This week, the Christian Fiction Blog Alliance is introducing What Lies Within (Multnomah Fiction, November 20, 2007) by Karen Ball
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Karen Ball, a bestselling novelist, is also the editor behind several of today’s bestselling Christian novels. Blending humor, poignancy, and honesty, Karen’s writing style is a powerful force for revealing God’s truth. She lives in Oregon with her husband, Don, and Bodhan, a mischief-making Siberian husky, and Dakota, an Aussie-terrier mix.
ABOUT THE BOOK:
Kyla Justice has arrived. Her company, Justice Construction, is one of the most critically acclaimed, commercially successful companies in the Pacific Northwest. And yet, something is missing. Not until she's called on to build a center for inner-city kids does she realize what it is: her sense of purpose. Now nothing can stop her, not the low budget, not supply problems, not gang opposition, not her boyfriend's suggestion that she sell her business and marry
My Review:
Hunter started a tad slow with a prologue from Sam’s childhood that I understand wanting to include after the fact. But, other than a few missed point of view intruders (saw, heard, etc.) to remind me early on that I’m reading a book rather than visiting Nantucket, this was a great read that I absolutely ate up.
At the same time, I did have a concern that kept nagging me at the back of my mind. This is an alegorical love story–Landon is your proverbial Christ figure that every Christian author has crop up somewhere in their works at some point (and that’s definitely not a criticism.) The novel works on the figurative level quite well. The parable’s point carries across quite well for anyone who has “ears to hear” as Jesus often put it.
But a good allegory works on the literal level, too, and on the literal level, God is sadly absent. By this I mean by the end of the story, on the literal level, the main character has embraced Landon
ORCHARD OF HOPE (Revell March 1, 2007) by Ann Gabhart
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Ann H. Gabhart has published a number of adult and young adult novels with several different publishers. The author of The Scent of Lilacs, Ann and her husband live a mile from where she was born in the Bluegrass region of Kentucky. She is active in her country church, and her husband sings bass in a southern gospel quartet.
ABOUT THE BOOK:
In the summer of 1964, drought has gripped the quiet Kentucky town of Hollyhill, and Jocie Brooke is nervous about starting high school. Her sister Tabitha is experiencing the weariness of waiting for a new baby. Her father David is feeling the timidity of those first steps toward true love.
In steps the Hearndons. Fresh off the Freedom Train, Myra Hearndon is sensitive to what the color of her skin may mean in a Southern town. Her family will have to contend with more than the dry ground and blazing sun as they try to create their ORCHARD OF HOPE.
REVIEW:
Gabhart presents us wi
Though provoking . . . humorous … Chris Well’s novel Tribulation House was everything the blurbs promised. At first glance, his story featured a questionable mixture of first and third person narration, but in the end, he made it work, as what we actually have is a third person multiple interspersed with a lengthy police statement given by the fun Mark Hogan, who is so blatant in his erroneous thinking, he’s a humorous example of everything that’s wrong with those who get so caught up with prophetic timetables and sky watching, they forget key texts in scripture, that the author happily quotes, making his point quite deftly, if not subtly.
I amened the whole way through it, but the very people who need to read it, I fear, won’t be so amused, and may instinctively insulate themselves from conviction by taking offense.
Some will deal by laughing at Hogan and insist it doesn’t apply to them, because they don’t have time lines identifying the exact day, hour, and minute, i
Popular wisdom is that women are more likely to read fiction and men are more likely to read non-fiction. Tom Morrisey challenges this notion with his novel IN HIGH PLACES (Bethany House March 1, 2007), and without any car chases. But definitely plenty of testosterone. To put it succinctly, if you’re not into vicarious adventure, you’ll learn more about rock climbing than you ever wanted to know.In High Places is a first-person narrative, Wonder Years style, (if you slept through 80’s television, that’s where an adult narrator regales us with tales from his formative years.) We meet Patrick Nolan, at sixteen, just coming back from a father-son weekend rock climbing trip, to find his mother has died suddenly, leaving behind only circumstantial evidence as to why.
His father, with no faith to sustain him, takes his son and moves down to their favorite rock climbing haunt in West Virginia, where he opens a rock climbing equipment store and plays chicken with death.In terms of
In Reclaiming Nick, a novel by Susan May Warren, Nick Noble returns home to ensure the family ranch stays in the family, just as the back cover said (always nice when the cover copy accurately describes the story). He’s also definitely the prodigal son (in the modern sense if not the original sense of wasteful)—which means the reader can expect sexual immorality and a violent temper in his past. I appreciated the honest handling of youthful transgressions and the damage the hot-blooded eldest Noble brother left in his wake, not to mention a man returning after his father’s death to face up to his past.
What can I say? Warren kept her view point almost too well. The only real flaw in the infrastructure of her novel is that I spent so much time in the first chapter, two tops, flipping back to earlier pages, trying to figure out if Piper was the redhead or the brunette, with her complaining of how he poured the coffee and watching the redhead leave when the brunette had beans serve
This week, the CFBA is touring A Valley of Betrayal, a novel by Tricia Goyer, the first book in a new series of historical fiction centered around a little known civil war that tore apart Spain in the middle of the great depression, which I learned from the book was a major prelude to WWII.
A Valley of Betrayal is the story of a young woman, who filled with romantic notions and dreams of walking down the aisle in a blue wedding dress and happily ever after, follows her heart into Spain just as it is on the brink of civil war, after the communists win the recent election and the nazis demand a do-over with bombers. As the title suggests, the brutal realities of war provide a rude awakening and she has to choose between turning back towards home or taking sides in the conflict and assisting in a war not her own.
Now, for most of us, this is definitely going to be a lesson in history, but have you ever read a history book cover to cover, had difficulty putting it down, and enjoyed it? No
