A Tree, A Book, and A Breeze

A Sherlock Holmes Devotional Trisha White Prieb Barbour      I'm not usually a fan of devotionals that try to mesh secular things with the spiritual. Actually, I'm a little wary of devotionals in general because I find that a lot of people use them instead of actual Bible reading, and are more inclined to trust other authors' interpretations than what the Bible actually says. That's why, when I first saw this book several months ago, I passed it by without a second glance.      However, I've been thinking lately that you really can't divide the world into the "spiritual" and the "secular"- God is Lord of all, even entertainment. And while I still do not at all like when people try to "sanitize" truly ungodly things, I do think that if one has a Christian worldview, then that mindset while affect how you look at everything.      Even fictional detectives.      So, as I was browsing netgalley (newly encoura...

The Flower Brides Grace Livingston Hill Barbour      It's been a little while since I've read something by Grace Livingston Hill, and when I saw this volume of hers available- with three stories in it that I hadn't yet read- I decided to try it.      I admit I was really dragging my feet with this one. Part of the reason was that this was an ebook, which is definitely not my preference, but also, as a whole, I don't think these three stories lived up to some of the other GLH books that I've read.      I admit that it was rather difficult for me to like the main character of Marigold . She wasn't all bad, but her attitude annoyed me even though I found her character to be realistic. I guess, considering the way she was raised, her actions seemed especially unlikable?      White Orchards  had some sweet moments, but the hero and heroine were separated for much of the book and some aspects of the plot seemed v...

South Carolina Brides Vickie McDonough Barbour Books After tackling quite a few classics, I was ready for a light read, so a set of novellas sounded good to me. Though the last novella collection I read was a disappointment, this collection is a set of books previously published by Heartsong Presents, which I enjoyed a lot when I was just beginning to read Christian fiction. And since these were all set in my home state, I thought it would be a nice change. Out of the three stories, the last was probably my favorite. All the same, I didn’t find any of them particularly memorable.  As I read South Carolina Brides , I think I discovered the main problem I have with romance novellas is that they try to fit all the elements of a full-length romance into a short amount of pages; it just very rarely works. Halfway through the novella the characters will be declaring their love and I’m just like, “Guys, you literally met the day before- this isn’t a Disney movie, all...

Kerry Grace Livingston Hill Barbour When I first made the leap from the children’s section to the adult section of our pervious church’s library, Grace Livingston Hill was one of the first authors that I tried. Her stories were a sweet, clean breath of fresh air. Even though they can be (for lack of a better word) a bit sappy, there is something very pure about them, and I love the old-fashioned way they are written. I’ve read dozens of her books, but I don’t think I’d ever picked up Kerry , so when I saw it available on netgalley, being re-released from Barbour Publishing, it was an easy choice for me. It’s been at least a couple of years since I’ve read any of Grace Livingston Hill’s books, so I was wondering if they were as good as I had remembered. The thing about her novels is that they never pretend to be anything they aren’t: they’re just sweet stories with a very strong message about Christ. Somehow, Grace Livingston Hill manages to include a strong Gospel...

Elusive Hope MaryLou Tyndall Barbour I really liked the first book in this series, Forsaken Dreams , so I was looking forward to this book in the hope that it would live up to the last one. This is definitely a problem exclusive to me, but I found it really, really weird to read a book with the hero’s name being Hayden. Because it’s my own name, I just think of it as feminine even though I know that it was historically a boy’s name. Still, it was a little strange for me! It was hard to like Hayden and Magnolia at times, because they were both so selfish. However, the most annoying aspect for me was the fact that the romance was totally grounded on physical stuff. The author must have mentioned dozens of times how attracted the characters were to each other, even when they supposedly hated each other’s guts. Half the time, it just seemed like the author was repeating what she had already mentioned earlier. What I did like was the spiritual aspect- it wa...

Stitched With Love Various Authors Barbour I’ve read many, many Heartsong Presents books over the years, as well as my fair share of Barbour’s special editions where they combine several of those novellas into one volume. Stitches in Love , however, didn’t really hold my interest- in fact, I only made it about halfway through the book before I just decided to stop because I wasn’t interested. Now this reflects a little worse on the book than it really means; since it does have nine stories in all, I read four entire ones. I was at a stopping point- it’s not as though I was in the middle of a story and stopped. Still, the first four novellas just weren’t interesting enough for me to commit reading the rest of them. Though they were clean, short, and a pretty good before-bedtime story, they just didn’t interest me much. Most of the stories were completely forgettable. Rating: 4 I received this book for free from the publisher in exchange for my honest review.