I love books that stretch perspectives, give new insights…. Here are tidbits of some of the many books I’ve read that haven’t made it to reviews on my blog mainly because of time and health and family issues. Not because they didn’t deserve to be featured. I’m including some of my favorite covers because the art & beauty deserve a second glance too. Dive in. Hopefully you’ll discover some new reads that appeal to you.
I must begin with WORDS by Ginny Yttrup because it really captured me. So much about this novel is unusual and compelling and I just loved it. For one thing, I like a story that draws me completely into a new perspective of a character I like.
WORDS by Ginny Yttrup
WORDS is a unique and thoroughly engaging story.
Yttrup is superb at immersing us in a child’s perspective in this story that shows how perspective leads to persistent beliefs,
The back cover begins: “I collect words. I keep them in a box in my mind. There, he can’t take them.”
Definitely intriguing, isn’t it? Thus we meet 10 year-old Kaylee Wren who is surviving then escaping neglect and abuse.
Yttrup is masterful at showing us Kaylee’s painful world through the selective vision and magical thinking of a youngster. Kaylee engages not only the reader, but other adults in the story who scatter light and hope across the pages.
WORLD WAR II STORIES
WW II stories are numerous and I read a lot of them. Many are already reviewed on this blog, but I’m also including some which aren’t and highlighting some set in a wide variety of less-covered locations: Denmark, The Netherlands, Russia, England’s Lake District, Pyrenees & Spain, Germany, North Carolina’s Outer Banks, Russia.
I begin with one set in France, a fairly common WW II setting, because I loved Sarah Sundin’s UNTIL LEAVES FALL IN PARIS and can hardly believe I never posted a review of it!
When the Nazis march into Paris in 1940, American ballerina Lucie Girard must make the decision of her life ~ stay in France or leave? She stays and buys her favorite English-language bookstore, thus enabling the Jewish owners to escape. Challenges abound when she discovers the resistance uses the store to pass secret messages and Lucie must decide which customers she can befriend and which to be wary of. Surely the charming four-year-old daughter of one patron is safe to befriend. The dramatic story unfurls with unexpected twists, potential heartbreak, danger, and surprises galore. Who would imagine that lives might be impacted by an imaginary friend named Feenee?
THE SOUND OF LIGHT by Sarah Sundin
In April 1940, everyone in Denmark had a decision to make. Within 2 hours of the Germans marching in, they defeated Denmark. Henrik must disappear from Denmark, and Else stays to continue her research. Yet each faces challenges that spring ceaselessly from their work. As time passes, pressure increases and their undercover activities become more difficult to keep secret, and when a romance blossoms, the consequences of each decision multiplies. …continue reading review here
IN LOVE’S TIME by Kate Breslin
The title of IN LOVE’S TIME declares it’s a romance. What it doesn’t tell you is that it’s also packed with mystery, intrigue, heroes and villains. And like any good detective story, it’s loaded with surprises and twists throughout. (In fact, one of the biggest caught me totally off guard just pages from the end.) I thoroughly enjoyed searching for clues and guessing which were real and which were misdirection.
But let’s return to the beginning. The book opens amidst a dangerous search for not only the Russian tsarina and her son but also information about a plot to assassinate Lenin. The high stakes story is always engaging and keeps you turning pages. It’s well-balanced ~action never overpowers the romance, and the love story, filled with its own complications, never eclipses the war-time drama. (Continue review here)
UNTIL WE FIND HOME by Cathy Gohlke
“For American Claire Stewart joining the French Resistance sounded as romantic as the storylines she hopes will one day grace the novels she wants to write. But when she finds herself stranded on English shores, with five French Jewish children she smuggled across the channel before Nazis stormed Paris, reality feels more akin to fear.” Set in England’s Lake District in 1940, this is a compelling tale that explores how people respond when their values and expectations collide with evil and conditions they cannot accept—or easily change.
SECRETS SHE KEPT by Cathy Gohlke
“Secrets a mother could never share ~ consequences a daughter could not redeem.”
Hannah Sterling sets herself a task: to untangle the conundrum that was her mother. A woman who lived simply and was generous to a fault yet saved tin foil and rubber bands and never seemed happy. Following Lieselotte’s death, Hannah determines to unlock the secrets of her mother’s mysterious past and is shocked to discover a grandfather living in Germany. Thirty years earlier, Lieselotte’s father is quickly ascending the ranks of the Nazi party, and a proper marriage for his daughter could help advance his career.
Marvelous plot twists just continue to darken the shadows and confuse Hannah further.
CG makes the characters come alive and their feelings become ours. And she has a way of sprinkling her writing with gems that glisten, making every story a gift.
NIGHT BIRD CALLING by Cathy Gohlke
A rich and complex story that starts off with some hard good-byes, then hard decisions. As one character said: “Wishing comes easy. Change don’t.”
And so we join Lilliana Swope in a journey to healing, hope, and North Carolina. A journey filled with interesting folk who become friends. Or perhaps enemies?
CHASING SHADOWS by Lynn Austin
“A powerful novel from Lynn Austin about three women whose lives are instantly changed when the Nazis invade the neutral Netherlands, forcing each into a complicated dance of choice and consequence. The Nazi invasion propels these women onto paths that cross in unexpected, sometimes-heartbreaking ways. Yet the story that unfolds illuminates the surprising endurance of the human spirit and the power of faith and love to carry us through.” A captivating tale with Austin’s customary excellence.
THE WISH BOOK CHRISTMAS by Lynn Austin
Best friends Audrey Barrett and Eve Dawson are looking forward to celebrating Christmas in postwar America, thrilled at the prospect of starting new traditions with their five-year-old sons. But when the 1951 Sears Christmas Wish Book arrives and the boys start obsessing over every toy in it, Audrey and Eve realize they must first teach them the true significance of the holiday.
Searching for healing after tragedy, the story includes the joy, innocence, and exuberance of young children and a dog; the encouragement of a supportive community; and the possibility of new love relationships.
THE PARIS DRESSMAKER by Kristy Cambron
Based on true accounts of how Parisiennes resisted the Nazi occupation in World War II—from fashion houses to the city streets—comes a story of two courageous women who risked everything to fight an evil they could not abide.
Paris, 1939. Maison Chanel has closed, thrusting haute couture dressmaker Lila de Laurent out of the world of high fashion as Nazi soldiers invade the streets and the City of Light slips into darkness. Lila’s life is now a series of rations, brutal restrictions, and carefully controlled propaganda. Lila is drawn to La Resistance and is soon using her skills as a dressmaker to infiltrate the Nazi elite. She takes their measurements and designs masterpieces, all while collecting secrets in the glamorous Hotel Ritz.
Paris, 1943. Sandrine Paquet’s job is to catalog the priceless works of art bound for the Führer’s Berlin, masterpieces stolen from prominent Jewish families. But behind closed doors, she secretly forages for information from the underground resistance.
Told across the span of the Nazi occupation, The Paris Dressmaker highlights the brave women who used everything in their power to resist darkness and restore light to their world.
THE PAINTED CASTLE by Kristy Cambron
THE PAINTED CASTLE is a riveting braid of three stories from three centuries. Each captures the reader … and reveals the answer to a mystery or adds layers to the puzzle. Cambron masterfully entwines the tales, carrying the reader effortlessly along. Each story so engages that when a chapter ends and a new era begins the next, one experiences a brief moment of shock, as if rousing from a daydream. Then delight at returning to another circle of friends and the attendant mystery to be resolved.
THE PAINTED CASTLE is a tremendous read with engaging characters, intriguing multiple mysteries, and plenty of plot twists and romance. As usual, Cambron is masterful in creating a fascinating story that is a joy to read.
THE WINTER ROSE by Melanie Dobson Grace Tonquin is an American Quaker who works tirelessly in Vichy France to rescue Jewish children from the Nazis. After crossing the treacherous Pyrénées, Grace returns home to Oregon with a brother and sister whose parents were lost during the war. Though Grace and her husband love Élias and Marguerite as their own, echoes of Grace’s past and trauma from the Holocaust tear the Tonquin family apart. More than fifty years after they disappear, Addie Hoult arrives at Tonquin Lake, hoping to find the Tonquin family. For Addie, the mystery is a matter of life and death.
Dobson’s skill is on full display in this dual-time tale that ranges from France to Spain to the U.S Pacific Northwest.
CHATEAU OF SECRETS by Melanie Dobson
A rich, intriguing book that draws the reader into this astonishing place, exploring a labyrinth of emotions. Dobson weaves present and WWII stories into an intricate, well-balanced tapestry.
I often find split-time novels slightly disappointing when the story or people of one era are not as interesting as the other, or following storylines is confusing. Chateau never falls into those but is always clear, crisp, and compelling.
I’m drawn to stories set during the 1940’s, have read many, and seen movies of even more. Yet Chateau introduced me to startling and new things I’d never learned about WWII. In telling this story, the “Sophie’s Choice” type decisions people faced are so real, I ached for them. (Continue reading review …)
YESTERDAY’S TIDES by Roseanna White
YESTERDAY’S TIDES is a gripping tale of fierce love, loyalty, and sacrifice that spans two world wars and half the globe.
Set largely on Ocracoke Island of North Carolina’s Outer Banks, it reveals some fascinating and new (new to me—but perhaps not to North Carolinians) historical episodes. And while the history is intriguing, the story and characters Roseanna weaves are even more so.
YESTERDAY’S TIDES is a dual-time novel and one of the best technically that I’ve read. The story is chock full of interconnections, immersing the reader in both stories such that each new detail reverberates in both eras. One tip I’ll give readers: tolerate the ambiguity. Even embrace it. Any “holes” you notice aren’t holes but really partial revelations with more to come.
Roseanna writes great stories with well-developed, memorable characters and twisty, involved plots in a wide variety of settings. They always surprise and delight me. (Read more of this review here.)
THE MEMORY HOUSE by Rachel Hauck
The inspirational story of two women whose lives have been destroyed by disaster but find healing in a special house.
When Beck Holiday lost her father in the North Tower on 9/11, she also lost her memories of him. Eighteen years later, she’s a tough New York City cop burdened with a damaging secret, suspended for misconduct, and struggling to get her life in order. When a mysterious letter arrives informing Beck that she’s inherited a house along Florida’s northern coast, she discovers something there that will change her life forever.
THE CHRISTMAS HUMMINGBIRD by Davis Bunn
Bunn draws clear and complex characters who exhibit courage and spunk in the face of opposition, life-altering opposition, with their freedom and lives on the line. And he displays a tenderness that respects his characters, making it easy for readers to have compassion toward them even when they make choices we’d prefer they don’t. … His stories are captivating and rich in detail while flowing right along, never lagging or lacking. Miramar Bay and The Hummingbird Christmas are more in a long line of successes and I highly recommend them both.
THE MEANS THAT MAKE US STRANGERS by Christine Kindberg
Home is where your people are. But who are your people?
A fascinating coming-of-age tale of a white girl, Adelaide, whose family lives in Ethiopia. She’s lived there her entire life and they are the only white people she knows. When in 1964 her father must return to the U.S., Adelaide goes through culture shock and doesn’t have any idea where to sit at lunch! As she forges a life and friendships, she will need to decide where she belongs when she graduates high school ~ the village where she promised to return or the U.S. where she’s begun to carve out a place for herself.
Labeled a YA tale, the story indeed focuses on a teen-agers, but the themes of identity, family, belonging, and race relations in a changing society are compelling and possibly perspective-shifting and will engage many readers of all ages.
A LONG TIME COMIN’ by Robin W. Pearson
“Granny B had had it hard, and there was no way her granddaughter could ever separate her from an ounce of her pain and suffering, not that anyone could. Evelyn believed that every morning, before Granny B got dressed, she put on this suit of armor—not her full armor of God because that never came off. Her past. And she buttoned it up tight. It protected her from all kinds of nasty things. Robin is a mighty wordsmith and captures the essence of her characters and their challenges in a compelling way.
FORGIVING PARIS by Karen Kingsbury
Ashley Baxter Blake is having her first professional art showing in Paris, a city filled with tormenting memories of foolishness and bad decisions she made when she was an intern there twenty years earlier. But revisiting remembered sites and encountering old acquaintances changes Ashley’s perspective radically and starts her on a journey of healing that where she learns some positive influences she had on others and how much God loves and protects her.
TRULY, MADLY, DEEPLY by Karen Kingsbury
Karen Kingsbury’s well-drawn characters take the reader on an emotional roller-coaster.
While Tommy and Annalee navigate their first—and planned forever—love, difficulties roll at them like a bowling ball to pins. Annalee faces a huge health challenge,[??] and Tommy supports her in every way he can also confronts opposition to his chosen career path upon graduation.
In the mix of romance and family drama, we see love and faith defined and refined.
WHERE THE FIRE FALLS by Karen Barnett
Stunning Yosemite National Park sets the stage for this late 1920s historical romance with mystery, adventure, heart, and a sense of the place John Muir described as “pervaded with divine light.”
This is a engaging hike with photographer and guide through the singular place of Yosemite National Park. I have loved traveling there many times, and enjoyed seeing it through new eyes and learning more of its history.
SHADOWS OF THE WHITE CITY by Jocelyn Green
Set in Chicago’s World’s Fair, this is a tightly woven tale that explores holding on or letting go ~ and discerning which to choose when you hit a turning point. Green draws realistic characters, well-nuanced and layered. We care about them. The reader walks with them until there is no turning back. The journey may begin as a stroll, but soon we’re swept up in the mysteries replete with surprises until the satisfying let-out-your-breath finish.
The settings came alive. Clearly Green has done her research. She handles the ethnic variations in character and various neighborhoods well.
THE BEST IS YET TO COME by Debbie Macomber
Hope Goodwin wants a new beginning in a coastal village in Washington state to recover from grief after the death of her twin brother. Immersing herself in her teaching job is a start but not enough. Volunteering at an animal shelter introduces her to Shadow, a dog believed to be beyond rescue and destined to be put down. Hope invests time and energy into the dog, and as he begins to trust humans again, so does she—which draws the attention of another wounded person, ex-marine, Cade Lincoln, with whom a romantic relationship gradually grows. A story of wounded people learning to grieve yet trust and hope again.
A DANCE IN DONEGAL by Jennifer Deibel
“All of her life, Irish-American Moira Doherty has relished her mother’s descriptions of Ireland. When her mother dies unexpectedly in the summer of 1920, Moira decides to fulfill her mother’s wish that she become the teacher in Ballymann, her home village in Donegal, Ireland.
After an arduous voyage, Moira arrives to a new home and a new job in an ancient country. Though a few locals offer a warm welcome, others are distanced by superstition and suspicion. Rumors about Moira’s mother are unspoken in her presence but threaten to derail everything she’s journeyed to Ballymann to do. …”
Saturated with Irish atmosphere. You’ll feel as if you spent a few days on the Emerald Isle!
Reviews for books by LAURA FRANTZ, KATE BRESLIN, AMANDA DYKES, SARAH SUNDIN, ROSEANNA WHITE are numerous on my blog. Simply enter your favorite author’s name in the search bar in the upper right corner of my page and reviews for that writer will appear.
At times, writing a book review is difficult because a so-so story or cliché characters don’t inspire. But writing a review for this one is difficult because the story is so good that my words fall so very short of conveying the beauty, the power…the light & joy the author has infused into it. I heartily recommend Yours is the Night for a stellar read (and re-read). Join the journey through fear and fog of war, yearning for life and love and peace, and most of all discovery. Who knows? You may, like me, even want to begin carrying a box of matches with you.
In SET THE STARS ALIGHT Amanda Dykes has penned a story that captivates completely from page one. I couldn’t have been more absorbed if I watched the tale unfurl while flying over it with Peter Pan.
For who were they to one another now? A shadow. An outline. A question mark. 
“Looks as if he ate anger for breakfast.” 
Ansel is a place where God’s presence and provision hovers over the residents like the fog hovers over the coast, and gossip is shunned but residents are not. Each one’s well-being is valued by the townsfolk who see beyond behavior and into a person’s heart, needs, and broken spots—which are handled respectfully and tenderly. Ansel residents help each other find ways to stitch together the rent pieces. In short, it’s a place anyone would like to live in.
“If everything around you is broken, it’s time to unbreak something.” [p 75]
[conversation Robert observes about a man missing after World War II]“Your husband,” Eva says gently. “He hasn’t returned … yet?” Her wording is hopeful but gentle and Robert wants to kiss her for it. He would have blundered that question a thousand ways. [p240]