Okay - thought I should do a formal post on this and clarify everything. I am having a giveaway for anyone who votes for my friend Shelley McCarthy. She is trying to win some money to go towards au pair expenses. She is the mother of twin boys and she lost her husband to cancer last year. She has returned to school and that is the reason for the au pair. You can vote DAILY here.
After you vote, come back here and just leave a comment - I am going to leave the sticky post at the top until the contest is over to remind everyone to vote DAILY!
This contest is open internationally! If the winner is from U.S. or Canada, they will get to pick 2 books from the list below - If the winner is not U.S./Canada - then they will win a $25 gift card to Amazon to choose their own book(s).
So What Are You Waiting For? VOTE
(If you voted at the other post - those will be added in to the final count for the drawing.)
This giveaway ends June 15th so you could have a ton of entries by then! Please leave your email address with your comment.
It is time for a FIRST Wild Card Tour book review! If you wish to join the FIRST blog alliance, just click the button. We are a group of reviewers who tour Christian books. A Wild Card post includes a brief bio of the author and a full chapter from each book toured. The reason it is called a FIRST Wild Card Tour is that you never know if the book will be fiction, non~fiction, for young, or for old...or for somewhere in between! Enjoy your free peek into the book!
You never know when I might play a wild card on you!
***Special thanks to Anna Coelho Silva | Publicity Coordinator, Book Group | Strang Communications for sending me a review copy.***
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Born in Baltimore, Maryland, Mike now lives in Hanover, Pennsylvania, with his wife, Jen, and their three daughters. He is a regular columnist for AVirtuousWoman.org, was a newspaper correspondent/columnist for over three years, has published several articles for The Candle of Prayer inspirational booklets, and has edited and contributed to numerous Christian-themed Web sites and e-newsletters. Mike is a member of the American Christian Fiction Writers association, the Christian Fiction Blog Alliance, the Relief Writer’s Network, and FaithWriters, and plans to join International Thriller Writers once published. He received his BA degree in sports exercise and medicine from Messiah College and his MBS degree in theology from Master’s Graduate School of Divinity.
List Price: $13.99
Paperback: 281 pages
Publisher: Realms; 1 edition (May 4, 2010)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1599799189
ISBN-13: 978-1599799186
AND NOW...THE FIRST CHAPTER:
Present day
As he pressed his beat-up Ford down an uneven stretch of asphalt, Rob Shields had death on his mind. His own. The void within him had grown to colossal proportions, opening its gaping black maw and swallowing any hope or happiness he once had. Lost forever. No chance of return. Death welcomed him, enticed him, drew him in with its easy ways and comfortable charm.
Oh, he knew he would never do it. Taking his own life had a certain appeal to it, held a certain freedom that his bleak outlook on life longed for, but it took a much braver— or dumber—man than he to actually pull it off. But still he wanted, maybe needed, to pretend he was as serious as murder. And that meant it was time to see the house. If he was to fantasize about putting an end to his journey, he at least wanted to see the place that had promised a better life. Just one visit, one look, would satisfy him.
He glanced over at the empty passenger seat then into the rearview mirror at the vacant spot in the backseat. Kelly would be jabbering about what beautiful country this was.
“Look at the wildflowers. Oh, I love wildflowers.”
And little Jimmy would be singing away to his MP3 player, getting the lyrics all wrong.
Man, he missed them.
A familiar sadness overcame him, and he once again thought of his own death. He couldn’t bear to live without them any longer . . .
Life had become a great burden, an endless source of sadness. Every day was lived in despair. Unhappiness and discontent had become his bedfellows. He would see the
house, allow himself one evening of pleasant dreams about what could have been, then return to Massachusetts to live out the rest of his life in isolated misery. And in his mind,
that in itself was a form of suicide. A living death.
Rob depressed the accelerator, and the odometer needle climbed nearer to seventy. On the horizon, heat devils performed an arrhythmic dance, and the sun-scorched
blacktop appeared to be glossed with mercury. The road cut through pastureland like a hardened artery. To his right, a handful of horses stood motionless, their noses to the ground. To his left, the land stretched out like a green sea, undulating slowly to an even tempo.
Mayfield had to be no more than an hour away, but the fuel
gauge said he needed gas now. Up ahead, an elderly man in a ball cap was on both knees working his garden. Rob slowed the car and stopped beside him. The older gent turned his body slowly, revealing a patch over one eye.
Rob leaned across the center console and spoke loudly. “Where’s the nearest gas station?”
The old man cupped one hand around his ear and raised his eyebrows.
Rob said it louder. “Where’s the nearest gas station?”
The man nodded in the direction Rob had been traveling. “’Bout a mile down the road. Shell station on the left.”
“Thanks,” Rob said, and he pulled away. In the rearview mirror he could see the man watch him for a moment then return to his garden.
Exactly one mile down the road Rob steered into a cracked-asphalt lot and up to an old-style analog gas pump, the kind with the rotating numbers. He didn’t even know those kind still existed. The station had seen better days. From the sun-bleached Shell sign to the grime-coated plate-glass window of the little convenience store to the scarred and faded blacktop, everything spoke of neglect. This was one outpost time had forgotten.
Rob got out of the car and noticed the handwritten sign on the pump: Pre-pay inside. Management.
Walking across the lot, he could feel the day’s heat radiating through the soles of his shoes. A little bell chimed when he opened the door. A thin, fair-skinned man with shoulder-length hair nodded at him from behind the counter.
“Thirty in gas,” Rob said, reaching for his wallet.
The clerk punched some buttons on the register and said, “Thirty.”
Rob paid him. “How far to Mayfield?”
The clerk looked up. “Where?”
“Mayfield.”
After a quick shrug, “Fifty, sixty miles.” He looked like he wanted to say more, so Rob waited. “Not much in Mayfield.”
“A house,” Rob said.
“Your house?”
“Should have been.” Then he turned and left. The bell chimed again on his way out.
At the pump, Rob unscrewed the fuel cap and inserted the nozzle. Jimmy always loved to squeeze the trigger.
“Can I pull the trigger, Daddy?”
That’s what he called it, a trigger. He’d pretend the nozzle was a cowboy gun. Thoughts of his son flooded Rob’s mind, and he did nothing to stop them. Now was a time for remembering, for soaking up every good feeling and every fond image left to enjoy.
When the rolling numbers hit seventeen dollars, a quick movement caught Rob’s attention. He jerked his head up and toward the side of the store where a stand of shrubs sat quiet and motionless. Then he heard it, a muffled giggle, and his breath caught in his throat. He knew that giggle. Knew it like the sound of his own voice. The movement was there again. An image ran from the shrubs to the rear of the store and out of sight. The nozzle snapped off and fell to the ground with a solid clunk. Rob knew that run too, the shortened stride, the slightly exaggerated pumping of the arms. He could feel his heart thudding all the way down to his fingertips.
It was Jimmy. His little buddy.
Crossing the lot in large walking strides at first, then a run, Rob rounded the building fully expecting to find his son, Jimmy, red-faced with brown hair matted to his forehead,
waiting in a crouch to scare him.
“I got you, Daddy!”
Instead, all he found were a few rusted-out fifty-gallon drums, a stack of dry-rotted tires, and a haphazard pile of rebar. His breathing rate had quickened from the short sprint, and beads of sweat now popped out on his forehead and upper lip. He wiped them away with the sleeve of his T-shirt.
He walked the length of the building, scanning the field of
knee-high grass behind it. “Jimmy?”
But no answer came. Not even a rustle of grass. And no giggle.
“Jimmy,” Rob said in a normal volume, more to himself than the phantom of his son that had haunted him now for going on two months. The visions—the psychologist called
them hallucinations—had come frequently at first, sometimes as much as once a day, then grew more sporadic. Until now, he hadn’t had one for over two weeks. At first,
Rob was convinced there was a purpose to them, a meaning. Maybe they even meant Jimmy was still alive, waiting for his daddy to find him and rescue him. Maybe. The psychologist disagreed. Rob thought he was a quack and stopped attending the weekly sessions.
Scolding himself for once again allowing his frazzled imagination to dupe him, Rob returned to his car like a man taking his final stroll down the long corridor to the electric
chair. The sun’s heat now seemed more intense, and his shirt clung to his back and chest.
He picked the nozzle up from the ground and balanced it in his hand.
“Can I pull the trigger, Daddy?”
Every time he pumped gas he’d think of Jimmy. It was one of those little things that would haunt him the rest of his life. But it was a haunting he welcomed. After squeezing out the rest of his thirty bucks, Rob returned the nozzle to the pump, opened the car door, and was hit by a breath of heat.
Sitting in his car was like hanging out in an oven, but Rob did not turn the ignition. The air outside was still and the heat sweltering. Sweat seeped from his pores, wetting the front of his shirt. He thought of the image of his son and that familiar gait and noticed his hands were trembling. Tears formed in his eyes, blurring his vision.
“Jimmy.” He said the name again, as if it were some holy word that could cross the span of the finite and infinite and bring his little boy back. He wanted to hold him, bury his
face in Jimmy’s hair, and draw in the smell of sweat and cookies.
“I like how you smell, Daddy. You smell like a daddy.”
Wiping the tears from his eyes, Rob started the car, pulled away from the pump, and headed east toward Mayfield.
As he drove, the empty seats beside and behind him burned like hot coals. As much as he tried, he could not dismiss the memory of Kelly reaching over and placing a graceful hand on his thigh, her hair rippling in the wind, a smile stretched across her face. Nor could he stop glancing in the rearview mirror, half hoping to see Jimmy bouncing against the back of the seat.
Rob slapped at the steering wheel. He knew he was going mad, that the solitude of the last three months had nearly driven him over the edge and blurred the line between reality and fantasy. And he was obsessing again. He had to think of something else, so he turned his mind to the house his great-aunt Wilda had left him. He’d never seen the place, had never even met Wilda. But when he found out he was the sole heir to the house, his mother raved about how much Kelly and Jimmy would love the place. That was six months ago.
Before his world got flipped on its head and everything went to pot.
Before he went insane and entertained thoughts of death. The boy and his mommy walk back to the car to clean his hands. He’s been working on a candy apple for some time, and it’s creating quite the mess. Daddy told them he’d meet them at the lemonade stand. Lemonade is great for a warm day, he said. The grass in the parking area is brown and ground into the dry dirt from everyone walking and driving on it. His mommy is holding his clean hand and singing a Sunday school song about Joshua and the battle of Jericho. The boy is still thinking about the eagle the man behind the table was holding. He never knew eagles were so big. And when it looked at him, it seemed to see right past his skin and into his insides. They had other things at the stand too—an owl with big yellow eyes, a couple different kinds of snakes, and an aquarium full of toads—but the eagle was his favorite. He wondered what it would be like to be able to fly like an eagle, way up in the sky where no one could bother you, seeing the whole world at once.
“Here we are,” Mommy says. Their car looks extra clean because Daddy washed it just before they left. The black paint looks like a dark mirror and makes him look funny, like one of those curvy mirrors at the carnival.
Mommy opens the trunk and leans over into it, looking for the napkins. It reminds him of a poem about a crocodile with a toothache. He wishes he could remember all the words. Something about the crocodile opening so wide and the dentist climbing inside, then SNAP! Mommy always claps her hands real hard at that part, and it always makes him jump.
A man comes up behind Mommy. He’s wearing dirty old blue jeans and a tight black T-shirt. His face is big and round, and there are a lot of little scars on his cheeks. His eyes are placed real close together and pushed back into his head. With his shaggy hair and large face, the boy thinks he looks like a head of cabbage.
“Excuse me,” the man says. He reaches out to touch Mommy’s hip then looks at the boy.
Mommy jumps and stands up fast. She turns around and looks at the man, crossing her arms in front of her. She seems nervous. “Yes?”
Cabbage Head looks nervous too. He pushes his hand through his hair, and the boy notices the sweat on his forehead. It makes his hair wet where it comes out of the skin. “It’s your husband—”
Now Mommy looks scared. “Wha–what’s wrong?” Her voice shakes.
“I need you to come with me.” He looks at the boy with those deep eyes then back at Mommy. “The boy can stay here at the car. We’ll only be a minute.”
Mommy bites her lower lip and looks around. She kneels beside the boy. She looks real scared and is breathing fast. Her hands are shaking, and she’s still biting her lower lip. “Stay here, OK? Don’t leave the car. I’ll be right back. Don’t leave the car.”
She hugs the boy then kisses him on the cheek. Opening the back door of the car, she motions for the boy to get in. “Remember, stay here. Don’t go anywhere. I’ll be back for you soon.” She closes the door, blows him a kiss, and leaves with Cabbage Head. The boy watches as they walk away and disappear behind a trailer.
It doesn’t take long for it to get too hot to stay in the car. He opens the door and slides out, staying low to the ground so no one will see him. He leans against the car, but the black metal is too hot. So he sits Indian-style on the ground next to the back tire and picks at the grass. He wonders what could be wrong with Daddy. Did he have a heart attack or get cancer? Mr. Davies next door got cancer last year and died. This scares the boy. Maybe Daddy’s just lost and the man needs Mommy to help find him. He thinks about the man and his deep eyes. They were like the eagle’s eyes. Something about them didn’t look right, though. The boy feels like if he looked at them long enough he’d see things that would give him nightmares for a very long time. And they would see things in him too.
It seems like a long time of sitting by the tire and picking at brown grass before the boy hears footsteps coming, the sound of dry grass crunching like stale potato chips. He stands and looks around, hoping it’s Mommy. But Cabbage Head is coming toward him, alone. Where’s Mommy? Is she with Daddy, and the man is coming to take him to them?
Cabbage Head comes close. He’s sweating even worse now, and his hair looks like it has been messed up. He offers the boy his hand, a big meaty thing that looks like a bear’s paw. “C’mon, son. You must come with me.”
“Where’s my mom?” the boy asks. He notices his own voice is shaking.
“She’s fine. She wants me to bring you to her.”
The boy can tell the man is lying. He wants to run away but is afraid he’ll never find Mommy or Daddy on his own. “Where is she?”
Cabbage Head closes his hand and opens it again. His wide palm is all shiny with sweat. “Come. She’s waiting for you.”
There’s no way the boy is going to hold the man’s hand. He turns to run but the man catches him by the arm. “Oh, no, you don’t. You’re coming with me.”
The boy tries to holler, but the man’s sweaty hand is over his mouth, pressing so hard it hurts. The boy has never known what it is like to be so scared. He’s sure Cabbage Head is going to kill him, or worse, keep him alive but never allow him to see his mommy or daddy again.
What are you reading on Mondays is hosted by Sheila at One Person's Journey - You can hook up with the Mr. Linky there with your own post - but be sure and let me know what you are reading too! I don't feel like I made much headway on the books I had been reading/listening to prior to last week. Hopefully this week will be better.
I won these earrings from NGlassworks who was sponsoring a giveaway over at Leslie Loves Veggies (sorry about the photo - I couldn't seem to get a good shot!)
Lawyer Danielle Parkman is at her wit's end. Her son Max, a whipsmart teen with high-functioning autism, has always been a handful. But lately he's shutting down, using drugs and lashing out -- violently.
Desperate, Danielle brings Max to a top-flight psychiatric facility. But rather than reassurance, Danielle receives an agonizing diagnosis portraying a severely damaged, dangerous boy -- one she's never met.
Then Danielle finds Max unconscious and bloodied at the feet of a patient who has been brutally stabbed to death. Worse, Danielle is arrested as an accessory to the heinous crime.
In a baffling netherworld of doubt and fear, barred from contacting her son, Danielle clings to the thought of Max's innocence. But has she, too, lost touch with reality? Is her baby boy really a killer?
With the justice system bearing down on them both, Danielle steels herself to discover the truth -- no matter how horrifying. But only finding the true killer will absolve her from having to choose between her son and her soul.
This story begins with a little boy's dream. Janet Elder's son, Michael, for years begged for a dog. At one point, when he was about seven years old, there was even a PowerPoint plea entitled "My Dog." Janet almost caved, but then she thought about their city apartment, her and her husband's demanding jobs, and their need to get away. As much as she hated having a heartbroken boy on her hands, she remained steadfast: no dog. What does make her reconsider her long-standing position on a family dog is a breast cancer diagnosis.
Worried about the toll the illness would take on eleven-year-old Michael and her husband, Rich, Janet decides the anticipation and excitement over the arrival of a new puppy would be the perfect antidote to the strain on the family of months of treatments.
On Thanksgiving weekend, shortly after the treatments are completed, they bring home a sweet, mischievous, red-haired toy poodle they name Huck, who quickly and conclusively wins everyone's heart.
A few months later, the family ventures south to attend the Yankee's spring training and enjoy a much-needed vacation, leaving Huck for the first time with Janet's sister in Ramsey, New Jersy. Barely twenty-four hours into their trip, Janet gets a phone call that Huck has slipped through the backyard fence and run away. Brokenhearted and frantic, the family races home to begin a search for little Huck, who faces the threat of coyotes, raccoons, swamps, rain, freezing temperatures, and fast cars. Moved by the family's plight, strangers -- from schoolchildren to the police lieutenant -- join the search. But, as the days pass, finding a small puppy in a densely wooded area proves to be an incredible test of faith and determination.
Touching and warmhearted Huck is a page-turning story about resilience, the kindness of strangers, and hope.
Newport, Rhode Island, 1899, is a place of shimmering waves, sleek yachts, and ladies of leisure. Of opulent mansions that serve as summer cottages for the rich and famous. Home of railroad magnates and banking tycoons -- dashing young men and the women who aspire to marry them.
But it's not the place for lady novelists. Especially not those who pen disreputable dime novels. This poses a problem for Lilly Westbrook, because that's exactly what she does.
No one in Lilly's social set knows she pens fiction under the nom de plume Fannie Cole. Not her family or the wealthy young man about to propose to her. And especially not Jackson Grail, the long-lost beau who just bought her publishing company. . .and who stirs her heart more than she cares to admit.
But Lilly must put aside her feelings and follow the path that will maintain her family's social stature and provide the financial security everyone is depending on.
Now Lilly faces a double dilemma. Can she continue to protect her secret identity? And will she have the courage to choose the man who will risk it all just to win her heart?
Sometimes I still wake up shivering in the early hours of the morning, drowning in dreams of being out there in the ocean that summer, of looking up at the moon and feeling as invisible and free as a fish. But I'm jumping ahead, and to tell the story right I have to go back to the very beginning. To a place called Indigo Beach. To a boy with pale skin that glowed against the dark waves. To the start of something neither of us could have predicted, and which would mark us forever, making everything that came after and before seem like it belonged to another life.
Evan Waller is a monster. He has built a fortune from his willingness to buy and sell anything. . .and anyone. In search of new opportunities, Waller has just begun a new business venture: one that could lead to millions of deaths all over the globe.
On Waller's trail is Shaw, the mysterious operative from The Whole Truth, who must prevent Waller from closing his latest deal. Shaw's one chance to bring him down will come in the most unlikely of places: a serene, bucolic village in Provence.
But Waller's depravity and ruthlessness go deeper than Shaw knows. And now, there is someone else pursuing Waller in Provence: Reggie Campion, an agent for a secret vigilante group headquartered in a musty old English estate -- and she has an agenda of her own.
Hunting the same man and unaware of each other's mission, Shaw and Reggie will be caught in a deadly duel of nerve and wits.
A Scottish Highlands werewolf fleeing his destiny. . .
Not ready for the responsibilities of alpha and clan leader, Gideon MacInnes crosses the ocean, looking for a place to rest and think. But as a snowstorm closes in, Gideon is attacked by rogue wolves and stumbles, wounded and bleeding, to the doorstep of Carly Silver's tiny romance bookstore.
A warmhearted woman looking for a new pet. . .
Carly takes him in, treats his wounds, and goes to sleep with what she thinks is a large dog at the foot of her bed. But she wakes up to find that the beast has turned into a man -- a devastatingly handsome (and naked) man. . .
With a supernatural enemy stalking them, their only hope is to get back to Scotland, where Carly has to choose between becoming a werewolf herself, or giving up the one man she's ever truly loved. . .
For the first time in Killington High School history, the Jackrabbits football team is one win away from the district championship where it will face its most vicious rival, the Elmwood Heights Badgers. On the way to the game, the Jackrabbits' bus plunges into a river, killing every player except for bad-boy quarterback Cole Logan who is certain the crash was no accident -- given that Cole himself was severely injured in a brutal attack by three ski-masked men earlier that day. Bent on payback, Cole turns to a mysterious fan skilled in black magic to resurrect his teammates. But unless the undead Jackrabbits defeat their murderous rival on the field, the team is destined for hell. In a desperate race against time, with only his coach's clever daughter, Savannah Hickman, to assist him, Cole must lead his zombie team to victory. . .in a final showdown where the stakes aren't just life or death -- but damnation or salvation.
A young mother and her infant child are ruthlessly gunned down while returning to their car in the garage of a shopping mall. There are no witnesses, and Detective Lindsay Boxer is left with only one shred of evidence: a cryptic message scrawled across the windshield in blood red lipstick.
The same night, the wife of A-list actor Marcus Dowling is woken by a cat burglar who is about to steal millions of dollars' worth of precious jewels. In just seconds there is a nearly empty safe, a lifeless body, and another mystery that throws San Francisco into hysteria.
Lindsay spends every waking hour working with her partner, Rich -- and her desire for him threatens to tear apart both her engagement and the Women's Murder Club. Before Lindsay and her friends can piece together either case, one of the killers forces Lindsay to put her own life on the line -- but is it enough to save the city? With unparalleled danger and explosive action, The 9th Judgment is James Patterson at his compelling, unstoppable best!
On February 15, 1898 the American ship USS Maine mysteriously exploded in Havana Harbor. News of the blast quickly reached U.S. shores, where it was met by some not with alarm but with great enthusiasm.
A powerful group of war lovers agitated for the United States to exert its muscle across the seas. Theodore Roosevelt and Henry Cabot Lodge were influential politicians dismayed by the "closing" of the western frontier. William Randolph Hearst's New York Journal falsely heralded that Spain's "secret infernal machine" had destroyed the battleship, as Hearst himself saw great potential in whipping Americans into a frenzy. The Maine would provide the excuse they'd been waiting for.
On the other side were Roosevelt's former teacher, philosopher William James, and his friend and political ally, Thomas Reed, the powerful Speaker of the House. Both foresaw a disaster. At stake was not only sending troops to Cuba and the Philippines, Spain's sprawling colony on the other side of the world -- but the friendships between these men.
Now, bestselling historian Evan Thomas brings us the full story of this monumental turning point in American history. Epic in scope and revelatory in detail, The War Lovers takes us from Boston Mansions to the halls of Congress to the beaches of Cuba and the jungles of the Philippines. It is a landmark work with an unforgettable cast of characters -- and provocative relevance to today.
Title: Real World Parents
Author: Mark Matlock
Publisher: Zondervan
From the back cover: Become a Proactive Parent (and Stop Overreacting!)
Real World Parents helps you be proactive, rather than reactive, while raising Christian kids toward lives of faith in a world filled with contradictions. Rather than trying to raise kids who are "good christians," you'll find the tools to help you live out a faith that allows your children to see what it means to live as a Christian. As a result, your kids will learn about real faith by living it out with you.
Culture expert and veteran youth pastor, Mark Matlock, will help you explore issues such as:
Helping your child make decisions.
The importance of failure.
Knowing God's story for your family.
Changing the story your family is in.
The pursuit of wisdom, and much more.
Mark Matlock has been working with youth pastors, students, and parents for two decades. He's vice president of event content at Youth Specialties and founder of WisdomWorks Ministries and PlanetWisdom. He's the author of several books, including The Wisdom On. . . series, Living a Life That Matters, and Don't Buy the Lie. Mark lives in Texas with his wife Jade and their two children.
My thoughts: What I liked best about this book is that it didn't just try to "scare" you with statistics or "tell" you how to raise your kids. What I took away from it was to keep showing your kids through the way you live, the path they should follow. Each chapter ended with some questions that really made me think. Things that, until they are actually asked point blank, you probably haven't given much thought about - like "In your own life, what has mattered more in the long run -- your behavior on any given day or your foundational beliefs about God and the world?" How many parents out there think that because they make mistakes that they have messed up their kids - or that they are terrible parents? I know that I have had days when I have felt that someone screwed up when they let me have kids! But in the big scheme of things - God still loves me and what is more important to Him is that I know He is my Saviour - not that I didn't have patience with my kids.
Here is an excerpt:
"The world's storyline began when sin entered into humanity's experience in the garden of Eden. It started when humanity believed the serpent's lie that a God who loves us would never keep from us something as good as that one restricted fruit. And those of us walking the world's storyline -- all of us at some point -- have been doubting God's love, goodness, and power ever since.
The world's storyline terminates abruptly, violently, at the end of time when the serpent -- along with all those who rejected Jesus as the path to livinig permanently on God's storyline -- is locked up once and for all. So, in truth, every second spent lingering on the world's storyline is time wasted on a dead-end path.
As Christians, we know this. We're convinced of it. Yet we continue to struggle to trust God and to stay off the world's path. We desperately want our kids to fully live out their lives on the line that has no beginning and no ending, the line that's energized with the very power of God, the line upon which is found meaning, purpose, hope and joy for all time. We want our kids to live on God's storyline." (pps 47-48, Real World Parents)
This is a book that I will be revisiting - if anything - just to keep reenforcing to me that I am not going to be perfect in how I raise my kids, but God is going to love my family anyway and He is the one directing the story of our lives.
~I received a complimentary copy of this book from Audra at TBB Media in exchange for my review.~
From the publisher:Get ready for a double dose of wedding frenzy!
Bella couldn't be happier that two of her long-feuding relatives have finally admitted their love for one another and are getting married. Their forties-style wedding is sure to be a night to remember. But when the Rossi house begins to fill up with family from Italy--and an old mobster from New Jersey--life starts to get complicated. Will a friend from the past drive the happy couple apart once more? And will Bella ever have time to think of her own rapidly approaching wedding amid the chaos?
Full of humor, plenty of Italian passion, and a bit of Texas gumption, It Had to Be You will have you laughing out loud and wiping a tear from your eye.
My thoughts: I read Fools Rush In, the first book in the series, back in January and loved it. I was really looking forward to this one and it did not disappoint me! Bella is still in the wedding planning business, but this time she is planning the wedding of her Uncle Laz to her Aunt Rosa - two people who have fought about everything for years. They are on their best behaviour for the wedding (or are they?).
In addition to this wedding, Bella is also trying to plan her wedding to D.J. Neeley - the hunky cowboy she had met in the Fools Rush In. I didn't get the chance to read Swinging on a Star - book 2 in the series - but it is on my TBR list. These 2 have been good as stand alone also though.
These are definitely "feel good" books. I know that when I sit down and pick up one of her books that it is going to pull me into a world full of fun and sometimes wacky characters. It is full of humor and wit - and filled with Christian values - without being too pushy. I would highly recommend this one!
Available May 2010 at your favorite bookseller from Revell, a division of Baker Publishing Group.
~I received a complimentary copy of this book from Revell in exchange for my review.~
It Had to Be You
Publisher/Publication Date: Baker, May 1, 2010
ISBN: 978-0800733445
330 pages
by Fred Lybrand
by Ryan Brown
by R.C. Ryan
by Susan Beth Pfeffer
by P.C. Cast, Kristin Cast
by Seth Grahame-Smith
by Stephenie Meyer
by Eva Marie Everson
by Mike Dellosso
by Matthew Frederick, Alfredo Cabrera
by Melanie Dobson
by Stephenie Meyer
by Rachelle Rogers Knight
by Kristin Armstrong
(audio book)
