Call me a skeptic. Young adult, pseudo-science fiction, 22-year-old author, first novel (OK, so I like first novels) – Jessica Khoury’s Origin was not shaping up to be my cup of tea. However, toss in that the author is from Toccoa, Ga. – my hometown – and I’m a little more engaged. Add that two readers I respect suggest it is better than Hunger Games (one being my mom) and despite the fact that I haven’t actually read the Hunger Games (see list of why not to read above), I’ll be …

I’m a Tracy Chevalier fan. Since Girl with the Pearl Earring – one of my very first book club discussions – I’ve gladly picked up anything she’s written. I love the way she takes well-known art and constructs a narrative history around its creation.
The Last Runaway Chevalier takes a bit of a diversion – her first novel set in the U.S. – and while she does weave art into the story, it doesn’t take the front seat. The primary focus of The Last Runaway is the underground railroad.
The main character …

Fruit of My Spirit: Reframing Life in God’s Grace is Deanna Nowadnick’s personal reflection on how God used various seasons in her life to grow the Spirit’s fruit. Her story isn’t revolutionary or extraordinary, and perhaps that is the true beauty of it. This is the Christian journey, the road of sanctification; God using experiences, people and circumstances to make us more like Him.
Deanna is married and has two boys. Her challenges are like many women – the responsibility of parenting, body image, identity in Christ, struggles with her own parents …

The beginning of the post is from Saturday, so if you haven’t read it, skip on over to it now.
In this first chapter, Maxwell delivers eight gaps that keep people from being intentional about development. One really resonated with me – “The Inspiration Gap.” In his discussion on this gap, Maxwell basically de-bunks the idea of motivation, quoting from another writer who calls it a trap. In talking about his own onset with growing intentionally he says,
I had only one reason to do it. I believed I should do it …

John C. Maxwell is a man after my heart. I’ve loved everything I’ve read by him, but with The 15 Invaluable Laws of Growth, he’s honed in on one of my passions – practical instruction for personal development. In this book, Maxwell is articulating so many ideas that I’ve had a sense of and know to be true while at the same time pushing me further and deeper than I’ve gone before.
I have stopped requesting ARCs because I’ve gotten so behind in my reading, but when my friend Sarah showed …

While I’m not big on traditional science fiction or fantasy literature, I do love a good dystopian novel. The Handmaid’s Tale, The Unit and Never Let Me Go are three such novels. However, Hillary Jordan’s When She Woke, fell short of what I had hoped for.

The idea behind When She Woke is that in this society – which is set in the not too distant future – criminals are injected with a dye and released back into society. Crimes are classified by color; for example, yellow is for misdemeanors, red …

A. Manette Ansay’s prose is the comforting arms of a familiar lover.
In the afternoon I read Good Things I Wish You, I was immediately home and nodding agreement with her beautiful language. It wasn’t the roller-coaster ride of discovering something new, but a gentle cadence that is completely fulfilling, leaving you looking forward to your next interlude.
This latest novel tells parallel tales – that of the narrator relationship with a new beau – and the suspicious romance of Clara Schumann’s and her husband’s student, Johannes Brahms.  The narrator - Jeanette Hochmann – …

It has been a long time since I wrote a truly negative review, but yuck. yuck. yuck.
Told in three parts – daughter, mother, grandmother – Michael Dorris’ A Yellow Raft in Blue Water attempts – I think – to tell the story of what happens when the truth is hidden from generation to generation in a native American family. Because the reader doesn’t learn the truth until the grandmother’s tale, there’s so much presumption and suspicion that I had a hard time going backwards to make the pieces fit. What’s …

Patti Callahan Henry was among the first authors I reviewed when I started this blog way back when. I had the opportunity to sit with her at dinner when she spoke to my mom’s literary club a few years back and was enthralled by her. She’s sweet, down to earth, and an Auburn grad – what’s not to love?
Coming Up for Air is her latest and eighth novel (in as many years), and it’s the best I’ve read so far.
Ellie Calvin is mourning the loss of her mother at too …

S.J. Watson’s Before I Go To Sleep is not the sort of book our book club typically selects, but for October (yes, sorry, I’m late) we wanted to read something a little different. None of us were disappointed.
This psychological thriller centers on a Christine – a woman who, because of a severe trauma she experienced, suffers from amnesia, and her sleep erases her memory. The book opens with Christine getting out of bed with someone who doesn’t seem familiar and looking into a bathroom mirror at a much older than …