"The Vanderbeekers to the Rescue" by Karina Yan Glaser

This series is quickly becoming an all-time favorite for me.  In this one, their mom is danger of losing her at-home baking business, so the kids try everything they can think of to help her keep it.  But someone keeps leaving animals on their doorstep in the middle of the night -- a box of kittens, two guinea pigs, a dog, and more.  How can they find new homes for all these critters while also helping their mom pass her kitchen inspection?

I really love how these kids and their parents interact.  They all clearly love each other and are trying to help and respect each other, but they're also all sinful human beings who make mistakes, get upset, lose their patience, and so on.  No one is too perfect, but no one is stupid or mean or neglectful either.

Yes, the kids keep a big secret from their parents in this one.  Yes, that causes a lot of problems.  Yes, there are consequences.  No one laughs this off, no one decides it doesn't matter after all, and no one pooh-poohs the fact that they should have been honest and forthright. That's a really unusual thing to find in a book for kids, especially a more modern one, and I find it very refreshing.

Particularly Good Bits:

The brownstone murmured its welcome-to-my-stairs noises--gentle creaks and sighs--as she ascended (p. 44).

If This was a Movie, I Would Rate It: G.  Good, clean, wholesome, and heartwarming.

This has been the 14th book I've read from my TBR shelves for #TheUnreadShelfProject2022.

Announcing the Outlaw Street Team!

I'm starting a street team for my Once Upon a Western series!

What's a street team, you ask?  Basically, it's a way for fans of my Once Upon a Western (OUAW) series to interact with me, help promote the series, and get some fun goodies.

Outlaws will get first dibs on advance reader copies (ARCs) of my books.  They'll see my book and short story covers before anyone else.  They'll get to chat with me and the rest of the team in a private Google Hangouts group.  AND they'll get a small welcome package with a couple goodies and a handwritten note from me.

Outlaws will be expected to share news about OUAW books and short stories via their social media. This may include, but not necessarily be limited to, book cover reveals, release date announcements, online book tours, and any related shindigs. Outlaws will be expected to participate in these on whatever platforms they already use, such a blogs, Instagram, Facebook, MeWe, Twitter, etc.  It's not necessary to have accounts on every social media platform ever, but it IS required to have at least one such way to spread news.

In other words, this street team will be a dedicated core group of people who know they want to share news about OUAW books and short stories with their friends, starting now and proceeding on into the future.

People will still have the opportunity to participate in reveals and online tours, and request ARCs, without being a part of this group, if they would rather not sign on for all of those. But ONLY Outlaw members will receive the perks such as Outlaw goodies, group chats, and early dibs on ARC copies.

This street team is open to anyone in the world who loves the Once Upon a Western book series! Be aware that if you live outside the US, your welcome package and any other goodies I send your way from time to time may take quite a while to get to you. Shipping internationally gets that way, you know.

If all this sounds like fun to you, and you're able to fulfill the aforementioned responsibilities, then follow this link or click on the button below to apply to join the team!

"Remember Me, Irene" by Jan Burke

Ooooooh, this was far and away the best Irene Kelly book yet!  Also, it's the first one I've read this year that was not a reread, so that added some extra zing, I suppose.  Though, to be honest, I haven't remembered loads about the first three either, since it had been so long since I'd read them the first time.

Remember Me, Irene kicks off with a homeless man at a bus stop recognizing Irene Kelly.  Not so shocking, as she's a pretty well-known reporter in Las Piernas, CA, and her picture has been in the paper more than a few times.  But he insists he knew her long ago, though he won't tell her his name.  It's not until later that Irene learns who he is now (Lucas Monroe, alcoholic) and who he used to be (a college instructor who taught Irene years ago).

This one little thread begins to unravel a huge, hidden conspiracy involving architecture, contractors, local politics, and several murders.  It was really, really tangled, and I loved every minute.  Especially the parts that took place in an abandoned hotel called the Angelus.  First, I am fascinated by abandoned buildings, and second, it sounded like a place they would use as a setting for some random ep of Angel (1999-2004).  I loved imagining wandering around in it.

Also, I love that Irene and Frank are a happily married couple.  They are both such strong-minded, stubborn, loyal, wonderful characters who insist on standing by each other through anything, but who also don't always get along at every minute of the day. 

Particularly Good Bits:

     Holding me in bed that night, Frank was warm and solid, his simple act of affection as important to me as the beating of my own heart against his hand.  "I like being married," I whispered, thinking he was asleep.

     "Me, too," he murmured against my ear (p. 220).

If This was a Movie, I Would Rate It: R for a long of very strong language, some messy crime scenes, a suicide, and quite a bit of innuendo (but no open-door love scenes).

This is my 13th book read off my TBR shelves for #TheUnreadShelfProject2022.

"Twice Freed" by Patricia St. John

I can't believe I'd never read this book before!  I feel like I read something else by Patricia St. John, as her style felt extremely familiar -- I'm betting my childhood best friend loaned me one of her other books, as this was exactly the sort of sweet Biblical fiction her family was so good at finding.  My friend Eva gave me a copy for Christmas because she knew I love the story of Onesimus and Philemon in the Bible; she knows this because the character Ness in my book One Bad Apple is actually named Onesimus, and I have his adoptive father Wallace actually quote a bit of Philemon in my book.

Anyway.  THIS book weaves a fictional story around the slave Onesimus, his master Philemon, and the apostle Paul.  It is crammed with wonderful historical details about live in the Roman Empire for slaves and free, for Christians and Jews and nonbelievers.  I just ate all that historicity up with a spoon, I tell you.  

St. John portrays Onesimus as a proud and stubborn boy who grows slowly into a proud and stubborn man.  He eventually runs away from his master, Philemon, and ends up in Rome with Paul kind of by accident -- or at least, Onesimus doesn't get there on purpose, but you can see God's hand guiding his journey all the way.  Onesimus has been resistant to this new Christian religion that his master, his mother, and so many around him convert to, but when he sees how Paul bears his own bondage and chains, he can't ignore the power of Christ to give even the most humble and downtrodden person hope and peace.

While this book doesn't shy away from the cruel reality of slavery, it doesn't fixate on that either, but treats it in what I feel is age-appropriate for its middle-grade audience.  I'll definitely be encouraging my kids to read Twice Freed, and possibly even incorporating it into our world history curriculum.

If This was a Movie, I Would Rate It: PG for discussions of beatings, brandings, an earthquake, and other harsh realities, all of which are presented in a straight-forward, non-sensationalist way.

This has been the 11th book I've read from my TBR shelves for #TheUnreadShelfProject2022.

"Bridge to Trouble" by Elisabeth Grace Foley

What a galloping good time this novella is!  I read the whole thing in one sitting, not only because it's pretty short, but also because it just pulled me right in and I couldn't wait to find out how everything turned out!

Jeanette Pierpont flees home to her family's land in Montana to nurse some wounded feelings after a social embarrassment.  There, she gradually uncovers a sinister plot with the help of a new friend she's not entirely sure she should trust.  But if she doesn't trust him, who can she turn to?  

I very much liked Jeanette, but I liked her new friend even more.  He was just the sort of solid leading man I tend to like, with a hint of mystery in his past, but no question about where his interest lies now.

Like Foley's last full-length novel Land of Hills and Valleys, this takes place in the early 20th century in the west, not in the cowboy age.  While that's not my favorite timeframe for a western, Foley makes it work really well.

Particularly Good Bits:

Perhaps solitude was safer, but it wasn't half as interesting (p. 130).

If This was a Movie, I Would Rate It: PG for some scenes of peril and danger and general skullduggery.  No cussing, minimal violence, no smut.

This has been the 10th book I've read from my TBR shelves for #TheUnreadShelfProject2022.

"The Prisoner of Zenda" by Anthony Hope

Well, this was a jolly romp of a tale!  Kind of a grown-up version of The Prince and the Pauper, in a way, but with the switch of commoner and royalty being deliberate and done for an actual reason.

Rudolf Rassendyll, a wealthy young man idly wasting his life at gentlemanly nonsense, goes to visit distant relatives in the middle-European (and fictional) country of Ruritania.  There, he meets another Rudolf, his distant cousin who is about to be crowned king.  After a night of drunken revelry, the almost-king is unable to attend his coronation.  His advisors press Rassendyll to take his place so as to avoid scandal and to thwart the new king's brother, who is scheming to take over the country.

You can guess what happens next, right?  It's rather like the movie Dave (1993) -- Rudolf Rassendyll has to keep on pretending to be the new king because the actual king gets kidnapped by his rotten brother and held prisoner in the Castle Zenda.  

Love and intrigue ensue, as the fake king must keep up the pretense of wooing the beautiful Princess Flavia so the real king will be able to marry her eventually.  Fist fights and sword fights and daring rescue attempts also ensue, and it all ends happily for almost everyone.  

Now I want to see the 1937 Ronald Colman movie version because the front cover of my copy is a picture from it :-D

Is this a weighty and thought-provoking book?  Nope.  It is, as I said, a jolly romp, and it's not pretending to be anything else.  Though it did have a few introspective parts, my favorite of which is below.  I love that it actually spawned a minor genre, called Ruritanian Romance.  Hope also wrote a sequel (Rupert of Hentzau) and a prequel (The Heart of Princess Osra), and I'm on the lookout for copies of those now.

Particularly Good Bits:

Ah!  But a man cannot be held to write down in cold blood the wild and black thoughts that storm a brain when an uncontrolled passion has battered a breach for them.  Yet, unless he sets up as a saint, he need not hate himself for them.  he is better employed, as it humbly seems to me, in giving thanks that power to resist was vouchsafed to him, than in fretting over wicked impulses which come unsought and extort an unwilling hospitality from the weakness of our nature (p. 91).

If This was a Movie, I Would Rate It:  PG for swashbuckling violence and veiled commentary about a woman's virtue being threatened.

This has been my 38th book read and reviewed for my third Classics Club list, and also my 10th for #TheUnreadShelfProject2022.

"In the Glorious Fields" by Emily Hayse

So, I inhaled this book.  In a day and a half.  That was the fastest I could read it, snatching paragraphs between cleaning my house for a visit from my in-laws, teaching my kids, and running various errands.  If I could have read it in one sitting, I would have, just to make ripping the Band-aid off go faster.  No lie:  I was very worried about what would happen in this book.

I'm going to love this book, the second time I read it, now that I know what happens to whom.  Right now, I'm almost a little numb from the sweeping emotions and powerful rightness of the finale.  I won't say this book "destroyed" or "wrecked" me, because if it had done that, I would never read it again.  This book satisfied me.  Very, very much so.  But it also brought me to tears several times, though most of those were at the end over happy things.  That's normal for me.  I cry more over wishes getting granted and hope being proven justified than over deaths and disasters.

This is the third and final book in the Knights of Tin and Lead trilogy, which retells the King Arthur legends as magical-realism westerns.  And, like the two books before it (These War-Torn Hands and The Beautiful Ones), it is drenched in golden beauty.  The characters view the plains and the mountains, the hills and the valleys, with a kind of joyful reverence that I whole-heartedly embrace.  Because I know exactly what it feels like to stand in the wind-swept vastness of the American West and rejoice to be so insignificant in the face of so much bold country.  I'm not sure any writer I've read has ever captured that feeling before, and I love it.

But I love the characters more.  Well, all except two, but I am happy to say they meet their just and deserved ends.  Moral balance is restored.  At great cost, yet, but restored.  I am pleased.

I'm contributing this review to the blog tour Emily Hayse put together for this book.  You can find out more about her at the following places:

Author Website

Author Newsletter

Instagram

Facebook

Particularly Good Bits:

To talk with the one you love is a wonderful thing, but to exist in peaceable quiet together, perfectly happy and content, is an understanding some never achieve (p. 56).

"Strangers have to become friends pretty quick out here if they're going to survive" (p. 131).

During all my years as a wanderer and an outcast, I had given up hope.  To feel it again is strange, ill-fitting.  But I could get used to it.  I turn my face to the north and I do not look back again (p. 361).

If This was a Movie, I Would Rate It: PG for western violence, including mention of beatings and torture, and lots of peril.  No cussing, no smut, no gore.

This has been my 9th book read off my TBR shelves for #TheUnreadShelfProject2022, though, to be very honest, it never sat on my TBR shelves at all.  I started reading it as soon as I had it in hand.  This is my most-anticipated book release this year, and I am so, so happy to know how it ends now!!!