4 Stars. I’m not a huge fan of Westerns but this book caught my eye when a friend of a friend mentioned it on Facebook. I really enjoyed it. There’s no denying the Western background but the themes of family, love, and loss are universal. I would actually recommend this for a book club. Jess’s mother died in childbirth and Jess […]
4 Stars. The Hildegard in these pages was fascinating. She was a strategist but she also had a heart to care for others. She was “only” a woman but she was a woman with connections and she wasn’t afraid to use them. As she grew older, she called out hypocrisy and inhumane practices. God was always female in her visions. She was […]
Jana at That Artsy Reader Girl invited us to share “Books I Wish I Could Read Again for the First Time” this week. At first glance the topic may sound weird but there is a difference between re-reading an old favorite and reading a new favorite for the very first time. There’s so much excitement as you realize how much you love […]
Welcome to my weekly update for August 22, 2021! If you’ve been around here much, you probably know that my husband and I travel with his job. You might not know that our permanent home is in the mountains of western North Carolina (near Asheville). Anyway, on Tuesday, Tropical Storm Fred came roaring up over Continue Reading…
5 Stars. As I read this, I periodically thought of that adage stating that to be a writer, “You simply sit down at the typewriter, open your veins, and bleed” (I’m going to attribute this to Walter “Red” Smith, citing Quote Investigator). Ms. Ward’s pain and grief comes through in these pages almost viscerally. Growing up poor […]
Jana at That Artsy Reader Girl invited us to share our ten favorite places to read this week. I don’t have pictures of all of these places but here goes! The beach. Well, now that I’ve traveled enough to really understand that not all beaches are warm, let me specify a warm, sunny beach. I Continue Reading…
Welcome to my weekly update for August 15, 2021! We’ve had a rainy week in Anchorage so we haven’t ventured out much. We did go to the Alaska Botanical Gardens last Saturday. It was small but beautiful! My husband’s cousin and his wife are flying up from San Diego on Thursday to spend a long Continue Reading…
4 Stars. I found this book absolutely fascinating. The remarkable thing about Ada’s survival is that she knew very little about surviving Arctic conditions. She was raised in the village of Nome. She’d seen some Inuit (the preferred term now) elders hunting and employing traditional skills when she was very young but she […]
3 Stars. I usually read a couple of books set in whatever state my husband and I are currently in. I’m really enjoying books set in Alaska so I’ve read more than usual. Add this one to the list. It was a solid, quick mystery that left me guessing. Something about the syntax of the writing did leave me re-reading sentences a few […]
3.5 Stars. I read and truly enjoyed Witchmark, the first book in this series, back in 2018 but that was during my blogging/reviewing break. I read this one and couldn’t remember much at all about events from the earlier book so I was pretty lost. There weren’t many contextual clues to help me fill in the blanks either. I do […]
Jana at That Artsy Reader Girl invited us to share ten secondary characters who deserve more love. I have a shelf full of books featuring characters I love on GoodReads so this was pretty easy to compile. I used to host a meme called Character Connection on my first turn at book blogging so I’ll link to some of those […]