Friday, February 26, 2010

Secrets by Robin Jones Gunn & Beneath a Summer Sky by Deborah Raney

These two books were read as part of a Spring Value Fiction Blog Tour by WaterBrook Multnomah.  They are reprinting some earlier books with updated covers and releasing them with value prices – only $6.99!  Thank you to them for providing my copies for the review.

 

Secrets

Jessica Morgan is a young woman who decides to run away from her past and start a new life in a small town in Oregon.  Unfortunately she makes quite an entrance in the town of Glenbrooke and meets Kyle, a paramedic that everybody in town seems to adore.  She also gets off on the wrong foot in her teaching job when she meets the interim principal, Charlotte, who is determined to find out more of Jessica’s past.

I loved this book and while parts of it might have been somewhat predictable, that’s ok when the overall story is well written.  The characters were fun and varied and I enjoyed every page.

Robin Jones Gunn has long been a favorite author of mine and my copies of her Sisterchicks books are dog-eared and have post-it notes sticking on the pages.  She writes the type of book that draws you in and makes you want to read well into the night.  It was interesting to me to find that Secrets was her first adult novel, first published in 1995. 

Thank you to WaterBrook Multnomah for sending a copy of this book to me for review. 

 

Beneath

Daria returns to the United States to mourn the death of her husband while they were serving as missionaries South America.  She and her baby girl, who was born after Daria returned to the US, begin to move forward in their lives and Daria starts to feel love for her boss.  After their wedding she receives a stunning telegram telling her that her first husband was found alive!

What follows is an almost heart wrenching story as she tries to make some sense of her life.  Trying to choose between these two men in the unbelievable circumstances she finds herself in is almost hard to read.

This book was harder for me to get into, but that could be just from the subject matter.  Since I absolutely cannot imagine losing my husband it was hard to read about that in a story.  But then the book does move on as she finds a new love and becomes happy again.  Then the twists and turns begin and stay with you until the very end as you wait to see who Daria chooses.

Thank you to WaterBrook Multnomah for also sending a copy of this book for me to review.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...
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Ginger said...

Thank you so much for your very sweet comment on my post...awesome food for thought! Both of these books sound really good. I've got several books on my nightstand that I just can't seem to get finished...one of these days!