After a nomadic lifestyle with her father, Tally thinks her Aunt Amanda’s home and family are like a dream come true but soon discovers that all is not as it seems on the surface. Working together to interview survivors of the Treblinka concentration camp for a school project, Chase and Tally become friends and confidants. While Chase grapples with the haunting dreams of a devastating fire that came close to claiming his life as a small child, his parents struggle to keep their marriage together as their secrets push them apart.
White Picket Fences is a multi-layered narrative with several simultaneous plot lines as well as a story from the past. This book is a frank look at how a home that looks perfect on the exterior can actually hide the painful secrets and troubled lives of its inhabitants. An emotionally charged essay about a family in crisis, White Picket Fences illustrates the impact past events can have on the present, the danger of keeping secrets, and the serious consequences that can result when a parent withdraws from a child. White Picket Fences is a well written book that has a few surprises and neatly ties up all the sub-plots by its end.
ABOUT THIS BOOK:
When her black sheep brother disappears, Amanda Janvier eagerly takes in her sixteen year-old niece Tally. The girl is practically an orphan: motherless, and living with a father who raises Tally wherever he lands– in a Buick, a pizza joint, a horse farm–and regularly takes off on wild schemes. Amanda’s idyllic home seems the perfect place for her niece Tally to stay while her vagabond brother is in Europe, but the white picket fence life Amanda wants to provide is a mere illusion. Amanda’s husband Neil refuses to admit their teenage son Chase, is haunted by the horrific fire he survived when he was four, and their marriage is crumbling while each looks the other way.
Seventeen-year-old Chase Janvier hasn’t seen his cousin in years, and other than a vague curiosity about her strange life, he doesn’t expect her arrival will affect him much–or interfere with his growing, disturbing interest in a long-ago house fire that plagues his dreams unbeknownst to anyone else.
Tally and Chase bond as they interview two Holocaust survivors for a sociology project, and become startlingly aware that the whole family is grappling with hidden secrets, with the echoes of the past, and with the realization that ignoring tragic situations won’t make them go away.
Will Tally’s presence blow apart their carefully-constructed world, knocking down the illusion of the white picket fence and reveal a hidden past that could destroy them all–or can she help them find the truth without losing each other?
Readers of emotional dramas that are willing to explore the lies that families tell each other for protection and comfort will love White Picket Fences. The novel is ideal for those who appreciate exploring questions like: what type of honesty do children need from their parents, or how can one move beyond a past that isn’t acknowledged or understood? Is there hope and forgiveness for the tragedies of our past and a way to abundant grace?
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Susan Meissner cannot remember a time when she wasn’t driven to put her thoughts down on paper. Her novel The Shape of Mercy was a Publishers Weekly pick for best religious fiction of 2008 and a Christian Book Award finalist. Susan and her husband live in Southern California, where he is a pastor and a chaplain in the Air Force Reserves. They are the parents of four grown children.
This book was provided for review by the WaterBrook Multnomah Publishing Group.
Claudette Fioré used to turn heads and break hearts. She relished the glamorous Hollywood lifestyle because she had what it takes: money, youth, fame, and above all, beauty. But age has withered that beauty, and a crooked accountant has taken her wealth, leaving the proud widow penniless and alone.
Armed with stubbornness and sarcasm, Claudette returns to her shabby little hometown and her estranged sister. Slowly, she makes friends. She begins to see her old life in a new light. For the first time, Claudette Fioré questions her own values and finds herself wondering if it’s too late to change.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Over the years, Melody Carlson has worn many hats, from pre-school teacher to youth counselor to political activist to senior editor. But most of all, she loves to write! Currently she freelances from her home. In the past ten years, she has published more than a hundred books for children, teens, and adults, with sales totaling more than 2.5 million and many titles appearing on the ECPA Bestsellers List.
Several of her books have been finalists for, and winners of, various writing awards including The Gold Medallion, The Christy, and The Rita Award. And most recently she is in the process of optioning some of her books for film rights.
She has two grown sons and lives in Central Oregon with her husband and chocolate lab retriever. They enjoy skiing, hiking, gardening, camping and biking in the beautiful Cascade Mountains.
I have never really thought very much about how difficult life would be for a person who had always had everything they wanted and everything done for them to suddenly find themselves in reduced circumstances. In Limelight that is exactly what happened to Claudette Fioré. At the beginning of the book, Claudette came across as an extremely selfish, stuck-up, shallow woman who had to have her way. As the story progressed and she realized exactly how little she had left, she began to make adjustments to her lifestyle. By the end, Claudette was a totally different person who was actually likable.
Another coming home and finding yourself novel, Limelight is somewhat different than the norm in that the primary character is in her 80’s. I enjoyed several humorous scenes where Claudette struggled with what most people consider everyday life – especially the plumbing and heating problems. I also enjoyed how the author demonstrated that we are never too old to change our attitudes or to find God.
Limelight is a wonderful illustration on the power of forgiveness and how much we all need each other.
This book was provided for review by the WaterBrook Multnomah Publishing Group.
He who conceals his sins does not prosper, but whoever confesses and renounces them finds mercy . ~ Proverbs 28:13
MY REVIEW:
When Piper reluctantly returns to her family hometown after twelve years of doing everything humanly possible to disassociate herself from it including changing her name, she finds that things are not quite the same as she remembered them. Still carrying a heavy burden of pain inflicted by her relatives, Piper digs in her heels and fights every attempt to change her feelings about the townspeople and especially her kin. But as each day passes, she becomes slowly reconciled with her cousins and the town and eventually finds herself.
Leaving Carolina is humorous with several laugh out loud moments; however it is not a lightweight book. It is a story about making difficult decisions, doing the right thing and most important of all – forgiveness. It also doesn’t hurt that there is a subtle romance that builds throughout the book to a satisfying conclusion. Ms. Leigh has incorporated plenty of spiritual content without being preachy. I would definitely recommend Leaving Carolina.
ABOUT THE BOOK:
Piper Wick left her hometown of Pickwick, North Carolina, twelve years ago, shook the dust off her feet, ditched her drawl and her family name, and made a new life for herself as a high-powered public relations consultant in LA. She’s even “engaged to be engaged” to the picture-perfect U.S. Congressman Grant Spangler.
Now all of Piper’s hard-won happiness is threatened by a reclusive uncle’s bout of conscience. In the wake of a health scare, Uncle Obadiah Pickwick has decided to change his will, leaving money to make amends for four generations’ worth of family misdeeds. But that will reveal all the Pickwicks’ secrets, including Piper’s.
Though Piper arrives in Pickwick primed for battle, she is unprepared for Uncle Obe’s rugged, blue-eyed gardener. So just who is Axel Smith? Why does he think making amends is more than just making restitution? And why, oh why, can’t she stay on task? With the Lord’s help, Piper is about to discover that although good PR might smooth things over, only the truth will set her free.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
After Tamara Leigh earned a Master’s Degree in Speech and Language Pathology, she and her husband decided to start a family, with plans for Tamara to continue in her career once she became a mother.
When the blessing of children proved elusive, Tamara became convicted to find a way to work out of her home in order to raise the children she and her husband longed to have. She turned to writing, at which she had only ever dreamed of being successful, and began attending church. Shortly thereafter, her agent called with news of Bantam Books’ offer of a four-book contract. That same day, Tamara’s pregnancy was confirmed. Within the next year, she gave up her speech pathology career, committed her life to Christ, her first child was born, and her first historical romance novel was released.
As Tamara continued to write for the secular market, publishing three more novels with HarperCollins and Dorchester, she infused her growing Christian beliefs into her writing. But it was not enough, and though her novels earned awards and were national bestsellers, she knew her stories were lacking. After struggling with the certainty that her writing was not honoring God as it should, she made the decision to write books that not only reveal Christianity to non-believers, but serve as an inspiration for those who have accepted Christ as their Savior. Her inspirational romances are peopled with characters in varying stages of Christian faith, from mature believers to new believers to non-believers on the threshold of awakening.
Tamara Leigh enjoys time with her family, volunteer work, faux painting, and reading. She lives near Nashville, Tennessee with her husband, David, and two sons, Skyler and Maxen.
ANNE DAYTON graduated from Princeton University and is earning her master’s degree in English literature at New York University. She works for a New York publishing company and lives in Brooklyn.
MAY VANDERBILT graduated from Baylor University and went on to earn a master’s degree in fiction from Johns Hopkins University. She lives in San Francisco, where she writes about food, fashion, and nightlife in the Bay Area.
Zoe is used to being overlooked. As the youngest and shyest Miracle Girl, she was happy to fade into the background last year. But when she sheds her baby fat and shoots up four inches the summer before her junior year, everything changes. Now she’s turning heads at school, and this new attention is beginning to strain her relationship with her sweet, serious boyfriend, Marcus.
Pressure builds when Zoe’s assigned partner for history class is Dean Marchese–a handsome New York transplant who isn’t afraid to show her how he feels. Just when she needs her three best friends the most, the Miracle Girls are suffering from boy troubles of their own.
Even Zoe’s rock-solid home life begins to shake underneath her when her parents’ relationship frays in the face of serious financial burdens. As this uncertain year of growing pains comes to a frenetic head, the quietest Miracle Girl must find her voice at long last and take control of her own destiny . . . with more than a little help from her friends.
Like the earlier books in the Miracle Girls series, A Little Help from My Friends is a positive tale for teen girls. There is not a great deal of spiritual content other than comments about going to church and youth group but the individuals in this story have good morals and exhibit the character traits of good Christians.
A Little Help from My Friends chronicles the girls’ junior year of high school with the emphasis on Zoe. The narrative is good wholesome fun with all the elements of high school life including good friends, school work, prom, rivalries, family crisis, and boys with none of the premarital sex, drug use, etc. that might be found in other books that target this age group.
If you have a teen daughter, I would recommend that you get her a copy of A Little Help from My Friends as well as the earlier installments of the Miracle Girls series.
Linda S. Clare is an award-winning coauthor of three books, including Lost Boys and the Moms Who Love Them (with Melody Carlson and Heather Kopp), Revealed: Spiritual Reality in a Makeover World, and Making Peace with a Dangerous God (with Kristen Johnson Ingram). She has also published many essays, stories, and poems in publications including The Christian Reader, The Denver Post, and The Philadelphia Inquirer. Linda grew up in a part of Arizona, where the dirt is as red as it is in Central Oregon. She graduated summa cum laude in Art Education from Arizona State University and taught in public and private schools. She has taught college-level creative writing classes for seven years, and edits and mentors writers. She also is a frequent writing conference presenter and church retreat leader. She and her husband of thirty-one years have four grown children, including a set of twins. They live in Eugene, Oregon, with their five wayward cats: Oliver, Xena the Warrior Kitty, Paladine, Melchior, and Mamma Mia!
ABOUT THE BOOK:
When legally separated Muri Pond, a librarian, hauls her kids, teenager Nova and eleven year-old Truman, out to the tiny town of Murkee, Oregon, where her father, Joe Pond lived and died, she’s confronted by a neighbor’s harassment over water rights and Joe’s legacy: a fence made from old oven doors.
The fence and accompanying house trailer horrify rebellious Nova, who runs away to the drug-infested streets of Seattle. Muri searches for her daughter and for something to believe in, all the while trying to save her inheritance from the conniving neighbor who calls her dad Chief Joseph.
Along with Joe’s sister, Aunt Lutie, and the Red Rock Tabernacle Ladies, Muri must rediscover the faith her alcoholic dad never abandoned in order to reclaim her own spiritual path.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Christa Parrish graduated high school at 16, with every intention of becoming a surgeon. After college, however, her love of all things creative led her in another direction, and she worked in both theatre and journalism.
A winner of Associated Press awards for her reporting, Christa gave up her career after the birth of her son, Jacob. She continued to write from home, doing pro bono work for the New York Family Policy Council, where her articles appeared in Focus on the Family’s Citizen magazine. She was also a finalist in World magazine’s WORLDview short story contest, sponsored by WestBow press. She now teaches literature and writing to high school students, is a homeschool mom, and lives with her husband, author Chris Coppernoll, and son in upstate New York, where she is at work on her third novel.
ABOUT THE BOOK:
Her Rescue Might Be the Miracle They Needed Things like this don’t happen in Beck County. Deputy Benjamin Patil is the one to find the infant girl, hours old, abandoned in a field. As police work to identify the mother, Ben and his wife, Abbi, seem like the obvious couple to serve as foster parents. But the newborn’s arrival opens old wounds for Abbi and shines a harsh light on how much Ben has changed since a devastating military tour. Their marriage teeters on the brink and now they must choose to reclaim what they once had or lose each other forever.
If you would like to read the first chapter of Watch Over Me, go HERE
Learn more about Christa and her books on her Website
MY REVIEW:
Emotionally charged novel of a couple whose distant marriage is haunted by his nightmares of his military experiences in Afghanistan and her struggles with a distorted self image. When they become foster parents of an abandoned newborn, Ben and Abbi are forced to work together to care for her. The couple then becomes involved with Matthew, a deaf high school boy who needs a kidney transplant, when he begins to do odd jobs around their house. With the baby Silvia at the center, the lives of the Patils and Matthew become woven together in a story full of twists and surprises.
Watch Over Me is a story that covers some difficult situations that are hard to read at times…but it ultimately reveals that only the Lord can change lives of total despair to lives of joy and peace.
As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases.
Many links on this site are supplied by the Reviewer groups that provide the books I review. Occasionally other links may be my personal associate links.
When her black sheep brother disappears, Amanda Janvier eagerly takes in her sixteen year-old niece Tally. The girl is practically an orphan: motherless, and living with a father who raises Tally wherever he lands– in a Buick, a pizza joint, a horse farm–and regularly takes off on wild schemes. Amanda’s idyllic home seems the perfect place for her niece Tally to stay while her vagabond brother is in Europe, but the white picket fence life Amanda wants to provide is a mere illusion. Amanda’s husband Neil refuses to admit their teenage son Chase, is haunted by the horrific fire he survived when he was four, and their marriage is crumbling while each looks the other way.
Susan Meissner cannot remember a time when she wasn’t driven to put her thoughts down on paper. Her novel The Shape of Mercy was a Publishers Weekly pick for best religious fiction of 2008 and a Christian Book Award finalist. Susan and her husband live in Southern California, where he is a pastor and a chaplain in the Air Force Reserves. They are the parents of four grown children.
Claudette Fioré used to turn heads and break hearts. She relished the glamorous Hollywood lifestyle because she had what it takes: money, youth, fame, and above all, beauty. But age has withered that beauty, and a crooked accountant has taken her wealth, leaving the proud widow penniless and alone.
Over the years, Melody Carlson has worn many hats, from pre-school teacher to youth counselor to political activist to senior editor. But most of all, she loves to write! Currently she freelances from her home. In the past ten years, she has published more than a hundred books for children, teens, and adults, with sales totaling more than 2.5 million and many titles appearing on the ECPA Bestsellers List.
Piper Wick left her hometown of Pickwick, North Carolina, twelve years ago, shook the dust off her feet, ditched her drawl and her family name, and made a new life for herself as a high-powered public relations consultant in LA. She’s even “engaged to be engaged” to the picture-perfect U.S. Congressman Grant Spangler.
After Tamara Leigh earned a Master’s Degree in Speech and Language Pathology, she and her husband decided to start a family, with plans for Tamara to continue in her career once she became a mother.
