Sundin (Embers in the London Sky) delivers a pulse-pounding tale of divided loyalties during WWII. Cilla van der Zee is a member of the Dutch resistance who infiltrates the local Nazi Party to gather intel, but as conditions grow increasingly violent, she decides to escape the country. Agreeing to serve as a Nazi spy in the U.K.—but planning to change her name and disappear once she arrives in England—she boards a U-boat headed across the North Sea. Things go awry, however, and she winds up rowing a fishing boat to the Scottish shore, where Navy lieutenant Lachlan Mackenzie brings her to the police and she’s recruited to be a double agent. Cilla and Lachlan start working together, and his initial distrust turns into curiosity and then attraction as the pair bond over their faith. But when Cilla’s Nazi contacts begin to suspect that she’s hiding something and orchestrate a plan to bring her to Germany, she and her Scottish allies must find a way to protect her. Some readers may be distracted by the occasional cliché (Cilla’s “liveliness and cleverness invigorated [Lachlan] more than the sea air”), but Sundin’s tight plotting and snappy dialogue keeps the suspense high as the plot builds to its satisfying conclusion. It’s captivating stuff. (Feb.)

Reviewed on 11/22/2024 | Details & Permalink

Lost memories, bad actors, and natural disasters animate Goddard’s uneven latest (Hidden in the Night). Former U.S. military photographer Remi Grant is in Germany when a shooting at a café and an explosion a few hours later land her in the hospital without any memory of what happened between the incidents. When a shady stranger comes by the hospital to question her about it, she’s spooked and flees the country. She takes refuge at the Cedar Trails Lodge, a retreat in Washington State, where she hopes to recover her lost memory. Instead, she faces a series of increasingly perilous threats—ominous notes, lodge guests who might be spies, and eventually a catastrophic storm that forces her to rely on her faith (and fellow guest Hawk Beckett, a former military pilot) to survive. Individual scenes thrum with tension, but the narrative as a whole is undermined by contrivances. Remi’s memory loss in particular feels like a plot device, especially when she suddenly recovers the entire episode at the height of the present-day action. The result is an intermittently propulsive yet poorly constructed puzzle. (Feb.)

Reviewed on 11/29/2024 | Details & Permalink

A family copes with personal and health challenges in the tender latest from Carlson (The Christmas Tree Farm). Honey McKerry, 66, is doing her best to care for her dementia-stricken husband, CT, who frequently forgets where he is, injures himself, and wanders off their property. Their daughter, Jewel, a single mother, decides to return to their Oregon farm to help out. When she arrives to find her mother at the ER with her injured father, who doesn’t recognize her, she fears she’s bitten off more than she can chew. Thankfully, her parents’ charming neighbor Miguel is willing to help out after CT falls again and Jewel comes up with a plan to purchase a one-story modular home for her parents and turn the farmhouse into a bed and breakfast. To make it happen, she’ll also need the help of high school flame Aaron Hanford, who owns the modular home company and is looking to reignite their romance. All the while, Jewel grapples with the pain of watching her father become less and less like the man she knows. The sections from CT’s perspective are powerfully rendered, and Carlson adds emotional depth with moments of humor and the characters’ enduring faith in the face of loss. This is sure to tug on readers’ heartstrings. (Mar.)

Reviewed on 11/29/2024 | Details & Permalink

A librarian becomes the heroine of her own story in this frothy contemporary from Monzon (All’s Fair in Love and Christmas). Six months after losing her hair from alopecia—and being dumped by her fiancé as a result—Evangeline Kelly seeks a fresh start in Little Creek, Tenn. Determined to avoid getting hurt, she dodges the advances of rugged tattoo artist Tai Davis, turning her attention instead to matchmaking locals based on their reading habits. When it turns out that one of the men she’s trying to set up is already engaged, Tai proposes a deal: he’ll give Evangeline the inside scoop on the locals if she’ll go out with him. She reluctantly agrees, and as they bond over books and their faith, Evangeline realizes that her own skin-deep judgments—like the assumption that tatted-up Tai isn’t a “man of God”—are dashing her chances for love and happiness. The chemistry between the two flawed yet lovable leads sizzles, propelling the plot toward its sweet if predictable conclusion. Readers will be charmed. (Feb.)

Reviewed on 11/29/2024 | Details & Permalink

Eason (Target Acquired) resumes her Lake City Heroes series with a propulsive game of cat and mouse between a fire marshal and an arsonist who’s eerily familiar with her past. As the story opens, deputy fire marshal Jesslyn McCormick is called to investigate a recent fire set at her own church, bringing back memories of the blaze that killed most of her family 20 years earlier. After touring the crime scene, Jesslyn and FBI agent Nathan Carlisle are mostly in the dark about the criminal’s aims. But when the arsonist strikes again, this time at Jesslyn’s gym, it becomes clear that she’s the target, even if the motive remains murky. As the threat mounts and Nathan becomes increasingly protective of Jesslyn, clues emerge—suspicious jewelry left at the scene of the fires; new, unsettling information about Jesslyn’s father—that ratchet up the suspense to hair-raising levels. Eason ably balances the escalating paranoia with heartfelt emotion as Jesslyn turns to God for help weathering the crisis and coming to grips with her past. The result is a thrill ride worth taking. (Jan.)

Reviewed on 11/15/2024 | Details & Permalink

A decades-long quest for a stash of gold buried in the Sierra Nevada sets the stage for this heart-pounding historical from Connealy (Into the Sunset). It’s 1874 when handsome Brody MacKenzie shows up at the Two Harts ranch looking for his younger brothers, Lock and Thayne. The pair has run away from New York to the California ranch, from which they plan to venture into the Sierra Nevada on a fabled treasure hunt first undertaken by their grandfather. Though the search has already caused their family considerable heartache (their father’s “gold fever” compelled him to abandon the family for long stretches and ultimately descend into alcoholism), Brody grudgingly agrees to help—as does Ellie Hunt, who runs the Two Harts ranch with her siblings, and who becomes increasingly close to Brody as the two bond over their faith. The closer they get to the treasure, however, the greater the obstacles that stand in their way—not least of which is the growing number of rival treasure hunters, including Ellie’s shifty ex-fiancé. Connealy heightens the stakes as the trek grows more treacherous, culminating in a tense climax in which the group must determine where their loyalties lie and what they’re willing to sacrifice for the gold. Atmospheric and action-packed, this will keep readers on tenterhooks. (Feb.)

Reviewed on 11/15/2024 | Details & Permalink

This riveting historical reaches into the pages of the New Testament to reimagine the life of Mary Magdalene. Smith (The Ark and the Dove) paints Mary as a fragile young woman whose mother died young and who is raised mostly by servants while her father tends to his business. When he fails to return from a trip, Mary’s best friend Susanna—who’s possessed by demons—urges her to summon spirits that might help find him. A desperate Mary agrees but regrets it when the spirits of multiple dead family members refuse to leave her. Wracked by anxiety, she hides evidence of her possession long enough to go through with an arranged marriage but her husband discovers the truth and banishes her. When he dies a few years later, a friend invites Mary and Susanna to come on a trip to see a new preacher named Jesus in hopes they might be healed by him. From there, the narrative chronicles Jesus’s public ministry, death, and resurrection through Mary’s eyes. Smith gets especially inventive in crafting Mary’s childhood and young adulthood, about which little is known—her demonic possession is powerfully rendered. The result is a sharp and nuanced take on the murky life of a biblical figure and the volatile period in which she lived. Readers will be spellbound. (Feb.)

Reviewed on 11/08/2024 | Details & Permalink

Deibel revisits the lush Irish countryside of The Irish Matchmaker in this heartwarming if somewhat uneventful historical. Saoirse Fagan has worried she brings bad luck ever since a house fire killed the rest of her family. Seeking a fresh start, she travels from Westmeath to county Donegal to find work as a maid. When her plans fall through and she winds up on a sheep farm belonging to Owen McCready and his sister, Aileen, master weaver Owen—who’s recently injured his arm—reluctantly conscripts her to fill an order of tweed fabric. As he teaches Saoirse to weave, sparks begin to fly, but when the town suffers a series of misfortunes—including a deadly landslide—Saoirse is sure her “ill fate” is to blame. She tries to run away to protect those she loves, and it’s up to Owen, Aileen, and other newfound friends to bring her back and help her start anew through her faith. This crisis point feels somewhat anticlimactic, and there’s little standing in the way of Owen and Saoirse’s relationship minus some miscommunications and Saoirse’s insecurities. Still, the rich, atmospheric background and winning chemistry between the leads mostly make up for it. The result is a cheery and charming tale of second chances. (Jan.)

Reviewed on 11/01/2024 | Details & Permalink

A gutsy woman is thrust into an unexpected marriage amid rising hostilities between Great Britain and the American colonies, in this sweeping historical from Frantz (A Matter of Honor). Juliet Catesby lives with her father on a Virginia plantation, where she helps him grow tobacco and indigo. She harbors a grudge against Leith Buchanan, a widowed Scottish tobacco farmer whose shady business practices have left the plantation deeply in debt. When Leith travels to the colonies to visit his trading partners and find a new bride, Juliet’s surprised to find she enjoys his company—though she has no interest in marriage and tries to set him up with her younger sister, Loveday. When Juliet’s matchmaking efforts fail and her father orders her to marry Leith in exchange for his forgiveness of the plantation’s debt, she’s humiliated and tries to resist, but desperate circumstances eventually force her to agree and begin a new life in Scotland. As Juliet and Leith navigate their tenuous union, their faith lends them the strength to endure unexpected challenges, including business intrigue, family jealousies, and a ghost from Leith’s past that threatens to destroy his reputation. Frantz’s characters leap off the page, propelling an ambitious, twisty plot that draws energy from the tensions of the Revolutionary era. The results are captivating. (Jan.)

Reviewed on 10/25/2024 | Details & Permalink

Ogle (Of Love and Treason) sets this captivating historical in an ancient Turkey roiling with religious tension. It’s been three years since 20-year-old Demi’s parents, sister, and fiancée were killed by Diocletian’s anti-Christian regime, and she’s still wrestling with guilt for renouncing her faith in order to survive. She and her brother Theseus work as coral divers, using their meager wages to buy food for the secluded, resource-starved Christian city of Myra on the Mediterranean coast. When Theseus is bitten by a moray eel, Demi gets him medical aid with the help of a passing stranger who turns out to be the city’s new pastor, Nikolas. As the two grow closer, Demi discovers that Nikolas has traumas of his own, stemming from an accident that killed his older brother and left him to inherit his father’s shipping company. But there’s not much time to work through their feelings before they must flee Roman soldiers intent on forcing them to swear allegiance to the emperor. Ogle keeps the suspense sky-high as sparks fly between Demi and Nikolas and both question how far they’re willing to go to uphold their faith. It’s a winning mix of thrills and heart. (Feb.)

Reviewed on 10/25/2024 | Details & Permalink