Book Review: Wish You Were Here

Allison Denman is supposed to get married in five days, but everything is all wrong. The huge wedding. The frothy dress. And the groom.

Still, kissing the groom’s brother in an unguarded moment is decidedly not the right thing to do. How could she have made such a mistake? It seems Allison’s life is nothing but mistakes at this point. And pulling a “Runaway Bride” complete with stealing, er, borrowing her best friend’s car doesn’t seem to solve her problems.

Can Allison find her way out of this mess? Maybe she just needs to stop orchestrating everything. Allison prefers being the one in control, and giving it up is not going to be easy. But to find her way again, she will have to believe that God has a plan for her and find the strength to let Him lead.

Beth K. Vogt believes happy endings aren’t limited to novels. She provides her readers with a happily ever after woven through with humor, reality, and God’s lavish grace. Married to her husband Rob for 31 years, as the mom of three adult children and one 10-year-old, Beth embraces her less-than-perfect life. Her degree in journalism helped establish her as a nonfiction writer. Beth was the editor of Connections, the leadership magazine for Mothers of Preschoolers (MOPS) International, for four years and continues to be a consulting editor, as well as a bimonthly columnist for MOMSnext, their ezine for moms of school-age children. After focusing on magazine writing and her book Baby Changes Everything: Embracing and Preparing for Motherhood after 35 (thanks to a surprise pregnancy at 41), Beth turned a season of burnout into her debut novel, Wish You Were Here.

My Impressions:

What seems like on the surface a light chick lit novel featuring a runaway bride, really is a great look at who we are in the light of God’s reality.  Wish You Were Here is a chick lit novel and it does have its light spots, but from the beginning you just know that there is much more under the surface.  It is also Beth Vogt’s debut novel.  And if this book is any indication, readers are in for a lot of great books from Beth.

Allison Denman has more than cold feet.  She has serious doubts that her longtime boyfriend/high school sweetheart is really the man for her.  Coupled with an amazing kiss she shares with her future brother-in-law, Allison knows she just cannot go through with the wedding.  Leaving fiance Seth at the altar, Allison embarks on a journey to find out just who she is apart from Seth.  Lots of long held secrets come to light, and Allison discovers who she really is apart from earthly relationships and in the reality of her relationship with God.

I enjoyed this novel very much.  It is a quick read, but I never really wanted to hurry the story or the characters along.  My feelings for Allison changed during my time reading as well.  She became much more than an indecisive bride.  Other characters had their quirks, but not to the point of silliness.  And the love story that develops with her ex-fiance’s brother Daniel will satisfy romance lovers.

So if you like romance, women’s fiction and a story with some meat, pick up Wish You Were Here.

Recommended.

(I received Wish You Were Here in conjunction with LitFuse.  The opinions expressed are mine alone.)

To read what other reviewers have to say, click HERE.

Celebrate with Beth by entering her Wish You Were Here Giveaway!

One “happy” winner will receive:

• A brand new iPad2 with Wi-Fi (The must-have, do-everything gadget!)
• Wish You Were Here by Beth Vogt (Swoon worthy.)
• $15 iTunes Gift Card (Music, books, apps, & more.)

Hurry, the giveaway ends on 6/4/12. The winner will be announced 6/6/12 on Beth’s Website! 

Just click one of the icons below to enter. Tell your friends about Beth’s giveaway on FACEBOOK or TWITTER and increase your chances of winning.

Tags: romance fiction, Beth K. Vogt

Book Review: Trauma Plan

Sidelined by injuries from a vicious assault, nurse chaplain Riley Hale is determined to return to ER duties. But how can she show she’s competent when the hospital won’t let her attempt even simple tasks? Determined to prove herself, Riley volunteers at a controversial urban free clinic despite her fears about the maverick doctor in charge.

Dr. Jack Travis defends his clinic like he’s commander of the Alamo. He’ll fight the community’s efforts to shut its doors, even if he must use Riley Hale’s influential family name to make it happen.

As Riley strives to regain her skills, Jack finds that she shares his compassion—and stirs his lonely heart. Riley senses that beneath Jack’s rough exterior is a man she can believe in. But when clinic protests escalate and questions surface about his past, Jack goes into battle mode, and Riley wonders if it’s dangerous to trust him with her heart.

Excerpt

Former ER nurse, wife, Mom and proud grandmother, Candace Calvert believes that love, laughter, and faith are the best medicines. Her popular medical fiction offers charismatic characters, pulse-pounding drama, romance, humor, suspense–and a prescription for hope. Think, “Grey’s Anatomy finds its soul.”

She is . . .

A Northern California native who spent several years in Hill Country Texas–where she learned to check her shoes for scorpions and plucked an armadillo from her swimming pool. Thinks cruising is the best way to travel: honeymooned in Venice, swam with stingrays, rode a camel at the pyramids, and sang (badly) with a Newfoundland country band. She’s passionate about cooking, loves bird watching, gardening, and gets goose bumps when her handsome husband hits the low notes at karaoke.

She writes inspirational fiction because . . .

God blessed her with a quirky wit, buoyant optimism, and a contagious sense of fun–but she didn’t come to know him until after the Triple Whammy that turned her life into a bad country song. A painful and unexpected divorce, the Northern California floods of 1997, and (just when she was coping like a champ, no problem) an equestrian accident that left her with fractured ribs, a bleeding lung, broken back, neck fractures and a spinal cord injury. She’ll tell you that God took drastic measures to get her attention.

In the months of rehabilitation, Candace healed in body and spirit. And came to fully understand the difference between being a strong woman and a woman of strength. The difference is faith, and that lesson has been her biggest blessing. Her story, “By Accident,” appears in Chicken Soup for the Nurse’s Soul, and launched her writing career.

Now . . .

She is honored to bring readers medical fiction that offers exciting entertainment and a healthy dose of hope.

My Impressions:

Trauma Plan is the first book in Candace Calvert’s new Grace Medical series. It is a mix between romance, suspense and medical mystery; a good mix, because the story kept me turning the pages.  Riley Hale is a former ER nurse turned chaplain trying her hardest to get back to the career she loved before being sidelined by a vicious assault that resulted in nerve damage to her dominant arm. Jack Travis is a determined ER doctor who wants to make his indigent care clinic work despite the very vocal opposition of the adjacent neighborhood.  Seemingly opposite in every way, they can’t seem to fight their mutual attraction.

Calvert explores the very real themes of testing and questioning God — to bless, to make things right, to do the things we want. All the characters, except the very lovable Bandy, have given up on God or seem to be on the verge of it.  But circumstances and surprise encounters bring them back to the realization that while God seemed silent, He was very much a part of their lives.  The novel never seems preachy, yet there is a strong faith message throughout.

If you like a medical drama with a dash of romance and suspense, then Trauma Plan is the prescription for a satisfying reading experience.  (Sorry, I couldn’t resist!)

Recommended.

(A review copy of Trauma Plan was provided by Tyndale.  The opinions expressed are mine alone.)

Tags: romance fiction, Candace Calvert, medical drama

Splash Into Summer Giveaway Hop!

I Am A Reader, Not A Writer and Page Turners Blog are hosting the second annual Splash Into Summer Giveaway Hop!   There are some really wonderful prizes for all book lovers given out by people all over the blogosphere. So to check out the bloggers giving away books and bookish things, click HERE. The giveaway runs from May 25 – May 31.

I am giving away a copy of Jennifer AlLee’s book The Mother Road and Lisa Wingate’s book Larkspur Cove to one lucky winner.  To enter my giveaway, leave me a comment (don’t forget your email address) telling your dream vacation spot.  Good Luck!

The Mother Road by Jennifer AlLee.  Within the course of a week, marriage expert Natalie Marino is dumped by her husband, receives an urgent call home from her father, and discovers her estranged sister, Lindsay, is pregnant.

A road trip on Route 66 may not help, but it sure couldn’t hurt. Or so Natalie thinks, until Lindsay’s boyfriend starts stalking them. Will their trip down the Mother Road bring the two sisters closer, or turn out to be the biggest wrong turn of their lives?

 

Larkspur Cove by Lisa Wingate.  Adventure is the last thing on Andrea Henderson’s mind when she moves to Moses Lake. After surviving the worst year of her life, she’s struggling to build a new life for herself and her son as a social worker. Perhaps in doing a job that makes a difference, she can find some sense of purpose and solace in her shattered faith.

For new Moses Lake game warden Mart McClendon, finding a sense of purpose in life isn’t an issue. He took the job to get out of southwest Texas and the constant reminders of a tragedy for which he can’t forgive himself.

Book Review: Finding Our Way Home

When principal ballerina Sasha Davis suffers a career-ending injury at age thirty-eight, she leaves her Boston-based dance company and retreats to the home of her youth in Minnesota. But Sasha’s injuries restrict her movement and her recently deceased mother’s absence haunts her. Since she can’t recover alone, she is forced to hire a temporary live-in aide.

Enter the ubercapable Evelyn Burt. As large-boned as Sasha is tiny, Evelyn is her employer’s opposite in every way. Small town to Sasha’s urban chic, outgoing warmth to Sasha’s aloof iciness, and idealistic where Sasha is hopeless, nineteen-year-old Evelyn is newly engaged and sees the world as one big, shiny opportunity.

Charlene Ann Baumbich is an award-winning journalist who speaks and writes about the layers of life as she sees them, which is often slightly off center, mostly dead-on, and always through lenses of grace. Her highly successful Dearest Dorothy series of novels celebrate octogenarian spitfire Dorothy Jean Wetstra and the residents of small-town Bartonville. Her nonfiction titles range from Mama Said There’d Be Days Like This to Don’t Miss Your Kids!. Charlene speaks to the heart, the funny bone, and a broad age span. For more than a decade, Charlene has presented her most requested talk–”Don’t Miss Your Life!”–to audiences across the country and in Canada. Her creative pedal is to the floor, her energized words are ripe, her cranky gallbladder has been “left behind,” and her message is right on time. Yes, fasten your seatbelts!

My Impressions:

Charlene Baumbich’s Dearest Dorothy series is one of my all time favorite small town reads.  And while I had heard something about a new Snow Globe series, I had not gotten the chance to check them out until given the opportunity to read and review Finding Our Way Home (book 3).  Each book is a standalone novel with snow globes as the common connection.  And because I found Finding Our Way Home to be such a delightful read, I am eager to add the first two books to my TBR pile.

Sasha Davis has had her ballet career cut short by a devastating fall.  Leaving her world and life behind she returns to her small hometown in Minnesota to recuperate.  Needing help with everyday tasks, she hires larger than life, nineteen year old, Evelyn as her assistant.  The two women, so opposite in their physical appearance, are both strong-willed and stubborn — good matches for this heart-warming story.  I really liked these two characters.  Coming from such different lives and backgrounds, they grow in their relationship, grow in their maturity, and grow in the affections of the reader.  The theme of grace being sufficient woven throughout the story caused this reader to stop and think.  Written especially for women readers, this character driven novel also contains a very sweet love story.

Highly Recommended.

 

(Thank your to Waterbrook/Multnomah for a review copy of Finding Our Way Home.  The opinions expressed are mine alone.)

Tags: Charlene Baumbich

You Might Be Interested . . . Beckon by Tom Pawlik

When three visitors arrive in Beckon, Wyoming, will any of them escape alive? An anthropologist researches a Native American legend and makes a terrifying discovery. An ex-cop investigates her cousin’s disappearance and finds herself in grave peril. And an aging businessman is lured by the promise of a miracle. One by one they learn the town’s ghastly secret!

(From the Author’s website) Tom Pawlik is the highly imaginative, Christy Award winning author of Vanish, Valley of the Shadow, Beckon, and the novella Recollection from the 7 Hours anthology. His thought-provoking, edge-of-your-seat thrillers are infused with nonstop suspense that grabs you on the first page and won’t let go until the last.

Tom’s fascination with the weird, the creepy and the unknown began at a very early age when he was introduced to a bizarre 19th century German story book called “Der Struwwelpeter”. The book was a collection of nightmarish morality tales by a German physician who obviously had too much time on his hands and no children of his own. The morbid nursery rhymes–sort of a Mother Goose meets Stephen King–included the frightful “Daumenlutscher” (Thumbsucker), a disturbing yarn about a young boy who was warned that if he continued to suck his thumbs, the local tailor would chop them off with his sewing shears. Other tales warned against playing with matches and being overly messy. Needless to say Tom never played with matches, generally kept his room clean and to this day retains the use of both his thumbs.

But the psychological damage was already done, and Tom’s warped imagination turned him to writing his own creepy stories at a rather young age. Alas, no publishers were brave enough to bring his stories to print, so Tom would not realize his life-long dream of becoming a published author until the ripe old age of forty-two. Today, Tom lives in Ohio and is happily married with six children of his own… who, oddly enough, never sucked their thumbs.

Beckon is being toured by the Christian Science Fiction And Fantasy Blog Tour this week.  To read their insights, reviews, and reflections click HERE.

Tags: Christian Science Fiction and Fantasy Tour, Tom Pawlik

Review: A Place to Belong (CD)

It is time for a FIRST Wild Card Tour book review! If you wish to join the FIRST blog alliance, just click the button. We are a group of reviewers who tour Christian books. A Wild Card post includes a brief bio of the author and a full chapter from each book toured. The reason it is called a FIRST Wild Card Tour is that you never know if the book will be fiction, non~fiction, for young, or for old…or for somewhere in between! Enjoy your free peek into the book!

You never know when I might play a wild card on you!

Today’s Wild Card artist is:

Lisa Troyer

and the cd:

A Place to Belong

℗ 2012 LifeWay Worship

***Special thanks to Rick Roberson for sending me a review copy.***

ABOUT THE ARTIST:

Radio personality, recording artist, speaker and author Lisa Troyer finds herself heart-deep in ministries that are changing lives forever. Her incredibly successful Circle of Friends women’s ministry, formed over a decade ago, is growing in all directions. With ministry and songwriting partner Dawn Yoder, Lisa and her Circle of Friends offer women’s conferences, leadership training, counseling services, worship music, life skills classes and marriage/family resources. No matter the outlet or the venue, Lisa uses her gift of encouragement, her influence and her resources to open doors for women everywhere to discover their significance and belonging through Christ.
Visit the author’s website.

SHORT CD DESCRIPTION:

Every woman needs acceptance, love and a place to belong. That’s the underlying theme of the new music CD, A Place to Belong (Lifeway Worship), from singer/songwriter Lisa Troyer, president of Circle of Friends Ministries. Refreshingly authentic and dynamic, the companion worship CD to Troyer’s recently released book, A Place to Belong: Out of Our Comfort Zone and into God’s Adventure (Barbour Publishing), tenderly draws women into a place of true freedom and belonging in the very heart of God.

To order go HERE.

Product Details:

$7.92 or $0.99 per song

Genres: Christian & Gospel, Music

Released: Mar 23, 2012

℗ 2012 LifeWay Worship

AND NOW…A SAMPLE SONG OFF THE CD:

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My Impressions:

A Place to Belong is a CD perfect for private worship and devotional time. The soothing and uplifting music speaks to a woman’s heart and brings her into the presence of God.  Recommended.

Book Review: The Mother Road

Within the course of a week, marriage expert Natalie Marino is dumped by her husband, receives an urgent call home from her father, and discovers her estranged sister, Lindsay, is pregnant.

A road trip on Route 66 may not help, but it sure couldn’t hurt. Or so Natalie thinks, until Lindsay’s boyfriend starts stalking them. Will their trip down the Mother Road bring the two sisters closer, or turn out to be the biggest wrong turn of their lives?

*********************************

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As a child, Jennifer Allee lived above a mortuary in the heart of Hollywood, California, which may explain her unique outlook on life. She has written skits, activity pages, and over one hundred contributions to Concordia Publishing House’s popular My Devotions series. Her novels include The Love of His Brother (Five Star, November 2007), The Pastor’s Wife, (Abingdon Press, February 2010), The Mother Road (Abingdon Press, April 2012), and the upcoming A Wild Goose Chase Christmas, book two in the Quilts of Love series (Abingdon Press, November 2012). She’s an active member of American Christian Fiction Writers and Romance Writers of America. Jennifer resides in the grace-filled city of Las Vegas with her husband and teenage son.

You can find out more about Jennifer’s writing and speaking at www.jenniferallee.com.

Twitter | Facebook | Amazon | Amazon Kindle | Barnes & Noble | Official Tour Page 

My Impressions:

Natalie Marino is having a very bad week.  An author and expert on marriage and a popular Christian speaker on the subject, Natalie has just found out that her husband is having an affair and his girlfriend is pregnant.  So what’s a girl to do? Road Trip!  Actually she decides to find her estranged sister and embark on a cross country trek to their home in Illinois following the legendary Mother Road, Route 66.  The road is rocky and detours abound, but the sisters soon find themselves becoming closer.  At the journey’s end, there is still more uncertainties.  Natalie has not been home for years because of her fear of facing her mother’s Alzheimer’s.  But Natalie is through running from a bad marriage, bad memories, and bad situations.  The three week road trip brings her past, present and future into focus.

I found AlLee’s characters and the situations/predicaments they find themselves in very believable.  And the detail of the sights along the Mother Road bring the legendary route to life.  I wanted to hop in a car and feed the donkeys of Oatman and sleep in a wigwam!  A quick read, The Mother Road would be great for book club discussions — the topics of divorce, elderly parents, sibling relations, etc. would make for great conversations.

Highly Recommended.

The Mother Road Virtual Book Publicity Tour Schedule

Tuesday, May 1

Interview at Examiner

Wednesday, May 2

Book Review at Life in Review

Thursday, May 3

Book Review at Book Nook Club

Friday, May 4

Interview & Book Giveaway at I Am a Reader, Not a Writer

Tuesday, May 8

Book Review at Carlybird’s Home

Wednesday, May 9

Book Review at Rainy Day Reviews

Thursday, May 10

Book Review at I’d Rather Be Reading at the Beach

Friday, May 11

Book Review at Splashes of Joy

Monday, May 14

Book Review at A Year of Jubilee Reviews

Tuesday, May 15

Book Review & Guest Blogging at Jersey Girl Book Reviews

Wednesday, May 16

Interview at Blogcritics

Thursday, May 17

Interview & Book Giveaway at Literarily Speaking

Guest Blogging at Motherhoot

Friday, May 18

Book Review at By the Book

Monday, May 21

Book Review at Reviews by Molly

Tuesday, May 22

Book Review at WV Stitcher

Wednesday, May 23

Book Review at Emeraldfire’s Bookmark

Thursday, May 24

Book Review at My Devotional Thoughts

Friday, May 25

Book Review at Celtic Lady’s Reviews

(Thank you to Pump Up Your Book for my copy of The Mother Road.  The opinions expressed are mine alone.)

Tags: contemporary fiction, Jennifer AlLee