for his arrest or banishment or both.

Man, this book was so good!  I inhaled it in just a few days, and now I want to read Lucero's book Cathey's Creek Road, which is also YA and also set in the same basic area.  In fact, I ordered a copy as soon as I finished A Name to Remember, so it should be hitting my doorstep pretty soon!

One quick theological note: there's definitely some decision-based theology in this book, which some of my readers will want to be aware of.

If This was a Movie, I Would Rate It: PG-13 for violence, portrayal of mental illness in teens (including self-harm and violence toward others), mentions of military violence and PTSD, and romantic yearning between teens that acknowledges temptation/desire to do more than kiss.  No cussing; no smut; no gory violence.

"Spark of the Revolution" by Megan Soja

What a lovely book!

Spark of the Revolution follows a young British woman named Patience who arrives in Colonial Boston in 1773, escorted by her brother William.  Their mother has died, and Patience is eager to be reunited with her father, who has been living in Boston ever since an injury meant he was unable to continue making his livelihood at sea.

Patience is shocked to discover that her father has remarried already, and now she has a stepsister as well as a stepmother.  She struggles especially much because she was hoping that she and her father could grow closer as they grieved for her mother and adjusted to their new life together, but now he has already moved on and seems to not be interested in getting to know her better.

Will finds work at a Boston printing office and makes friends with some young men who are secretly part of the Sons of Liberty organization leading the boycott of Britain's taxes on tea and so on.  One of his new friends is Josiah, a blacksmith who catches Patience's eye as well.  Josiah is struggling with his Christian faith and with loneliness.  Will and Patience bring friendship and eventually love into his life, and Josiah grows and changes the most of anyone over the course of the book.

While there is a romance central to this book, the themes of sibling friendship and family love are basically just as strong as the romance, and I loved that.  The historical details of pre-Revolutionary Boston are fantastic, and "seeing" the Boston Tea Party happen made me bounce with joy.  The writing is fluid and enjoyable, and the characters are delightfully believable and real-feeling.  I'm so glad there are two more books out in this series already, and a fourth coming before the end of the year!

Particularly Good Bits:

But it had been a decade since she'd spent more than a handful of months at a time in her father's company, and nearly three years since she had seen him at all.  Not enough time to plant any new memories in the garden of her heart (p. 22).

The whole of Boston seemed poised and tense, like a barn cat crouching low and steady, barely twitching her tail before she pounced on her prey (p. 138).

"Each day is one the Lord has made, a gift from Him that we give back by living in obedience and trust.  To know tomorrow is His place, not ours" (p. 185).

Mama would forever be a part of her, woven tightly into the fabric of Patience's life, and as time passed and the sharpness of the pain dulled, the joy of those memories grew and flourished (p. 295).

If This was a Movie, I Would Rate It:  PG for some discussions of violence, though it is pretty well kept off-page.  No cussing; no smut.

This has been my third book read from my #RevolutionaryWarReads list!

"A Heart Adrift" by Laura Frantz

I wouldn't exactly say that A Heart Adrift by Laura Frantz is a retelling of Persuasion by Jane Austen.  But I wouldn't exactly say it's NOT one, either.  Both are second-chance romances involving a capable but rarely understood woman of good family and a sea captain who might make decisions a little too hastily sometimes.  The main characters in both have a best friend who is widowed and runs a business and knows all the local news.  There's only one vain and self-centered sister here, as opposed to two in Persuasion.  And the main character's dad is actually a good and wise father in this.  But there certainly are a lot of similarities.

And, since Persuasion is my favorite Jane Austen novel, I didn't mind that at all!

A Heart Adrift begins in 1755, during what we now call the French and Indian War.  Esmée Shaw spends her days running the chocolaterie her mother founded in York, Virginia, decades earlier.  Her father runs the coffee shop next door.  Both are closer to the waterfront than some snooty genteel folk deem proper, while others are perfectly happy to run the risk of rubbing elbows with seafarers in their quest for famous Shaw chocolates.  

This book made me crave chocolate a lot.  Be warned.

Esmée's sister Eliza is married to a wealthy and influential man with a title and a fine estate and a fancy house in Williamsburg.  She's not pleased at all that her sister is unmarried and runs a shop.  So common!  So quaint!  So much work!  Also, Eliza is pregnant with her first child and convinced that this solidifies her place at the center of the entire world.

Ten years earlier, Esmée turned down a proposal from the man she loved, Captain Henri Lennox.  She still loves him.  He still loves her.  But, at the time, she was absolutely certain that she could never be happy if married to a sea captain who had to leave her all the time.  You see, her father was an admiral and was rarely home when she was growing up, and she saw how hard that was on her mom, and so on.  

Anyway, there's a war on, with the French trying to take over the British colonies in North America, and the Governor of the Virginia Colony wants Captain Lennox to become a privateer and take the fight to the high seas and stop the French from landing so many troops and generally scuttle the French plans.  All Henri Lennox wants to do is build a lighthouse and marry Esmée and be a lighthousekeeper.  But duty calls, etc.

Everything works out very nicely in the end for the main characters, despite the best efforts of the French navy, random scurrilous rogues, a smallpox epidemic, and even (sometimes) Eliza.  

I really loved that this book was set in Williamsburg and York (now Yorktown) because I spend a LOT of time in Colonial Williamsburg, so the characters could be like "I was walking down Duke of Gloucester Street and passed the Raleigh Tavern," and I would be like, "YES!  I have been there!  I know what that looks like!  I know what a spring morning and a fall afternoon and a winter evening feel like there!"

The characters were really well-drawn, and the historical details were almost uniformly delightful.  (Except the use of the term "bluestocking" as slang for "women who think too much," which I don't think was common until about 30 years later.  But that is my only real quibble!!!!!!!)  The love story was paced just perfectly -- we did NOT have to wait nearly 400 pages to get misunderstandings sorted out and come to our senses and so on!  I was a big fan of that.

I am not sure I have ever read adult historical fiction that took place during the French and Indian War before, and that was an absolute treat.  I will definitely be reading more of Laura Frantz's books.

Particularly Good Bits:

The only certainty about life was its uncertainty.  Only God stayed steadfast.  Only the Almighty could walk her through life's many changes.  And when she felt overwhelmed, like now, she simply had to look back to see how faithful God had been, did she not?  The heartaches and closed doors of the past had made the present more beloved (p. 250).

If This was a Movie, I Would Rate It: PG.  No cussing, no smut, but a little on-page violence and threat of assault against a woman.  Some lightly described kissing, too.

All the Fairy Tale Retellings I Have Reviewed

Not only do I write fairy tale retellings, I love to read them!  And I have reviewed quite a few of them over the years.  So here is a list of all the fairy tale retellings I have reviewed, along with what I rated them and what fairy tale(s) they are retelling.

I've grouped books that belong to a series together, and then have the stand-alones or single titles at the end here.

The Austen Fairy Tales series by Kendra E. Ardnek

Rose Petals and Snowflakes (PG) -- Snow White and Rose Red

Crown and Cinder (PG) -- Cinderella

Emmazel (PG) -- Rapunzel

Snowfield Palace (PG) -- The Snow Queen

Thornrose Estate (PG) -- Beauty and the Beast

A Little Persuaded  (G) -- The Little Mermaid

The Christmas Chronicles (multi-author series)

The Midnight Blizzard by Mary Mecham (PG) -- Cinderella

The Silent Night by Sarah Beran (G) -- Sleeping Beauty

The Evraft series by Jenni Sauer

Wait Until Tomorrow (PG) -- The Steadfast Tin Soldier

Rook di Goo (PG-13) -- Cinderella

Yesterday or Long Ago (PG -- Aladdin

A Little Beside You (PG-13) -- Snow White and Rose Red

Kling Klang Gloria (PG-13) -- Sleeping Beauty + King Thrushbeard

Collections/Anthologies

Blind Beauty and Other Tales of Redemption by Meredith Leigh Burton (PG) -- Beauty and the Beast, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, and something else I couldn't identify

Cloaked in Red by Vivian Vande Velde (PG) -- Little Red Riding Hood (multiple short story retellings)

Five Enchanted Roses (anthology) by Kaycee Browning, Savannah Jezowski, Jenelle Schmidt, Dorian Tsukioka, Hayden Wand (PG-13) -- Beauty and the Beast

Five Poisoned Apples (anthology) by Skye Hoffert, Jenelle Hovde, Cortney Manning, Maddie Morrow, Rachael Wallen (PG/PG-13) -- Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs

Once (omnibus) by Elisabeth Grace Foley, Rachel Heffington, J. Grace Pennington, Emily Ann Putzke, Suzannah Rowntree, and Hayden Wand (PG-13) -- Little Red Riding Hood, Sleeping Beauty, Rumplestiltskin, The Little Match Girl, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Rapunzel

Stand-alone Novels

Beauty by Robin McKinley (G) -- Beauty and the Beast

Befriending the Beast by Amanda Tero (PG) -- Beauty and the Beast

Corral Nocturne by Elisabeth Grace Foley (G) -- Cinderella

Enchanted by Alethea Kontis (PG-13) -- lots and lots of fairy tales blended together

A Flame Shall Spring from the Embers by Heidi Pekarek (PG) -- Sleeping Beauty

The Goblin and the Dancer by Allison Tebo (PG) -- The Steadfast Tin Soldier

January Snow by Hayden Wand (PG-13) -- Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs

The Lady and the Lionheart by Joanne Bischof (PG-16) -- Beauty and the Beast

Lost Lake House by Elisabeth Grace Foley (PG) -- Twelve Dancing Princesses

The Merchant's Daughter by Melanie Dickerson (PG-13) -- Beauty and the Beast

The Midnight Show by Sarah Pennington (PG-10) -- Twelve Dancing Princesses

The Reluctant Godfather by Allison Tebo (G) -- Cinderella

Snow White by Matt Phelan (PG) -- Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs

With Blossoms Gold by Hayden Wand (PG-13) -- Rapunzel

This list is another contribution to my We Love Fairy Tales Week that I am hosting on my other blog, Hamlette's Soliloquy :-)

Top Ten Tuesday: Ever After

This week's Top Ten Tuesday prompt from That Artsy Reader Girl is a Valentine's freebie -- anything about romance, basically.  I'm choosing to share my top ten favorite romantic couples from fairy tale retellings!

I've linked each retelling title to my full review of that book in case you are curious about it, and also provided my movie-style rating and what fairy tale it is retelling.

1. Cori and Bender in A Little Beside You by Jenni Sauer (PG-13) -- Snow White and Rose Red

2. Princess Holly and Dominic Klaus in The Silent Night by Sarah Beran (G) -- Sleeping Beauty

3. Emmazel and Night in Emmazel by Kendra E. Ardnek (PG) -- Rapunzel

4. Snow and Chase in "Falling Snow" by Skye Hoffert (PG-10) -- Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs

5. Rosanna and Grik in The Goblin and the Dancer by Allison Tebo (PG) -- The Steadfast Tin Soldier

6. Beauty and Beast in Beauty by Robin McKinley (G) -- Beauty and the Beast

7. Rue and Robbie in Wait Until Tomorrow by Jenni Sauer (PG) -- The Steadfast Tin Soldier

8. Ella and Burndee in The Reluctant Godfather by Allison Tebo (G) -- Cinderella

9. Enna and Anthony in A Little Persuaded by Kendra E. Ardnek (G) -- The Little Mermaid

10. Ellie and Cole in Corral Nocturne by Elisabeth Grace Foley (G) -- Cinderella

As well as being my entry for the Top Ten Tuesday linkup this week, this post is also one of my contributions to We Love Fairy Tales Week, a blog party I am hosting on my other blog.  Check out this post for more details, a fun blog tag, and links to all the posts from other participants!  Plus, I'm running a fairy tale-themed giveaway as part of the event, and you are welcome to enter that if you're a fairy tale fan too :-)

"Southern Snow" by B. R. Goodwin

This is a really enjoyable Christian romcom.  Georgia is a capable and believable modern woman, trying to juggle caring for her aging parents with running the family business and being a good older sister to her siblings, but with little time for her own growth.  Enter Lakeland, the bad boy she almost dated in high school, who may or may not have become a good guy.  Sparks of all sorts fly, of course.

I am not always a fan of dual timeline stories, but that writing device worked very well here.  I liked that we got to see how everything built up and then fell apart between Georgia and Lakeland, but in little pieces here and there, not all info-dumped at once.  

I look forward to reading the other books in the Sugartree series by B. R. Goodwin -- and I'll probably try to read them during the seasons when they take place, like I did with this Christmastime book.

If This was a Movie, I Would Rate It: PG for discussions of drug use, lots of thinking about being attracted to a guy, and some lightly described kisses.

"Hear the Falling Snow" by Storm Shultz

I read Hear the Falling Snow by Storm Shultz in tiny little nibbles over the course of three weeks.  The plot involves a lot of delicious Christmas baking, and the book as a whole felt like some kind of rich and comforting and nourishing food -- like homemade chicken soup or something.

The main character, Adeline, is grieving for her mother.  Her sisters pay for her to go to a month-long Christmas baking seminar-and-retreat at a fancy mansion.  The baking classes are taught by a celebrity chef.  There's an assortment of quirky and lovely side characters also taking the classes.  And there's a handsome, sweet, single groundskeeper named Luke who seems like a perfect match for Adeline.

If only he wasn't planning to move to Turkey to become a missionary.  In January.

But if there weren't any problems to overcome, there'd be no plot, right?

One of the things that made this a perfect book for me to read this particular year is that Adeline is a ballet dancer.  She performed professionally for years, and now she teaches ballet.  There are references all through the book too The Nutcracker... and my teenage ballerina was in her own first production of The Nutcracker this year!  So that felt especially timely.

Also, I love to bake.  There are recipes at the end of the book, and I am totally going to try some of them!

Also, both Adeline and Luke genuinely enjoyed snow, and I love snow myself, so that made me like them both a lot.

I love how Storm Shultz always writes characters that feel like I could meet them myself somewhere, like they're real people living in the real world.  They're not just relatable, they're realistic in their ordinariness.  Their problems feel normal and real and understandable.  

Finally, since I am still grieving my dad's death a little over a year ago, Adeline's storyline held extra poignancy for me.

Particularly Good Bits:

This is the worst part about grieving.  Grief hits you smack in the face anytime, anywhere.  It doesn't matter if you're eating heavenly bread or if you're driving down the road.  Grief does not care.

Why are you flirting?  You just had an existential crisis in the bathroom!  Stop flirting!

Here I am at forty-one, still needing Dad for advice and guidance.  Then again, any good dad will always be needed -- no matter the age of his children.

"Oh, and what did Mom always say?"
"Wash your nose and stay away from raccoons?"
"No, the other thing."  Lissy snickers.

I smile because I know exactly what she's talking about.  "God is good.  No matter what."

I don't want to be the person who sits around and misses the life she could have had.  I want to be the person who gives a toast about how she sees hope for the future, loves her present, and doesn't regret the past.

If This was a Movie, I Would Rate It:  G.  Good, clean, wholesome.  No smut, only semi-described kisses.  No violence, no gore, no cussing.

"The Silent Night" by Sarah Beran

This is EXACTLY the level of romanceyness that I like in a book.  We did not spend several sentences every chapter or two rhapsodizing over what it might be like to kiss the love interest.  No one stared at the other person's lips.  No one daydreamed about touching their love interest's velvety skin or running a hand through their hair.  The main characters fell in love via letters.  Theirs was absolutely a slow-burn, friends-to-more story, and I am HERE FOR IT.

The Silent Night is a Sleeping Beauty retelling, plus a Santa Claus origin story, and you had better believe I am also very much here for a romance between Sleeping Beauty and Santa Claus.  Though they're named Princess Holly and Dominic Klause here, and Dominic has sled dogs instead of a sleigh with reindeer.  Every chapter has a snippet of "The Night Before Christmas" as a header, and I loved how those got worked into the story.

Particularly Good Bits:

Take a look around you and see what there is that you can do in small ways... Can you offer encouragement or a kind smile?  Find the ways that you can serve, and do them.  You may not be able to change the financial and economic state of the kingdom, but you can do something even more powerful: You can bring hope and love (p. 74).

If This was a Movie, I Would Rate It: G.  It's clean, it's bright, it's lovely.  No smut, gore, violence, cussing, or anything else objectionable.

"Of Masquerades and Fame" by Candice Pedraza Yamnitz and Claire Kohler

Book three in the Games of Greed and Ruin series does not disappoint!

Of Masquerades and Fame picks up the story of two contestants from One Must Die, Camilla and Rupert.  After surviving the deathly games of the first book, Camilla has vowed to change her ways.  She no longer makes and sells poisons, but has a legitimate (if boring) job.  She and Rupert are tentatively heading toward getting engaged, but Camilla is worried that Rupert will feel ashamed for not being able to support a wife, and she thinks he might do something desperate to change his fortunes.  So she does something desperate instead:  she accepts an invitation to a masquerade ball from a man she knows is evil and wants to manipulate her into poisoning someone.

Meanwhile, Rupert has a big and important secret that he is hesitant to share with Camilla.  He worries that if she finds out he's not actually poor anymore, she'll only agree to marry him to get at his money.  He has to learn to trust her before he can propose -- and he is so far from trusting her, he's having her followed and all her activity reported on.

Both Camilla and Rupert have a lot of growing up to do over the course of this short book.  The bulk of the book takes place all in a single night, during the masquerade ball.  The story has lots of disguises and masks and secrets, a dangerous hedge maze, and a very stunning conclusion that left me eager for the next book in the series.

If This was a Movie, I Would Rate It: PG-10 for some violent deaths (lightly described), lots of danger, and a scary hedge maze sequence.

"Comets Fade with Summer" by Amber Lambda

I didn't know quite what to expect from this book.  A teenage girl is falling in love with her imaginary best friend?  What?  I got it as a gift from a friend who was confident I would like it, and they were right!  I did.

Halley has to move to California right before she starts the next year of high school.  She'd worked so hard to fit in with the coolest girls in her old high school, and now she has to start all over... but how?  She's not actually cool herself, she's just really good at blending in and pretending she likes all the things the cool kids do.

Someone unexpected greets Halley when she gets to her new home: West, her childhood imaginary friend.  He's sixteen now too, and a compelling mixture of sweet, kind, supportive, and hot.  How is Halley supposed to resist West?  Too bad he only exists in her imagination, even if he seems extremely real to her.

This whole book reminded me a lot of a line from the 1995 movie Sabrina:  "Illusions are dangerous people.  They have no flaws."  West is everything Halley wants... because she made him up.  His only flaw is that he doesn't really exist, and he'll slowly fade when Halley makes some real friends.

The message in this book is really good: don't hide who you are in order to attract friends or significant others.  The middle section of it started to drag for me after a while, as Halley made unfortunate choice after unfortunate choice, but the pacing picked back up again at the end.

The last two chapters had me crying so much, I went through several Kleenex.  I had some very dear imaginary friends when I was a kid and a teen, and I brought a couple of them with me into adulthood.  (But I never fell in love with any of them, whew.)  The thought of having no choice about whether or not I could keep them was pretty devastating, so probably a lot of readers wouldn't be bawling like I was.

Particularly Good Bits: 

"Isn't it better to stick to the people and the things that make you shine brighter?  You don't have to fade away to find a place to fit in, Halley" (p. 29).

If This was a Movie, I Would Rate It:  PG-13 for scenes with teenage boys making girls feel uncomfortable, lightly described kissing, mention of teen make-out sessions, and a LOT of physical attraction to the opposite sex.  It is maybe a little more romantic than I would let my teen daughters read just yet, and they are 13 and 15.

"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.

"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.

"North and South" by Elizabeth Gaskell (again)

Have you ever felt like God nudged you to read a specific book when you needed it, without your realizing He was doing that?

At the beginning of June, my father-in-law was discussing the Industrial Revolution with some of us.  He said something about wanting a good way to get a clear idea of how the implementation of factories affected ordinary people.  I piped up and recommended North and South by Elizabeth Gaskell, which is all about the two sides of the factory coin -- it shows the struggles of the factory owners and of the factory workers.  I said it's pretty even-handed, and it's written by someone who lived in a manufacturing-centric city, and it's a really enjoyable read besides.

My father-in-law said maybe he would try it someday, if he lives long enough.  I extolled its virtues some  more.  He was still unenthusiastic.  I doubt he will ever read the book.

But I had reminded myself how very much I like this book.  (After this third reading, I will bump that up a notch and say I love it.)  All this took place while I was hastily packing for a will-we-or-won't-we vacation that we finally decided to take two days before we meant to leave, after having to toss all our original travel plans out the door and make new ones almost on the spot.  The night before we left, I pulled out of my bag three books I'd meant to take along and put in a copy of North and South instead.

It's the only book I read over the two weeks of our vacation (not counting an audiobook we all listened to as a family).  And it was exactly what I needed.

The reason we had to rearrange our travel plans was that my mom had gotten a preliminary diagnosis of lung cancer, pending more tests.  Instead of spending two weeks of June at her house in Iowa with us, she had to stay here in Virginia with my brother's family and have a biopsy and other tests done.  So we rejiggered all our plans and set off for a vastly different vacation than we had been looking forward to, all while having this possibility of Mom having cancer hanging over our heads.  

And what is this book about?  Why, a daughter whose mother slowly succumbs to a lingering illness, and who loses her father without warning.  I lost my dad without warning last fall, and here I am, facing my mother's lingering illness.  While we were gone, my mom did receive a diagnosis: stage 4 lung cancer.  And Margaret Hale was right there beside me, bearing up under personal pain and loss and fear and worry and uncertainty, just like me.

I'm fully convinced the Holy Spirit sometimes nudges my hand to pick up specific books.  Like when I read Summon the Light by Tor Thibeaux on the way to my dad's funeral.  Like when I ditched other books and stuck this in my bag at nearly the last minute.  Fiction has such power, and our Creator knows it.  Why else would He have taught using fictional stories so often?

Particularly Good Bits:

"I must do something.  I must make myself busy, to keep off morbid thoughts" (p. 35).

"I came here very sad, and rather too apt to think my own cause for grief was the only one in the world.  And now I hear how you have had to bear for years, and that makes me stronger" (p. 129-130).

"My theory is a sort of parody on the maxim of 'Get money, my son, honestly if you can, but get money.'  My precept is, 'Do something, my sister, do good if you can; but, at any rate, do something'" (p. 231).

"Come! poor little heart! be cheery and brave" (p. 304).

"It is the first changes among familiar things that make such a mystery of time to the young; afterwards, we lose the sense of the mysterious.  I take changes in all I see as a matter of course.  The instability of all human things is familiar to me; to you it is new and oppressive" (p. 359).

(I find it very interesting and appropriate that all my favorite lines this time are very different from my favorite lines the first time I read this.)

If This was a Movie, I Would Rate It:  PG for some violence and quite a lot of character deaths, really.

"The Grump's Bodyguard" by Latisha Sexton

You know how I like plot-driven romances, but I'm not a fan of romance-driven plots?  This is definitely one of the former.  

Clover's parents are famous movie-makers, and she moved to Colorado to get away from their glitzy, hectic Hollywood life.  She's a book editor, she battles anxiety, and she just wants to be left alone.  But when someone from her parents' life has a mental break and comes after Clover, the quiet and safe life she's built for herself is shattered.  She agrees to let her parents hire a bodyguarding service to protect her until the danger is past.  

Enter Thor, ex-military bodyguard built like a movie star and scarred inside and out from his past.  Obviously, Thor and Clover are going to fall in love.  I think the thing I liked best about the whole book was how staunchly they refused to act on their growing feelings while Thor is her bodyguard, since a romantic relationship would be completely inappropriate at that time.  

This is a clean and sweet Christian romance.  You can't even call it "closed door" because Clover and Thor don't seek a sexual relationship with each other, but instead choose to date chastely while considering marriage.  There's a lot of yearning and desire expressed on-page, but never in a steamy way that could lead a reader astray.

If This was a Movie, I Would Rate It: PG-13 for danger, lots of noticing physical attractiveness, and one night accidentally spent together (in which it is very clear that the couple never even made out, much less made love).  Probably fine for older teens.

"The Souls of Lost Lake" by Jaime Jo Wright

Oh my.  This was very creepy.  So creepy, I almost quit reading it about halfway through because I was afraid it was going to give me nightmares.  But I decided to read a couple more chapters, and then eerie and creepy things started getting real-life explanations, and I went ahead and finished the book.  It turns out that all the ghostly and creepy things were totally explainable and due to secret human activity, and there were no hauntings.  There definitely were horrible murders in the past, and those were hard to read about, but they weren't what was creeping me out anyway.

This is one of those split-timeline books where you have one storyline going on in the present day, and another in the past.  The present-day story is about a young woman named Arwen who lives at and works for a Christian camp in the north woods of Wisconsin.  She is helping with a search for a missing little girl who disappeared near the camp.  In the process, she digs up a lot of information about her own past.

In the past story, it's the 1930s, and there's a young woman named Ava Coons whose whole family was killed in a bloody and terrifying way when she was a child.  Their bodies disappeared, and her family home burned to the ground -- only Ava escaped, and she was covered in blood and dragging a massive, bloody axe when she was found by people of the small Wisconsin town nearby.  Even though Ava had no memory of what happened to her family, and clearly was too small and weak to even heft the axe she was dragging, many people still thought she killed her family.  A decade later, a person from that town is killed with an axe, and many people want Ava arrested for the crime.  About the only person who believes she is innocent is a new minister who isn't very well known in the area yet.  Ava starts to fall for him, even while trying to figure out how to prove she isn't now and never has been a killer.

The burned-down Coons cabin also plays into Arwen's story, and she lives near the small town where Ava grew up after her family died.  

I devoured this book in three days because I absolutely had to know how everything turned out.  I've been assured by some friends that the rest of Wright's books are not this creepy, so I think I will try another, one of these days.

If This was a Movie, I Would Rate It: PG-16 for creepiness, discussions of murder victims, lots of innuendo, and scenes of a child being in peril.  I would not hand this to any of my teens to read, to be honest.  But it's also not really R-rated.

"Forget Me Knot" by B. R. Goodwin

Sometimes, when I have a very busy and stressful week or so, I want to read something short, bright, and perky.  This past week was overstuffed, and so I read Forget Me Knot because I knew it would make me smile and keep me interested, but not stress me out by being really suspenseful or anything.  It delivered everything I wanted: nice characters I'd like to be friends with, a cute little town I'd like to live in, and a sweet-but-not-sappy romance.  

There aren't a lot of authors that can get me really invested in a book that has a romance-driven plot, simply because I prefer plot-driven romances, on a whole.  B. R. Goodwin pulls it off handily, and I totally trust her to strike the right balance between romantic and realistic.

Forget Me Knot is about a young woman named Dinah who moves to a small Georgia town to be closer to her widowed sister and niece.  Dinah opens a pretzel shop and starts to fall for Jack, the guy who owns and operates a flower shop next door.  But Jack has a very complicated life because he has (SPOILER ALERT!!!) a split personality thanks to a traumatic head injury.  B. R. Goodwin doesn't offer any simplistic or unrealistic solutions to the inherent difficulties that presents, and I really appreciated her balanced and open-eyed look at that.

Particularly Good Bits:

Sometimes, when someone grieves, just allowing them to talk about their loved ones in their own time is the best offering (p. 61).

"No, Dinah, it sucks.  It's okay to say it sucks.  Grief isn't measured with time.  There aren't rules for how long you're permitted to miss someone, and pretending that you don't will only hurt more in the end" (p. 170).

If This was a Movie, I Would Rate It: PG-16 for a LOT of gushing about how attractive a man is, women talking about their ovaries reacting to a man, some kissing and caressing, and just generally being more romantic than a younger teen is going to enjoy anyway.  Nothing smutty -- you can't even call it "closed-door" because Dinah and Jacks are both committed to waiting for marriage before having sex.  But I also wouldn't hand this to my young teen daughters.