Book Review - Countdown

Lynette Eason drops the next installment of her Extreme Measures series on August 1 and the Countdown is on. If you read the first three books in the series, Raina Price has been a figure throughout as a fixture in the lives of Penny, Grace, and Juliana. Countdown gives us Raina’s backstory, as well as a pulse pounding race to protect one boy from the man who won’t let her go. Since being beaten and left for dead, keeping secrets and guarding her identity are survival requirements in her new life. But Vince Covelli’s patience and quiet persistence make Raina want to trust him. When she sees a familiar face on television, she knows she has to do whatever it takes, at whatever cost to herself, to protect the boy from a threat he doesn’t even know. Opening up to Vince and learning to trust him become necessary, but maybe that’s ok.

In Countdown, Eason delivers action and suspense at every turn. Intrigue is woven into romantic suspense to keep the story moving at an enjoyably fast pace. With characters written carefully to evoke love or hate in turn as appropriate, the multifaceted plot deals subversion on several levels to keep the reader guessing until the satisfying conclusion. If you’re looking for a book you can savor chapter by chapter or one you’ll devour in one sitting, Countdown has your number.

Countdown, book 4 of the Extreme Measures series from Lynette Eason, hits the scene August 1. You can preorder (Baker Book House tends to have great preorder rates) or pick it up then from your favorite local bookseller or online:

Baker Book House        Christian Book        Barnes & Noble            Amazon

Thank you to the author and publisher for allowing me a copy to read and review. All opinions expressed here are my own and are completely genuine.

Book Review - This Is Where It Ends

It’s all about the gold, it seems, in the latest release from Cindy K. Sproles. This Is Where It Ends opens with the death of Stately Jenkins, leaving his wife Minerva to fend of herself on their secluded homestead in the mountains of Kentucky. With his last breath, he begs her to keep his secret. Thus begins the ending.

When young Delano Rankin shows up thirty years later, searching for answers to the question of gold hidden away on the property, Minerva is nearing the end of her life and has no time for the darkness dredged up from the past by his investigation. She is forced to deal, not only with this nosy newcomer, but with the pain and suffering of her many years secluded on her homestead. While the quest for gold is a key plot point, the search for treasure beyond riches is the real story for the inquisitive young journalist and the broken old woman. Sproles pens intrigue and truth together to write a beautiful, though heartbreaking, novel about where true treasure is found. She gives us well developed characters, some of whom will live on in our minds long after the story ends.

This Is Where It Ends by Cindy K. Sproles is available now from your favorite local bookseller or online:

Baker Book House           Christian Book          Barnes & Noble           Amazon 

Thank you to the author and publisher for allowing me a copy to read and review. All opinions expressed here are my own and are completely genuine.

Book Review - The Best Summer of Our Lives

I have been waiting and waiting and waiting for the latest release from Rachel Hauck. That’s the problem with preordering. You know it is coming, like Christmas, but you can only count down until the day the clouds part and the book angels sing to announce its arrival in the mailbox. You dance your happy dance, (the neighbors are free to think what they want to think,) pluck your treasure from the box, and happy dance back inside before your glisten turns to sweaty drowned rat. You crack open the book to devour it. Then you realize this one is going to take some time. There’s a lot to unravel in The Best Summer of Our Lives. If you’re worried that you’ve overspent, please allow me to put those fears to rest. Clocking in at 376 pages, Hauck is giving you what you paid and waited for. Not a single page is wasted on frivolity and every bit of detail is pertinent. And if you think you’ve got this one figured out in the first chapter, here’s a spoiler: you don’t.

Summer, Spring, Fall and Snow are the Four Seasons, a group of friends knit as tightly together as the hours are knit into their days. The Best Summer of Our Lives focuses on the summer of 1977, the one between high school graduation and their freshman year at Florida State, the one they had planned to be the best summer of their lives. It is also the last summer these girls spent together and twenty years later they find themselves back in Tumbleweed, Oklahoma trying to figure out how to regain what was lost that year. Because if they can fix that, maybe they can also each find a way forward. Rachel Hauck threads together the individuals who make up this group and those who love them to deliver a perfect poolside read that will stick with you long after the last page.

The Best Summer of Our Lives by Rachel Hauck is available now from your favorite local bookseller or online:

Baker Book House        Christian Book            Barnes & Noble            Amazon

(This is where you usually see a disclaimer, because I often post reviews of books I have received from the author and/or publisher in exchange for an honest review. There is actually no need for a disclaimer here, because I bought this one and decided to review it because it brings me joy to share great books with you and to help promote and encourage these authors who work so hard to deliver quality literature.)