After Hannah Miller loses her dream job, becoming a nanny—and matchmaker—for widower, Jake Burkholder is her only option. Finding Jake a wife is her hardest assignment yet. After all, he once broke Hannah’s heart when he married her best friend. But as long-held secrets are revealed, Hannah can’t help but wish she could be Jake’s perfect match…
Recommend: Yes! The last couple of books have been tough to get through. This was a cute, Amish tale that you knew that they would get together in the end. You just didn’t know how. It had all the makings of a good book. Widower, Nanny for hire, accident happen, and a character not realizing the other had affection for them. This would be a great start to Amish books.
Texas, 1934. Millions are out of work and a drought has broken the Great Plains. Farmers are fighting to keep their land and their livelihoods as the crops are failing, the water is drying up, and dust threatens to bury them all. One of the darkest periods of the Great Depression, the Dust Bowl era, has arrived with a vengeance.
In this uncertain and dangerous time, Elsa Martinelli—like so many of her neighbors—must make an agonizing choice: fight for the land she loves or go west to California in search of a better life. The Four Winds is an indelible portrait of America and the American Dream, as seen through the eyes of one indomitable woman whose courage and sacrifice will come to define a generation.
Recommend: Yes. This was a really tough book to read. It reminded me of Grapes of Wrath and learning about the Oregon Trail. It’s a hard look at what people went through at that time.
In 1936, tucked deep into the woods of Troublesome Creek, KY, lives blue-skinned 19-year-old Cussy Carter, the last living female of the rare Blue People ancestry.
The lonely young Appalachian woman joins the historical Pack Horse Library Project of Kentucky and becomes a librarian, riding across slippery creek beds and up treacherous mountains on her faithful mule to deliver books and other reading material to the impoverished hill people of Eastern Kentucky.
Along her dangerous route, Cussy, known to the mountain folk as Bluet, confronts those suspicious of her damselfly-blue skin and the government’s new book program. She befriends hardscrabble and complex fellow Kentuckians and is fiercely determined to bring comfort and joy, instill literacy, and give to those who have nothing, a bookly respite, a fleeting retreat to faraway lands.
Recommend: Yes. This was part of me asking others what books I should read. It was one of those hard reads, but I was rooting for the main character by the end. Everyone should take the time to read this book.
Blubber meets Steel Magnolias in this funny and honest story about body image and family.
Rosemary Goode is smart and funny, loyal, and the best eyebrow waxer in Spring Hill, Tennessee. But only one thing seems to matter to anyone, including Rosemary: her weight. And when your mom runs the most successful (and gossipy) beauty shop in town, it can be hard to keep a low profile. Rosemary resolves to lose the weight, but her journey turns out to be about everything but the scale. Her life-changing, waist-shrinking year is captured with brutal honesty and humor, topped with an extralarge helping of Southern charm. It is a truly uncommon novel about an increasingly common problem.
Recommend: Yes! This is such a good book. It tugs at your heart strings and makes you want to help your own mother, which is hurting. Rosie does drastic and nondrastic things to lose weight. You are just rooting for her. I have read many different “fat girl wants to lose weight” books, and this is now on my favorites.
Miriam Schrock has one rule in her quest for a respectable Amish life—stay away from troublemakers like Aaron Raber. That is, until their employers play matchmaker and Miriam sees a different side to the former rebel. Aaron promises his time with an Englischer gang behind him. But when his past returns, will protecting Miriam from their threats mean losing her for good?
Recommend: Yes! You are rooting for them to finally get together. You also get to remember that your past doesn’t always make you what your future is.
When sisters Sadie and Zuzu Brooks move to Salt Lake City, they discover a secret room in the attic of their new house, with a sign that reads “Palace Beautiful” and containing an old journal. Along with their neighbor, dramatic Belladonna Desolation (real name: Kristin Smith), they take turns reading the story of a girl named Helen living during the flu epidemic of 1918. The journal ends with a tragedy that has a scary parallel to Sadie and Zuzu?s lives, and the girls become obsessed with finding out what happened to Helen after the journal ends. Did she survive the flu? Is she still alive somewhere? Or could her ghost be lurking in the nearby graveyard?Sarah DeFord Williams has created a gripping read that covers two time periods, many fantastic characters, and a can’t-put-it-down ending, all with delightful, extraordinary prose.
Recommend: Yes! This quick read makes you root for new families, and you will want to find out what happens to all of the families!
When Sawyer Roth is hired to work on his childhood ranch, he knows he has a damaged reputation to repair. Tess Malone, the new ranch owner’s daughter, is the hardest to win over. But as Christmas approaches, Tess and her toddler son find a way into Sawyer’s heart. He lost everything the last time he put his trust in love. Can he risk it all again?
Recommend: Yes! This was a quick read when you are rooting for each of the characters. Even with the stubborn father, you are rooting that it all comes together in the end.
In 1942, Europe remains in the relentless grip of war. Just beyond the tents of the Russian refugee camp she calls home, a young woman speaks her wedding vows. It’s a decision that will alter her destiny…and it’s a lie that will remain buried until the next century.
Since she was nine years old, Alina Dziak knew she would marry her best friend, Tomasz. Now fifteen and engaged, Alina is unconcerned by reports of Nazi soldiers at the Polish border, believing her neighbors that they pose no real threat, and dreams instead of the day Tomasz returns from college in Warsaw so they can be married. But little by little, injustice by brutal injustice, the Nazi occupation takes hold, and Alina’s tiny rural village, its families, are divided by fear and hate. Then, as the fabric of their lives is slowly picked apart, Tomasz disappears. Where Alina used to measure time between visits from her beloved, now she measures the spaces between hope and despair, waiting for word from Tomasz and avoiding the attentions of the soldiers who patrol her parents’ farm. But for now, even deafening silence is preferable to grief.
Slipping between Nazi-occupied Poland and the frenetic pace of modern life, Kelly Rimmer creates an emotional and finely wrought narrative that weaves together two women’s stories into a tapestry of perseverance, loyalty, love and honor. The Things We Cannot Say is an unshakable reminder of the devastation when truth is silenced…and how it can take a lifetime to find our voice before we learn to trust it.
Recommend: Yes! This is a book that I got from the library. I know that either a friend from Facebook or one of the gals I watch on YouTube told me about this book.
I started to read it Sunday morning while working on Spark with my hubby. I couldn’t stop reading it and even stayed up until 11 pm. to read the ending. Everyone should read this. It’s one of those heartbreaking books that you are rooting for everyone, while also no one bc of the truth that everyone is going through at that time. It’s a book that will stay with you for a while and will want you to talk to others who have also read it.
Synopsis from Goodreads: Ten-year-old Maxine is determined to become a famous inventor so she can take care of her younger brother’s heart condition, and she convinces a troubled classmate to help her.
Recommend: This was a cute YA book that was easy to read. You were rooting for all of the characters!
Synopsis from Goodreads: Living in a new place is very different from visiting one, especially when that place is far away from home. Traveling gives us the rare opportunity to see who we might have been if we had been born someplace else. For some, it’s a chance to recreate ourselves. For others, it’s a time to realize who we already are. In Open Your Eyes, ten writers will be your guides to the journeys that changed their lives: a boarding school in England; parenthood in France; the most beautiful spots in Italy; China on the Yang-tze; a tiny shop in Tokyo, Japan; and even to Pilzen, Czechoslovakia as World War II is ending. Though each story offers an original viewpoint, all of the stories reflect back on two important themes: where we come from and how we become who we are.
Recommend: Yes! This was a quick read book with a bunch of authors trying to connect you with a true story of them growing up. Some are hard to read, but life is hard at times.
Reading becomes a pattern 