A Passion Most Pure (Daughters of Boston #1) - Julie Lessman

This book was on my watch list and it popped up for $2.99.  I read Hope Undaunted and was willing to give the author another chance.  I actually get this author mixed up with Julie Klassen, who seems to be one of the authors I enjoy a lot.

This book follows the O'Connor family.  Mainly the story is about Faith, who has had a hard childhood.  She lost her twin sister to polio, and while she survived, she has a slight limp resulting from the disease.  She thinks that her sister is more beautiful than she is and she'll never find love.  The man that she's been in love with since she was a girl is interested in her sister, Charity.

Collin lost his way after his father died.  Now, he's more concerned with what he desires, which is women and drink.  When Faith gets Charity in trouble for seeing him, he decides to confront her.  Instead of telling her off as he had planned, he notices something in her that he is drawn to.  His lack of faith in God causes him to draw away from Faith.  God means everything to her.  He decides to remove Faith from his heart by marrying Charity.

I have to say that I really wasn't happy reading this book.  I ended up hating most of the characters for one reason or another.  Was there a happy ending?  Yes, but I wasn't sure anyone deserved one.  These characters were just doing things that made no sense to me. 

Faith is a prime example.  She claims that things like kissing should be avoided, but then she appears to have no issues kissing just about every man in the book that isn't part of her family.  The "love" she says that she has for two men in the book is hardly what I would term real love.  When Collin leaves to go to war, he tells her that he loves her.  Yet a month later, Faith is falling in love with some other guy, going so far as to get engaged to him.  He's only 14 years older than she is, by the way, and the family was having fits over Collin being 5 years older than Charity...

Formatting errors made reading this book somewhat of a nightmare.  There is no separation from one character's section to the next.  You can end up crossing the ocean when you think that you're just starting a new paragraph. 

I don't think that the writing was bad or that it was a completely bad story.  It just wasn't for me at all.  I need more happiness and hope in the books that I read.  I can see why people like this author, but I just don't think that this author is someone that I'll enjoy.  I'll avoid her in the future.  There are two more in this series that follow Charity, A Passion Redeemed, and their younger sister Elizabeth, A Passion Denied. 

Crocodile on the Sandbank (Amelia Peabody #1) - Elizabeth Peters

Elizabeth Peters/Barbara Michaels is one of my all time favorite authors.  She also has written nonfiction books as Barbara Mertz.  I have most of her books in DTB form.  I was made aware of a deal of getting an omnibus of the Amelia Peabody series where the first four books were a little over a dollar.  I snatched that right up!  A chance to replace 4 of my print books was too good to pass up.  I believe that it was a mistake on amazon's part, as there is no pricing information on it now.  Regardless, I now have the first four in the series and read the first one again.

Amelia Peabody is traveling the world now that she has the money her father left her.  She is not at all deceived about the number of suitors that are coming out of the woodwork asking for her hand in marriage.  As she states, she has always known that she is plain.  She comes upon a young woman Evelyn,  in the streets of Rome and ends up hiring her as her new companion.

Evelyn is distressed about her life.  She has left her grandfather and been seduced by the man that she thought was in love with her.  He has left penniless and alone.  She tells Amelia her story, believing that it will force Amelia to retract her offer.  On the contrary, Amelia passes no judgement, and begins to ask questions to satisfy her curiosity.

Walter and Emerson are archaeologists working in Egypt.  Emerson has a terrible temper and makes quite an impression when they meet the ladies for the first time at the British Museum.  Both Amelia and Emerson have unusual personalities and are not exactly drawn to one another in the usual way.  When Amelia visits the men on her trip of the Nile, she finds that Emerson has a fever and needs her medical expertise.


As Emerson recovers, there is an unwanted visitor in the form of a walking, moaning mummy.  Accidents start to occur and Evelyn's cousin arrives to pursue Evelyn for his wife.  As Walter and Evelyn are in love, Amelia does what she can to discourage the one and encourage the other.  The mummy starts to get more violent and the group must work together and have one of Amelia's famous 'councils of war.'  They need to capture the mummy and solve the mystery.


I really love this book.  Emerson is basically a heathen, so there is some mild language in there.  An allusion here or there to sex that even I don't blush at.  I think this is the 3rd time I have read the book and enjoy it every time.  The author writes the story from Amelia's point of view.  There are 18 books in this series.  I have to say that I like the earlier ones the most, I thought that the story seemed forced in the later ones and the characters were acting in ways that I didn't approve of.  Regardless of my feelings on the later books, I heartily give this one a Good Book! review.

Out of Control (The Kincaid Brides) - Mary Connealy

Over the weekend, I had a wonderful dilemma.  I woke up to 40 emails.  At first I thought that my email account had been hacked, but upon closer inspection, I had about 38 price drop emails.  I had despaired of getting anything to drop for so long, it was quite a shock.  Most of them were above my $5.00 limit, so I was spared that temptation.  In the end, I did end up with 11 new books to read.  I won't have a drought for a while now.  Thanks to my wonderful husband for allowing me to splurge!

On to the review.  Out of Control has been on my watch list for a while.  It was one of those books that kept popping up in my recommendations and looked like it had a unique story line.

Julia likes to go exploring in caves.  It's her chance to get out of the house while her stepmother, who is almost the same age as she is, gets some rest.  The stepmother has a baby and is also expecting another child.  The two women live out in the middle of nowhere in a shack that is about to fall down around them.  They were brought there by Julia's father, who apparently is a scoundrel and runs a saloon in town.  Not knowing what he has been up to, they believe that he runs the general store.

On one of Julia's explorations, she descends into a cave and someone maliciously brings up her rope and leaves her trapped in the dark.  She panics and hits her head.  Afraid that the man will come back, she tries to remain quiet, but eventually she cries out for help.

Rafe is fighting past demons in that cave.  As a child, an accident happened in that cave that destroyed his family.  Passing by it now is hard, but hearing someone yelling for help from inside is something he wasn't prepared for.  Once he saves Julia, their lives are intertwined.  Back at the ranch, Rafe discovers that his brother, Ethan, has come home and now has to deal with him as well.  Both men take Julia back to the shack and discover that they are needed there.  Julia's father is gravely ill and the women are forced to accept Rafe and Ethan's presence.

Both Rafe and Julia are incredibly bossy.  Neither wants to give in to the other.  They also have nothing in common but enjoy kissing quite a bit.  Eventually Rafe just tells Julia that they are getting married and she eventually just agrees.  It was just weird.  I also had issues with Julia's obsession with her fossils.  While possibly in danger, Julia cares more about the fossils than Rafe or anything else.  While I can understand her fascination, I didn't relate to ignoring the danger to the man you are supposed to be in love with.

The appearance of Rafe's lost brother had some elements of the odd as well.  This ended up being one of those books that I got to a certain point and ended up wanting to know what happened.  While I don't expect my fiction to be completely believable, it is fiction, I enjoy the story more when it is more possible than impossible.  This one was just a little too far on the one side for me to truly enjoy.  There is another book out in the series, In Too Deep, that tells the story of Ethan, and later this year the 3rd book comes out, Over the Edge, that follows the story of Seth.  I don't plan on watching either one.  They're just not up my alley.

Healer: A Novel (The Brides of Alba Series) - Linda Windsor

This book was up for free quite a while ago and it took me a while to give it a try.

Breanna is a young woman who has had a very solitary life thus far.  Her mother and father were murdered by a neighboring family.  Driven by jealousy and revenge, Tarlach brought his young son, Ronan, to the killing.  Breanna is whisked away by her nurse and becomes the only survivor of her family.

Now, Breanna is older and rumors surround her existence.  She is believed to be a witch that can shape forms and become a wolf.  Her only friend is her white wolf, Faol.  Her life changes one day when she witnesses the attempted murder of a man.  Her wolf saves him, and as a healer, it is Breanna's duty to use her gifts to help heal him.

Ronan wakes to find a beautiful woman caring for him.  Once he figures out who she is, he is wary that she might be up to something.  He decides to use a false name to protect himself.  As time goes by, his suspicions are put to rest and he begins to fall in love with her.  Breanna is falling in love as well, and she believes that he was meant to be her husband.

Once they are united, they both come to believe that it is time to put the feud to rest and begin again with peace between the two families.  Unfortunately, there is more than meets the eye at home and the people that want the alliance to fail need to be exposed before the families can move forward.

This was a pretty good book.  I made it to the end, but there were parts of it that struck me as odd.  There was a lot of Arthur and Guinevere characters in there and these aspects were mixed with demons and visions.  Something about the way they were combined struck me as unusual to the point of distraction.  I also would get tripped up figuring out how to pronounce some of the names and places.  A minor complaint to be sure, but it was still a negative for me.

At present, there is another book in the series, Thief, a novel about Ronan's brother, Caden.  I don't really have any desire to read that one and won't track it.  The writing was good, there was just something about it that lessened my enjoyment.

Courting Miss Amsel (Heart of the Prairie #6) - Kim Vogel Sawyer

This is my first review for this author. I had been watching it because it kept popping up as a recommendation and it looked like the kind of thing that I read.  It popped up for $2.99 and I picked it up.

Edythe has finally left home to start a new life teaching in Nebraska.  She has been raising her siblings since her mother died.  Her father has hardly been a parent and Edythe finally decides it's time for her to leave.  Her only regret is her sister, Missy, who is a teenager.  She has been left with Edythe's brother and his wife.

Joel is raising his two nephews.  Johnny and Robert were left parentless after a carriage accident took the lives of their parents.  When Joel meets the new schoolmarm, he starts falling for her and imagining her being a mother to the two boys.

Edythe's teaching style raises some eyebrows in the town.  She has done away with the switch that the old teacher used, endearing her to most of the class.  The only problem she encounters there is William, a troublemaker with a capital T.  With no help from the parents, Edythe is left to figure out a way to keep the peace without breaking her promise to not use the switch.

The town seems split on Edythe's teaching methods.  She teaches them a little more than just the reading, writing and arithmetic.  Joel is happy with what she is doing, his boys are no longer afraid of going to school.  In fact, they enjoy it.

The more Joel talks to Edythe, the more he likes her.  He tries to explain his feelings to her, but she is unwilling to raise another family.  Keeping her feelings at bay is hard.  She runs him off but then has to deal with the consequences when Joel decides to try and find love elsewhere.  Joel himself begins to second guess himself on that decision.

I enjoyed this book.  I liked most of the characters.  Missy was pretty irritating, but that's just her being a teen.  Ms. Sawyer has written a number of other books.  At present, the only one I am tracking is called Song of My Heart.  It seems the like the one I would enjoy the most.  I give this one a Good Book! review.

A Million Miles in a Thousand Years - Donald Miller

A friend recommended this book to me as a great read.  I was a bit skeptical, since not only is this a nonfiction book, my friend doesn't read anything remotely similar to what I like to read.  Regardless of my feelings, I picked it up for $4.99 and read it in three days.

Let me clarify why it took me three days.  It wasn't because I was really into the book.  It was because I wanted to get through it and be done with it.  I wanted to like the book, it just wasn't happening.  I had planned on reading 20% a day, but I forced myself to get through more at each sitting.  My thought was that if I read more, I would get done quicker.

The book follows the author as he edits his life to make it more interesting for a movie.  Along the way, he faces the fact that most lives are overall boring and that we have a choice to make them interesting.  He decides to go on adventures for the sake of making his life story better.  He does things that make me wonder if he did them because he wanted to add adventure to his life or he thought that he would be able to make people think he was more interesting.  For example, he offers to take an extremely difficult hike to try and impress a girl.

He adds these random stories that are disjointed and added here and there throughout the book.  You get to section and it dawns on you that part of this story was earlier in the book.  Was there a particular point in breaking up the story that way?  I didn't see a clear reason for it.

Don't get me wrong, there were some interesting parts to the book.  I learned a little bit about story itself and what makes a good story.  The thing that I thought was missing was God.  God was mentioned in there at times, but I didn't feel like He was central to the point of the book.  Overall, this book just seemed like the random ramblings of a man who had some things to say but wasn't quite sure how to order them in a way that connected itself to the ultimate purpose of his own story.  It was also a little depressing.  Donald Miller's major work that people seem to like is called Blue Like Jazz.  I have no plans on reading it. 

Would I have read this book on my own?  No.  Do I want to read more?  No.  This just isn't my genre at all.

A Heart Divided (Heart of the Rockies #1) - Kathleen Morgan

This is the last of the books I got through during vacation.  I've read this author before.  She has Daughter of Joy up for free.  I believe that it's been free for a long time and that I read it shortly after I got my Kindle.  I have also read Child of the Mist, which was a good book, yet a little depressing at the same time. 

This is another feud book.  I found it interesting that two of the three books I read during spring break involved feuding families.  Sarah's father feels that he was cheated out of his ranch by the Wainwrights.  His father went out to the ranch drunk and while trying to threaten the man he feels is responsible, he ends up shooting a small boy.  The man's wife is pregnant and ends up giving birth that night to Cord.  She ends up dying due to the birth.

The Caldwells have now sworn to get vengeance on the Wainwrights any way they can.  Years later, the father's hatred has spilled over to his two older sons.  He gets Sarah involved by using her younger brother's illness to convince her that they have to do what they can to help him, even steal.

At the Wainwright ranch, Sarah tries to seduce Cord, not knowing who he is.  She's just following instructions to distract the ranch hand while her family robs the house.  She's an innocent and has no idea what she is doing.  When her family comes back and sees who it is, they start to beat him.  Sarah prevents them from killing him and they escape.

Cord ends up recognizing her on the street one day and makes a citizen's arrest.  He decides to keep her at his house until the sheriff returns.  While there, Sarah has to face some hard realities about the family she has tried to keep together at all costs and the family that she is now a part of.

The characters in this book were very likable.  Cord was a man that never seemed to be good enough for his father.  Sarah was a woman with a heart torn between the man she loves and her family.  I especially enjoyed Cord's brother and the housekeeper.  They see the feelings that Sarah and Cord are trying to hide and has some fun trying to get them to admit them.

I did like this book.  It did have the elements of the depressing in there, but it wasn't near as overwhelming as it was in Child of the Mist.  I found it interesting that the author skipped the wedding completely, even though there was more story after it.  I'm not used to that.  I found the addition of Cord's stepsisters to be a little unnecessary, but it seems that the second book in the series, A Love Forbidden, is about one of those sisters.  I was hoping that it would be about Nick, Cord's brother that was crippled by the gunshot.  He was a great character.  Anyway, A Love Forbidden is due out May 1st.  I'm going to go ahead and track it.  Good Book!

Yellow Rose Bride - Lori Copeland

Another book that I bought before vacation to make sure I had an author I enjoy.  I have read a few of hers in the past including Faith, and more recently Bluebonnet Belle. 

Adam and Vonnie were married briefly, long ago when they were still very young.  Their families feud like the Hatfields and McCoys, so they decide to annul the marriage.  Or more accurately, Vonnie can't face her father and Adam does nothing to stop her.

Years later, Vonnie is now a successful seamstress.  Adam is now engaged to one of her friends and she is being asked to make the wedding dress.  Vonnie comes to the realization that she has never stopped loving Adam, and now is carrying the guilt of loving a man engaged to someone else.

Adam is having problems of his own.  His fiance finishes all his sentences for him.  I don't know about you, but that would annoy me.  The marriage was set up by his father, who is hoping that it will bring some money to the ranch.

A tragedy in Vonnie's family forces her to take over running their ostrich farm.  She also has the choice to sell up and move away.  As she realizes just how much she loves Adam, moving away starts to sound better all the time.  She can't stay there and watch him be married to someone else.  She's also having to deal with her mother, who lost most of her sense of reality when her husband died.  A change might do her good.  It also seems like someone is trying to encourage her to sell by sabotaging things around the farm.

The feud that exists between the two families needs to be resolved before Vonnie and Adam can be together.  The heart of the matter seems to come down to a horrible act that the fathers and two other men committed on their way home from the civil war.  There's something more to the mystery than meets the eye and the end is unique and I thought was well thought out.

All in all, my only real complaint was the overly long descriptions of clothes.  I know nothing about different types of lace, etc. so I skimmed these parts.  I'm also not quite sure why it was titled Yellow Rose, but maybe I missed that in one of the clothing descriptions.  Overall, a great book and it definitely gets a Good Book! review.

To Win Her Heart - Karen Witemeyer

This book was on my watch list and I was happy that it popped up for less than $5.00.  I have read Tailor-Made Bride a while back and enjoyed that one, so this seemed like a safe bet for a nice read.

Levi is a reformed prizefighter who has just finished his prison term for accidentally killing a man during a fight.  Wanting a brand new start, he ends up in Spencer where he runs the smithy.  He meets Eden, whose family the town is named for.  Unfortunately, he has a lisp and his search for safe words leaves Eden feeling that he is far from the intellectual man that she needs in her life.

Eden runs the town library and keeps running into Levi there.  He loves to read, but Eden's preconceived notion about him brings her to the conclusion that he is only at the library to try to win her affections.  Slowly she notices that he isn't what he seems and she decides to reach out and test him.  She finds out that he is much more than she thought.

As their friendship grows, Levi challenges Eden to live out her faith and not be shallow about it.  This is hard when a girl runs away from the saloon and Levi asks Eden to take her in for a while.  Eden is worried about her reputation.  She has to make a decision on whether or not to live what she believes.

The romance is not without its share of hardships.  Eden has been hurt in the past and is somewhat unwilling to put her heart out there.  She also has an enthusiastic sheriff who doesn't know what the word 'no' means.  Levi is hiding his past as best he can, but he knows that it will come out eventually and he knows that it needs to come from him if he wants to protect the shaky trust that he has built with Eden.

I enjoyed this book a lot.  I loved Levi's character and his story of how he turned his life around.  I had no troubles getting through this book.  I am also tracking two other books by this author: Head in the Clouds & Short-Straw Bride.  The latter of the two is not due out until June, but I hope that the price drops someday.  I think that both these look like great books.  Nonetheless, I heartily give To Win Her Heart my Good Book! review.

The Eighth Sea - Nancy Sprowell Geise

Well, my spring break is over and I got some reading done on vacation.  As a result, I decided to go ahead and post a review on the weekend.  The Eighth Sea was one of the freebies I've had for a little bit and decided to give it a shot.

Breanna lives on an island with her father.  While he's drunk, he reveals that she is not really his daughter and that she was taken in at his wife's request.  Now that she is gone, Breanna suffers from the anger and thievery of her father.  Once she finds out that she doesn't belong to him, she makes the decision to leave the island.

Nathan is the captain of the ship that Breanna stows away on.  She has hidden in the bowels of the ship so long that, when he finds her, she is very sick.  She is given the opportunity to recover in the captain's chamber, not knowing that she has met him before.  Questioning his motives, Breanna flees the first chance she gets.  It is at that moment that she leaves behind a bracelet that identifies her as the missing daughter of a couple that lost her while traveling to America.

I forced myself to read to about 20% on this book before I gave up.  Unfortunately there was something about Breanna that irritated me, I'm not quite sure what it was.  When she left the island to stow away on the ship, I was more concerned about the dog she was leaving behind.  There was a lot of flashbacks in there.  What really bothered me was when I read a flashback from her dead mother.  It just didn't seem to flow for me.  Nathan, on the other hand, seemed to be a nice character and I liked what I read of him.

I guess that Breanna irritated me to the point that, when she ran away, I just quit out of frustration.  I didn't want to read about her anymore and decided that I had suffered long enough.  The sea travel was a long, tedious read for me and I was ready for it to end long before it did.  I realize that it wasn't a 4 hour trip to cross the ocean, but I didn't want to spend that much time on it.  This book just wasn't for me.