Into the Whirlwind - Elizabeth Camden

I have read a few books written by Elizabeth Camden including The Rose of Winslow Street and The Lady of Bolton Hill.  I really enjoyed those, so choosing to read this was easy.

Mollie is the owner of a fine watchmaking company in Chicago.  She has taken over the 57^th Illinois Watch Company that her father left her.  Working for her are members of her father’s infantry unit, mostly the crippled men that had nowhere else to go.  When an offer to buy her out arises, Mollie has to consider what all the implications would be for her and for the lives of the men who rely on her for their well-being.

Zack is a lawyer that is negotiating the deal, but he has adored Mollie from afar for three years.  Revealing his feeling for Mollie would mean the death of his career, but certain circumstances make him rethink his priorities.  The Chicago fire of 1871 affects Mollie and her business.  Her father’s deed for a piece of land comes between Zack and Mollie.  She ends up not trusting him even as he does his best to win her love.

This book was great.  It only took me two days because I simply couldn’t put it down.  The interactions between Zack and Mollie had me frustrated and hopeful at the same time.  There were tons of details in the book about watchmaking and also about the fire.  I was impressed with the focus being on the aftermath of the fire.  It caused me to think about how people come together when there’s a tragedy, like this fire, and then as time goes by, the effects fade from our memory even as there are people still rebuilding.

Her only book out that I haven't read is Against the Tide and I was able to pick it up today for free!  I hope to read more from this author in the future.  She’s becoming one of my favorites and I anticipate reading her novels.  Good Book!

*I received a copy of this book from the publisher through Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

Against the Tide by Elizabeth Camden - FREE

This Thursday and Friday, Bethany House is offering up Against the Tide for FREE!  I have really enjoyed books by this author and was quick to snatch this one up.  Check it out!!

Link to Against the Tide on Amazon.

Irene Hannon's first book in Guardians of Justice series, Fatal Judgment is also free.

Link to Fatal Judgment on Amazon.

A Promise for Spring (Heart of the Prairie #3) - Kim Vogel Sawyer

I've been skipping around this series, and for the most part, enjoying the ride.  I've read book 1 Waiting for Summer, book 6 Courting Miss Amsel, and book 9 Song of My Heart. This is the third book in this series.

Emmaline has traveled from England to get married to her fiance, Geoffrey.  When last she saw him, it was five years ago, and he had vowed to bring her to him in one year. Now that she has endured a long, tedious journey to the Kansas prairie, she feels like she doesn't know her future husband and in the last moment declares that she won't marry Geoffrey.

Geoffrey has been working hard to make his home with Emmaline in mind.  He has known her since she was a child and has been anxiously awaiting her arrival.  He is surprised at the coolness that he is met with and isn't sure what to do about her sudden refusal to marry.  It is decided that she will come and be Geoffrey's housekeeper.  She has agreed to give him until spring and if she wants to leave, Geoffrey agrees to send her back to her father.

Emmaline suddenly has found this independence that she wasn't allowed to display at home.  She didn't feel like her father really loved her that much, he just bossed her around and made her leave her homeland to marry a man she doesn't feel like she doesn't know anymore.  Geoffrey, instead of wooing Emmaline, treats her like staff and bosses her around like her father did.  Her reaction is to try and head back to England alone, breaking her word.

For basically the first half of the book, I was irritated with both characters.  Emmaline was a childish brat who wanted everything her way or she would run off.  I found myself rolling my eyes when she kept trying to run off.  Geoffrey irritated me as well.  He basically would criticize Emmaline's efforts and boss her around.  They both seemed pretty clueless for much of the book.

Much to my surprise, I did enjoy the book.  It shocked me a little, because Geoffrey's quick temper and Emmaline's irrational behavior didn't give me any indication that they would be able to become one, but I thought that the second half of the book saw both of them change enough that the rest of the story was good.  As I have learned with the other books in this series, they can be read individually with no problems.  I have a few more of this series and look forward to reading more.  Good Book!

Spring of My Love (Silver Hills Trilogy #3) - Ginny Aiken

After reading Song of My Soul, book 2, I was anxious to read more of this series.

Angel's father has just died and now she has the task of taking care of the ranch alone.  In this area, drought has hit many of the cattlemen hard.  There are quite a few of them that are on the brink of losing everything.  If the men in town find out that Angel is on her own, it could become dangerous for her.

Jeremy lives close to Angel and once word spreads that her father is gone, he knows that he will have a lot of competition for that land.  He assumes that Angel would like nothing more than to sell her land and move somewhere else.  What he runs into is a stubborn, red-headed woman running around in pants and running the ranch on her own.

Angel is wary of Jeremy from the moment she sees him.  She knows that none of the ranchers approve of her raising sheep.  The cattlemen see her as not only ruining the pasture but also hogging all the water.  Once she gets attacked, she starts to see that there might be more to Jeremy than she first thought.  While he isn't sure exactly what he's supposed to do, he knows that he just can't leave her out there alone.

I really enjoyed this book.  While it is the final book in the trilogy, I was hoping that there had been some sort of followup that would address Wynema, independent photographer that has sworn off marriage.  At the end, she is on her way to document the plight of the Indians on the reservations.  It would have been great to see her side-swiped by love.

I was able to pick up the first book and look forward to finishing out the series.  It doesn't matter if you read these out of order.  As long as you can accept that you'll see that the characters from the previous books get married, you can enjoy them in any order.  Good Book!

Elisha's Bones (Jack Hawthorne #1) - Don Hoesel

This book isn't normally what I read at all.  After receiving an email containing information about this author's newest book, I noticed this one has been free for a while and decided to step out of my comfort zone and give it a shot.

In the beginning, Jack is excavating in the Valley of the Kings with his brother.  An incident takes the life of his brother and leaves Jack questioning whether it was an accident. Years later, he is approached by a man trying to find the bones of Elisha, a relic fabled to bring the dead back to life.  Jack has his doubts, but he ends up following the clues wherever they may take him.

While he follows the clues, he comes in contact with many people from his past and it seems that none of them are all that happy to see him.  When the body count starts to rise and Jack and his former fiance are targets, they realize that they only way to get out of the mess is to find the bones.  Somehow it's all related to the death of Jack's brother and he becomes obsessed with learning the truth.

I found myself trudging through the first half of the book.  The second half of it picked up and I found myself more interested and wanting to read on to the end.  I found that the ending left me feeling like I had missed something, and I had to read the last part a couple times.  It wasn't all that satisfying in that respect.  I also felt disconnected from the characters.  It seemed like anyone who talked to Jack ended up dead, but he just kept talking to people and watching them die.  It wasn't until the end that Jack makes a connection to God.  The glimpses of it that we see from those he interacts with were pretty shallow.

I made it through the book, but I pretty much forced my way through the first half.  I felt like there could have been less descriptions of the surroundings and more depth to the conversations between the characters.  I thought Jack was basically an island for most of the book and it just wasn't up my alley.  This book is part of a series.  Book 2 is called Serpent of Moses and the third book just came out the first of July, Blood and Bone.  My final decision is that it's a pass for me.

Waiting for Summer's Return (Heart of the Prairie #1) - Kim Vogel Sawyer

In the past, I have read two other books in this series.  As far as I can tell, not many of the books have anything to do with others.  Courting Miss Amsel is book 6 and Song of My Heart is book 8.  I couldn't really find connections between the two.  I saw this book was up for free this month, so I picked it up.  I placed more of this author's books on my watch list and they all dropped at the same time.  When I picked this up, I didn't know that it dealt with the Mennonites.  I don't have anything against books about this culture, but I normally don't enjoy those or ones dealing with the Amish.  Not sure why.  They just don't appeal to me.

Summer has lost everything.  Her husband and four children were taken by typhoid and now she is alone.  The Mennonites in the community seem to have little interest in helping her, and she has little interest in living.  All alone, she ends up taking up an offer of employment with a miller who needs help with his son's schooling.  She's given up on God and Peter tries to show her the way back.  The community isn't sure about the intelligence of Peter's plan to have Summer stay in his shack and they both suffer the effects of the local gossips.

Peter's wife died on the way to America and now he lives with her grandmother and his son.  When his son falls from a tree and breaks some ribs, he hears that Summer is a recent widow and may be an educated woman.  Feeling that God is asking him to reach out to her, he does his best to make sure she is comfortable in the shack.  After a while, she seems to fit in perfectly with their family, but she has plans to build her own house and move close to the graves of her family.  Peter's son believes she would make the perfect mother, but it takes some time for their feelings to become clear for them.

Overall, it was a pretty decent read, but I did have some issues with it.  Peter's accent was my major qualm.  His native language is German, but at times he has no accent, other times a slight accent, and the worst is when it is so bad he sounds like Yoda.  "Come when ready you are" is something close to what I read and all I could think of was the raspy little voice of a small green guy with a lightsaber.  And the interactions between the native people should have theoretically been in German, therefore not needing any sort of accent.  Instead it seemed like they spoke to each other in English.  I did like the main point of finding joy past the pain and thought that was well done.  The second book in the series is about the son of Peter, but I don't have it on my watch list.  The ones I was watching all popped up as price drops at the same time.  If this had been the only book by this author I had read, I'm not sure that I would have had any on my watch list, but I know that I can enjoy her books and look forward to reading the ones I purchased.

Song of My Soul (Silver Hills Trilogy #2) - Ginny Aiken

I was a little surprised when I got an email for a price drop on this book and the third book in the series.  As far as I could tell, I haven't read anything by this author before.  I even went so far as to check my Kindle library in case it had just been a long time.  I don't normally place an author I've never read on my watch list, so I decided to read it as soon as I could.  My curiosity was heightened!

This book tells the story of Phoebe, a recent widow from a cave-in at the mine.  Her Shaker background is something that certain people in the town are more than happy to hold against her.  She feels that the people weren't bad, they just were misguided in their beliefs.  Now that her husband is gone, she runs the mercantile that is run by the mining company.  Her future rests in the hands of the new owner.

Adrian is on the run.  He's hoping that he'll be able to fade into the background as the new owner of the mine, but he discovers that the more privacy he desires, the more attention he draws to himself.  He tries to stay away from Phoebe, for her own sake as much as his, but circumstances don't make that possible.  They end up working together to solve problems with the treatment of the Chinamen, find out about an opium problem and try to solve murders.

I enjoyed this book.  I found that Phoebe and her friends struck me as a little "holier than thou" at times, and I thought that Adrian was almost a little too cowardly at times.  The end also seemed a little rushed.  Even with these minor issues, I found myself  wanting to find out if Adrian makes peace with his past and if he and Phoebe can get together.

I purposely looked at the names involved in the first book to see if I would feel like I was missing anything by reading them out of order.  While I saw the names and read a little of their background, I didn't feel like it would be an absolute necessity to read them in order. While I'm still not sure why these were on my watch list, I was glad that I got a chance to read this book and look forward to reading the next book in the trilogy, Spring of My Love, which seems to be about characters that I didn't read anything about it in this book.  Book 1, Light of My Heart, is still on my watch list.  Good Book!