Stop a moment and feed your brain. Don't forget to leave a note before you go

My Foolish Heart by Susan May Warren

posted by

I expected Susan May Warren’s My Foolish Heart to read like a romance novel. And it does. But to dismiss this book as simple pulp would be doing it a grave injustice. There is real substance here with a main character who suffers paralyzing anxiety attacks and, we learn, was sole survivor in a terrible car crash. Isadora, Issie, is a radio host of a talk show about love called The Foolish Heart. She dispenses advice and listens to romantic issues and yet she is so deeply scarred by her post-traumatic stress disorder she is barely able to venture from her home and therefore also unable to fall in love. She lives in Deep Haven and is the daughter of the town’s well loved former football coach. Football is almost as much a character here as are the grown high school students who never left town or left briefly and came back. Caleb is an ex-vet who was injured on duty in Iraq and has returned to town to audition for football coach. His nemesis Seb Brewster is also auditioning for coach. Caleb has been physically scarred over part of his face and yet, when he moves in next door to Issie she can’t help but noticing how attractive he is. Lucy is the town’s donut shop owner. She is Issie’s friend and as the plot reveals also has a history with Seb. My Foolish Heart is about a town healing after the death of their beloved coach. It is the first book I have read by Susan May Warren. She has three others in the Deep Haven series. Warren has clearly done her research on anxiety and PTSD. She delves really graphically into the psychological and emotional issues that are coupled with these disorders. For this reason her characters are unique and deep and multi-faceted. Caleb calls into the radio show one night and falls for a voice without knowing the woman behind the voice is also his neighbour. He is both physically and psychologically scarred by the past. Can they both get over their many obstacles in order to find each other? The author Warren has written more than 30 novels and was once a missionary in Russia. She is married with four children and now lives in Minnesota.

This one is a $$$$ out of $$$$$. I received a free copy of this book for review. That in no way impacts my opinion.

My Foolish Heart by Susan May Warren, published by Tyndale Fiction, US, $13.99, 358 pages paperback.

Beside Still Waters: Not Your Average Amish Fiction Story

posted by

Beside Still Waters is an unexpected and gorgeous treat of a book. It’s like buying a trip off the Internet for the first time. You cross your fingers and take a leap of faith. Then you get there and discover you landed a 5 star resort with world class dining and an unexpected room upgrade. It is clear from page two on that Beside Still Waters is the equivalent of landing a five star resort. On this journey there is fine writing with great and moving characters and a stunning, heart-wrenching, plot. From the first page the author grabs you and won’t let you go. Tricia Goyer has a real talent for gripping your heart, evoking emotion, and inspiring imagination. Beside Still Waters: A Big Sky Novel is the first book in a new series by Goyer. The book begins with a terrible tragedy, and an early birth that follows hot on the heels of the tragedy – life asserting itself even as grief reigns down on the Sommer family. The plot that unfolds reveals themes of growth, grief, romance, faith, differences and tolerance. Marianna is the infant born the same day her parents experience a horrible life-altering tragedy. She is, at once, a blessing and a lifelong reminder of their tragedy. Not surprisingly her character is sobre beyond her years. Marianna is the eldest daughter in her family and therefore often charged with child care. When we first meet her she is 18 planning a life in her community in Indiana, a place she has known all of her life. But her family is unable to move past their losses. They have also lost an older son, Levi, the brother to Marianne, who chose to leave Amish life for the world of the Englisch. In Indiana, Aaron Zook is the near perfect Amish young man who has her in his sights and quickens her heart. He is already building their home together despite having never really even asked her for an official date. Despite the many sadnesses that plague and follow Marianna, she believes she can see a future with Aaron. But her father shocks her with news they will leave their home and try to start fresh in Montana. Marianna agrees to give the new home six months and then she will return to her church, her home and the life that is waiting with Aaron. Or will she? A long train trip with her family is Marianna’s first real experience with the Englisch. And while there is a lovely older woman who speaks to her of faith and trusting God on the train trip, there is also a belligerent drunk young man who hits on Marianna prompting her father to step in and threaten physical retaliation. Goyer has an interesting way of illustrating the good with the bad and through her character’s psychological journeys, showing that black and white sometimes make grey.

Tricia Goyer is a remarkable talent. Goyer is the author of 24 books including Songbird Under a German Moon. She has also written a Mommy memoir called Blue Like Play Dough. She has been published in magazines and has written for Today’s Christian Woman and Focus on The Family. She doesn’t rely on the old standby stereotypes, or even the predictable Amish fiction romance plots. Her characters challenge the norms for Amish tradition. They have strong psychological lives. For instance, while it is common that Amish people live all their life in one area, this family in Beside Still Waters, moves to Montana. Despite the fact that the Amish are peaceful people, they can also be moved to violence should the opportunity demand it. Marianna’s father threatens to hit a young man hitting on Marianna when she is on the train ride. Marianna questions him after and he tells her he was merely calling the young man’s bluff. Goyer magically balances the allure of that which is different, the English culture, and the appeal of a familiar Amish life. She has created in Marianna a really strong, authentic, and lovely character I hope readers get to see more of in future books. To assume that this is a simple romance is to do great injustice to this novel, a book that could hold its own with any best-selling fiction novel I have read.

Beside Still Waters, by Tricia Goyer, released April 2011, paperback, is published by B&H books, 320 pages and $14.99 US.

I give this one a $$$$ 1/2 out of $$$$$.

I was provided with a free copy of this book to review. This in no way impacts my opinion.

Tricia Goyer has her own blog over at http://www.triciagoyerblogspot.com/

She is running a giveaway there right now offering five readers each a copy of this book. She also has a unique Amish salt and pepper set for one winner.

The Mountains Bow Down Blog Tour and A Cruise Giveaway

posted by

Picture the cruise from hell. That’s where Raleigh Harmon, a newly engaged FBI agent, finds herself with mother, aunt and a dead movie star’s wife. This story The Mountains Bow Down has one of the best mystery plots I have read in awhile. Raleigh Harmon is a beautiful but athletic and very capable FBI agent asked to come on a cruise to Alaska to simultaneously relax and also act as a consultant for a B grade movie being filmed on the cruise ship. She is no sooner there when a body turns up, a young woman, apparently a suicide. But the clues don’t add up. The ship turns back to the sea before it has even reached the first port of call and the vacation cruise is over for many. Raleigh knows the evidence is indicating this can’t have been an ordinary suicide. Initially they point to movie star Milo Carpenter, husband of the deceased. But is it him? Or is he just a washed up actor with a drinking problem? Despite the limitations of being on a boat, she manages to cleverly manipulate the tools available to analyze and collect evidence. Petroleum jelly becomes an agent to reflect ultraviolet light on a bracelet and create a glow in the dark lure for a thief. These are the types of smart tricks that Raleigh uses and they complement the strong female character. She runs her own investigation and uncovers a whole lot of criminal activity on the cruise ship. Her nemesis Special Agent Jack Stephensan, a good-looking cowboy with an eye for Raleigh, shows up to help and soon begins to make her question  her engagement. As the one week cruise sails through the Inside Passage Raleigh and Jack have to solve this crime in the span of five days. After that the cruise ship passengers disperse to various countries and suspects and evidence will be gone.  Sibella Giorello lives in Washington with her family. She began her writing career as a news features reporter. Raleigh Harmon is also the main character in two other novels by Giorello The Rivers Run Dry and The Clouds Roll Away.

The Mountains Bow Down is by Sibella Giorello, Thomas Nelson publishers, paperback $14.99 US, 369 pages.

I was not compensated for this post. I received a free copy of the book to facilitate the review and the blog tour.

This one gets $$$$ out of $$$$$. It was suspenseful and had a great main character. Very plot driven.

Sibella’s celebrating the release of The Mountains Bow Down by giving away a Cruise prize pack worth over $500.00!
Giorellos Cruise Giveaway

One Grand Prize winner will receive:
A $500 gift certificate toward the cruise of their choice from Vacations To Go.

The entire set of the Raleigh Harmon series.

Click the button for cruise giveaway details.
Then tell your friends. And enter soon – the giveaway ends on 4/1! The winner will be announced at Sibella’s Raleigh Harmon Book Club Party on FB April 5th, 2011! Don’t miss the fun – prizes, books and gab!

Join Sibella and fans of the Raleigh Harmon series on April 5th at 5:00 pm PST (6 MST, 7 CST & 8 EST) for a Facebook Book Club Party. Sibella will be giving away some fun prizes, testing your trivia skills and hosting a book chat about the Raleigh Harmon books. Please RSVP and if you have questions you’d like to chat about – leave them on the Event page.

An Amish Love: Three Novellas and Something Unexpected Review/Giveaway

posted by

Drug addictions, forced marriages, deadly accidents, a fall out with the church and spouses who disappear mysteriously. An Amish Love contains three lovely novellas, set in Amish country-side, with a big dash of the unexpected. The novellas are all tied to place and characters flit in and out of each separate story. The prominent themes are: alienation and love. This is a perfect book for my February I Heart Books Event. An Amish Love is a triple threat. Usually in acollection like this, there is at least one weak link. But all of these stories are really well done and enjoyable. Each is a treat on its own.

Take for instance the first novella: A Marriage of the Heart by Kelly Long. Joseph Lambert has been away from his Amish ways for several years and has come back to live with a local doctor. Abigail Kauffman, motherless, lonely and a beautiful flirt, sees a way out of her ‘boring’ Amish life that she no longer wants to be part of and she tricks him into marriage. Well, as the plot progresses in this really charming story, she comes to love her husband and slowly reveals to her father that she has always felt lonely and unloved and was deceitful in claiming Joseph made advances towards her before their marriage. Joseph carries his own secrets. When an ex-girlfriend shows up with a vial full of painkillers and an old hold on his heart, the relationship is tested. 
In the second novella, What the Heart Sees, written by Kathleen Fuller, Ellie Chupp, who lost her sight in an accident, finds her jam business growing and her idenpendence tested with overprotective parents. Her friend is about to marry the young Amish man who is known to have been responsible for a deadly car accident. Ellie’s good friend is dead as a result and Ellie’s fiancee broke up with her, unable to handle her blindness. When Christopher Miller returns to town after being shunned, Ellie finds herself feeling romance again. But how could this individual love her, now that she is blind? And will Miller be able to forgive and return to the Amish life in time for his sister’s wedding?
And finally in Healing Hearts by Beth Wiseman, the father of a large brood returns home to his wife after being absent one year without explanation. While Naaman Lapp was not shunned, his family remains perplexed as to why he left. His son Adam is particularly angry and finds it difficult to forgive despite the Amish teachings. Naaman’s wife, Levina, has moved on and found a degree of independence despite the chatty gossip in town and the speculation that Naaman might have had another woman in Ohio. Eventually he will realize he needs to court his wife again and earn her trust back.

The end of this book contains a reader’s guide and some excellent Amish recipes from within the novellas. I cannot wait to try some out here. Yum!                 
 Am Amish Love, by Beth Wiseman, Kathleen Fuller and Kelly Long is a Thomas Nelson book. $14.99 US, 391 pages and is classified Fiction, Christian, Romance.
All books are provided free from the publisher but that in no way affects my review.
For this giveaway also Feb. 27th.
1. Follow me on GFC.
2. Follow @inkscrblr on twitter
and leave me your contact information so I can reach you if you win.
Extra two entries if you tweet this contest. “Amish Love book giveaway – not what you expected – enter on http://www.thriftymommasbrainfood.com/ ”

The Search: Blog Tour

posted by

The Search is a quiet little charmer of a book. A romantic story set in Amish country, The Search is part three in the Lancaster County Secrets series of women’s Christian romance novels. This story centres around two young women, one named Bess and the other Lainey O’Toole. At first it is unclear what the two women might have in common and how their stories are intertwined. Bess is the grandaughter of Bertha Riehl, and she is sent for the summer to Pennsylvania to help care for her grandmother after some surgery has left Bertha in need. Well, the surgery turns out to have been a bit of a stretch and the grandmother, a bit of a scheming puppet-master. Bertha is a comical character who Bess learns to love over the course of the summer. Bess and Bertha and the farmhand Billy will all work together throughout the summer at Rose Hill farm, living off the land and learning how to grow roses. The roses, of course, are a metaphor for the characters within the book, some blooming like Bess, others slowly withering like Simon and Bertha and, yet another group still twinning together like the hybrids Billy has learned to graft into new variations on the traditional flower. Throughout the summer Bertha mischieviously tells Bess she must teach her how to drive a car and repeatedly “borrows” a police car to give her lessons. When Bertha manages to get herself and Bess thrown into jail, her son Jonah must return home. Thus Bertha successfully orchestrates the return of her son Jonah, Bess’s father. Lainey O’Toole has remained in Stoney Ridge following some car troubles. She is an aspiring chef who once lived in Stoney Ridge and didn’t intend to return, but winds up spending far more time there than intended. While she is there revisiting her old home, she is confronted by her past and the choices made so long ago, on a night when Jonah and his young family were involved in a horse and buggy accident just outside Lainey’s old childhood home. When Bertha Riehl’s brother, the drunk Simon, who has been shunned by the Amish community for many years, is near death, Bertha seeks a family member to donate bone marrow. Finding a match for the old miserable Simon starts a whole subplot that will call DNA and lineage into question. When Bess is eventually found to be a perfect match, everybody but Jonah, it seems, understands what that must mean. This is a story well told. Suzanne Woods Fisher has successfully created several strong female characters that really are the heart of this book. The author shows restraint and purpose in capturing the reality of Amish life. Suzanne Woods Fisher is the author of The Choice and The Waiting. I have not read either one of the earlier stories, so I know that this novel can stand on its own, or in the context of the series. Based on how much I enjoyed this story, I would happily choose either of those other books. Getting to know the characters in The Search was enjoyable. The characters are engaging and well rounded and driven by psychological struggles and romantic desires. I found this book to be a nice surprise and truly enjoyed the strong female characters.
The Search by Suzanne Woods Fisher, Jan. 2001, Revell, a division of Baker Publishing Group, US $14.99, 297 pages with discussion guide.

Thriftymommastips rating is $$$$ out of $$$$$.
I received a copy of this book in order to review it. The opinions in this blog are my own.

The Search Is Over

posted by

Honestly this blog is one of the best gigs around. I get to read some truly captivating reads and also some books that make me wonder how they got published. And, on occasion, I get to step outside my literary comfort zone and explore an author I’ve not yet spent time with. And so it was with Nora Roberts. Oh, I know she sits on the shelf at every library, corner store and grocery store checkout. But until this month she was an author I had little desire to read. Then The Search landed on my desk and well the queen of romantic suspense captured my imagination. So we spent a couple of enjoyable weeks together. Until now I believed this author to be romantic pulp fiction and yet, this one intrigued me enough to delve into the story. Luckily I found more there. The Search is the story of Fiona Bristow, who runs a dog training school on the island of Orcas, in the Pacific Northwest. She is also a volunteer with a canine search and rescue unit, which is where the plot begins. The very kickoff of this novel has a toddler that has gone missing from inside the cottage where his parents are holidaying and enjoying temporary-lapse-of-judgement-holiday-sex. Well, let’s just say the topic matter resonated and, when a plot jumpstarts in that manner I am hooked for the ride. I will not spoil this incredibly suspenseful story for my readers but it centred around Fiona and a carpenter named Simon, who seeks her help with his unruly pup named Jaws. Simon is brusque and handy and incapable of disciplining his puppy. Naturally, neither one is looking for a relationship when love comes knocking. The romantic part of the plot is, at times predictable, and there were definite scenes that felt like lady porn, but the suspense kept me on the edge of my seat. The amount of detail in the search and rescue scenes was intriguing and it leant authenticity to the story. Roberts purposefully juxtaposes canine training sessions with the romance plot so that readers will draw parallels between canine and human behaviour. It is not ham-handed but a rather clever insight. Fiona Bristow, a sort of dog whisperer, leads a quiet life on her island until she gets word that a serial killer has begun copying crimes that are tied to a psychopath she helped put away, the Red Scarf Killer. She is a strong and competent heroine, which truly is rather refreshing. She is believable throughout as a person who could fight back if abducted off the street. Dubbed RSK II, the new copycat killer, is hunting Fiona, because she was the only survivor of the intial Red Scarf Killer.  There were moments in the middle of this 488 page novel that I thought the story slowed to a crawl and might have benefitted from more aggressive editing, but overall the story is well told and a definite page-turner. It’s enough to make me pick another one of the author’s many books to see if she is as consistent with character and suspense. Nora Roberts is a New York Times best-selling author of 191 novels. Over 400 million copies of her novels are in print and a total 169 of her 191 novels have been New York Times bestsellers. Stunning, really!

The Search, By Nora Roberts is published by G.P. Putnam’s Sons, $31.00 Hardcover. July 6, 2010.
ISBN 13 978-0-399-15657-1
$$$$ out of $$$$$. At times it seemed like The Search might never end, but the story is suspenseful and a good summer read.
Thriftymomma was not paid to review this novel. Instead I was given a copy so that I could review it. The opinions are my own.

The Forty Rules Of Love

posted by

A truly good story takes you on a voyage to a place you didn’t know you wanted to visit. The Forty Rules of Love is just that kind of story; reading it is just that kind of journey. Elif Shafak is one of Turkey’s best-selling female authors. Up until I received this novel, her latest, The Forty Rules of Love, I had never heard of Shafak and that’s a shame really. Shafak is a gifted storyteller. The Forty Rules of Love consists of two parallel stories, one of which is set in contemporary time and the other of which takes place in the 13th century. The contemporary plot revolves around a housewife, Ella, about to turn 40, who is hired as a reader for a literary agent to read a book dubbed Sweet Blasphemy. Ella is a realist or so she thinks at the start of the book when she begins reading a new novelist’s rumination. The Forty Rules of Love is in some ways her coming of age story. Quickly Ella falls in love with the prose in the novel she reviews and then reaches out to the author through email beginning a relationship. But what sort of relationship will it be? That remains up to Ella, taken by the writing of this new author Aziz. She knows little of him but his talent and this portion of the book is told in a nouveau sort of epistolary for our times – through written emails to each other. Their emails grow increasingly amorous. “Her first email to Aziz was not a letter so much as an invitation, a cry for help. But Ella had no way of knowing this as she sat in the silence of her kitchen and composed a note to an unknown writer she didn’t expect to meet now or any time in the future.” The plot within Sweet Blasphemy revolves around the Sufi poet Rumi and his spiritual encounter with Shams of Tabriz. As Shams schools Rumi in spiritual matters he learns to open his mind more fully to that which he cannot see or touch and he realizes his life has been missing a key ingredient. Ella, in the contemporary plot line, can be seen to follow the same story arc only with a more romantic outcome. As Shams unveils each of his rules of love to Rumi, Ella and Aziz can be seen experiencing, internalizing and reacting to the fictional rules as their own. There is a certain subtle magic realism about this novel, not as overt as the Latin American authors who perfected the genre, but gentler and slightly more spiritual in nature. Perhaps that’s another reason I so enjoyed this book. The characters in this book are beautifully illustrated and the narrative at times complex, but not so as to detract from the read, only so that it illuminates the strength of the writer’s talent. In the end there is an unexpected twist and prose so lovely and insightful that it is also slightly heartbreaking. The Forty Rules of Love is more than a great love story: it is also an intriguing look at the intimate relationship that can exist between author and reader, writer and reviewer.
The Forty Rules of Love, 2010, Viking, $32.50 Canadian and $25.95 US.
Thriftymommastips’ rating $$$$$ out of $$$$$
thriftymomma is not compensated for her reviews, but receives a copy of the books she reviews.