Fans of Christian romance will delight in this tale of salvation through love.
A highly sought-after artist by day and clandestine graffiti prankster by night, Roman Velasco has shut his heart—until Grace Moore shows up on his doorstep.
Grace has overcome too much in her life: she has survived her parents’ violent deaths; she has given up her own studies to support her husband through college only to find him cheating on her in their own house; and she has transcended the shock of an unplanned pregnancy. Through it all, Jesus has stood by her, even appearing as an angel to comfort her when she was a grieving 7-year-old trying to find a way to endure. Recently, she has found a home for herself and her 5-month-old son, Samuel, but living with the Garcias, who had hoped to adopt Samuel, is difficult, especially since Selah consistently pushes Grace away, casting herself as the boy’s constant maternal presence. So when Grace accepts a job as the temperamental Roman’s personal assistant, complete with a cottage to herself —a cottage where she can start to separate from Selah and her family, where she can build a life for herself and Samuel —it's a dream come true. Roman’s rough language and atheism, however, trouble Grace, just as Grace's spirituality and privacy trouble Roman. After all, he's used to easy women and commitment-free interludes. Christian novelist Rivers (Earth Psalms, 2016, etc.) deftly threads Roman’s and Grace’s lives together as they tiptoe around their emotional scars, eventually shifting into a dance of tentative steps toward a love neither can resist.
Fans of Christian romance will delight in this tale of salvation through love.Pub Date: Feb. 6, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-4964-0790-0
Page Count: 500
Publisher: Tyndale House
Review Posted Online: Nov. 11, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2017
These letters from some important executive Down Below, to one of the junior devils here on earth, whose job is to corrupt mortals, are witty and written in a breezy style seldom found in religious literature. The author quotes Luther, who said: "The best way to drive out the devil, if he will not yield to texts of Scripture, is to jeer and flout him, for he cannot bear scorn." This the author does most successfully, for by presenting some of our modern and not-so-modern beliefs as emanating from the devil's headquarters, he succeeds in making his reader feel like an ass for ever having believed in such ideas. This kind of presentation gives the author a tremendous advantage over the reader, however, for the more timid reader may feel a sense of guilt after putting down this book. It is a clever book, and for the clever reader, rather than the too-earnest soul.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1942
ISBN: 0060652934
Page Count: 53
Publisher: Macmillan
Review Posted Online: Oct. 17, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1943
Entertaining and thoroughly engrossing.
Another reboot of Jane Austen?!? Hadlow pulls it off in a smart, heartfelt novel devoted to bookish Mary, middle of the five sisters in Pride and Prejudice.
Part 1 recaps Pride and Prejudice through Mary’s eyes, climaxing with the humiliating moment when she sings poorly at a party and older sister Elizabeth goads their father to cut her off in front of everyone. The sisters’ friend Charlotte, who marries the unctuous Mr. Collins after Elizabeth rejects him, emerges as a pivotal character; her conversations with Mary are even tougher-minded here than those with Elizabeth depicted by Austen. In Part 2, two years later, Mary observes on a visit that Charlotte is deferential but remote with her husband; she forms an intellectual friendship with the neglected and surprisingly nice Mr. Collins that leads to Charlotte’s asking Mary to leave. In Part 3, Mary finds refuge in London with her kindly aunt and uncle, Mr. and Mrs. Gardiner. Mrs. Gardiner is the second motherly woman, after Longbourn housekeeper Mrs. Hill, to try to undo the psychic damage wrought by Mary’s actual mother, shallow, status-obsessed Mrs. Bennet, by building up her confidence and buying her some nice clothes (funded by guilt-ridden Lizzy). Sure enough, two suitors appear: Tom Hayward, a poetry-loving lawyer who relishes Mary’s intellect but urges her to also express her feelings; and William Ryder, charming but feckless inheritor of a large fortune, whom naturally Mrs. Bennet loudly favors. It takes some maneuvering to orchestrate the estrangement of Mary and Tom, so clearly right for each other, but debut novelist Hadlow manages it with aplomb in a bravura passage describing a walking tour of the Lake District rife with seething complications furthered by odious Caroline Bingley. Her comeuppance at Mary’s hands marks the welcome final step in our heroine’s transformation from a self-doubting wallflower to a vibrant, self-assured woman who deserves her happy ending. Hadlow traces that progression with sensitivity, emotional clarity, and a quiet edge of social criticism Austen would have relished.
Entertaining and thoroughly engrossing.Pub Date: March 31, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-12941-3
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: Dec. 22, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2020
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