Spoiler Alert! Love Comes From the Heart!
By Milena Kirkova
Accord Publishing, $9.99, 16 pages
This sweet children’s book, Where Does Love Come From? takes our early readers on a colorful and attractive journey to discover the origins of love. Illustrator, Milena Kirkova is brilliantly gifted implementing cutout hearts on every page with bright colors, rounded shapes, and lovable funny faces that covers every season and corner of the world. The text asks many questions inspiring a young one to think about love and discover its place and its source. This is a children’s book that you’ll have memorized from all the readings it will bring!
Reviewed By M. Chris Johnson
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By Katie Ganshert
Waterbrook, $9.99, 316 pages
There seems to be a growing trend in the world of romantic fiction; combining religion and traditional romance plots. This is the case from new author Katie Ganshert, who combines finding faith and romance into one novel. The book takes place in rural Iowa, when Bethany Quinn comes back to town from Chicago. She must attend the funeral of her beloved Grandfather. When she gets back to Chicago, her world is turned upside down after she loses her job. With nothing else she moves in with her best friend. Slowly reawakening to a long buried faith. Along the way she reconnects with her best friend from high school, and slowly falls for Evan Price. The strikingly handsome rancher, who has a past of his own. For a debut novel this is not that bad. While the minor characters are one note, and easily forgotten; the story moves along at a brisk pace. You also really get to know the main characters by the end of the book. Mrs. Ganshert skates by the pitfalls that hurt most first time authors. She is able to combine romance, and faith, into one book and makes it work.
Reviwed by Kevin Winter
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By Tessa Dare
Avon, $7.99, 379 pages
Tessa Dare’s A Week to be Wicked won’t take you more than a week to finish. The pacing is such that it is nearly impossible to put down. You just won’t want to wait to see what horrible calamity happens to the characters next. In true Odyssey form, the characters set out on a quest that seems quite achievable and are met with challenge after challenge, most of them completely absurd and absolutely hilarious. Even when Lord Payne, the main character, describes the adventures, it sounds absurd. “I’m a rather useless viscount and my companion here is a brilliant geologist. We need to get to Edinburgh by tomorrow so she can present her findings about giant lizards…” Throw in some steamy romance that Homer himself never dreamed up and you have an epically enjoyable romp indeed. Minerva Highwood and Colin Sandhurst Lord Payne are characters you can’t keep yourself from liking. Their love story will give you belly laughs and satisfaction to the very last page.
Reviewed by Rachelle Barrett
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By Victoria Alexander
Zebra, $7.99, 374 pages
Victoria Alexander introduces us to a new family, the Hadley-Attwaters, in the first book in her new series all about sinful secret lives. What is unique is that the story begins two years after happily-ever-after with married couple, Adrian and Evelyn, who are still very much in love. Evelyn is a smart fearless female protagonist who married her husband because she was tired of excitement and instead wanted stability. Adrian, the head of the Hadley-Attwaters, with several siblings that are sure to dominate the following books in the series, seemed to offer just what Evelyn needed. The thing about a good marriage, that this couple fails to realize, is that a spouse is more than a lover; they are also a confidante and partner. While their marriage seems perfect, even to them, it is lacking in fundamental trust. So it is no surprise that things get hairy when each of their past lives, which they have agreed never to talk about, invades their current lives. This book is not about falling in love like so many other romance novels, it is really about how to be in love. While not particularly suspenseful or steamy, My Wicked Little Lies is a charming introduction to what promises to be a complex series. And of course it contains the humor and close knit family that Alexander’s fans have come to expect.
Reviewed by Rachelle Barrett
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