A Heartfelt Christmas Promise

NANCY NAIGLE

Stats: Mass market paperback, St. Martin’s Paperbacks, 9/28/21.

How acquired: Bought.

First line: Vanessa slid her hand along the slick wooden banister as she climbed the stairs.

(Goodreads synopsis below.)

My thoughts: My third Naigle book and I loved it as much as the first two.

A bit of the stereotypical girl from the big city forced to go to a small town where she doesn't fit in but falls in love with the town and one of the locals, but not gonna lie, I'm a sucker for that trope, if you can call it a trope. In this instance, Vanessa works for a large company in Chicago, the company bought a fruitcake factory in Fraser Hills, North Carolina, and now Vanessa has been sent to the town to shut down the factory in preparation for the warehouse space to used for an athletic company. I've been grabbing her books whenever I come across them so I have six more in my TBR. A job that has never bothered her before, but this time she finds herself getting friendly with the locals, including Buck, an older man who gives her some business advice and provides his guesthouse for Vanessa and her cousin over the Christmas holiday, Misty, a sixteen year old who works in the fruitcake factory's retail store and has lots of ideas to improve the business, and Mike, who breeds and trains Percheron horses. Oh, and Scooter, an adorable Lab puppy. The ending is of course predictable for the most part, but it's the journey to that ending that matters, and it was a wonderful journey.

I've been collecting Naigle books whenever I come across them, and have six more in my TBR, and I anticipate several more wonderful journeys!

Synopsis from Goodreads:

Vanessa Larkin was supposed to be spending Christmas in Paris, France on a business trip. Instead, she’s been assigned to Fraser Hills, North Carolina—home of the Best Fruitcake in the USA—to convert her company’s property into warehouse space and shut down Porter’s, the fruitcake factory. 

Mike Marshall’s family founded Porter’s. For decades, the factory served as the lifeblood of the community until his grandfather sold the business to a Chicago corporation. The sale cost the town its independence—and the Marshalls their family ties. A horse farmer, Mike was never involved with his grandfather’s company, but news of the factory’s closing means losing another piece of the town’s legacy. And as a widower raising a teenage daughter, he’s suffered enough losses in one lifetime. 

Far from the skyscrapers and rapid pace of the city, Vanessa finds herself enjoying the easygoing rhythms of rural living. With Mike as her guide, she learns to appreciate the simple pleasures found in shared holiday festivities among friends. Fraser Hills is a town she is growing to love—and Mike is someone she is falling in love with. Can a Christmas miracle give her newfound friends and home a gift they’ll cherish for many New Years to come?

The Road Before Us

 

JANINE ROSCHE

Stats: Trade paperback, Revell, 2024.

How acquired: Revell Reads Blogger Program

First line: Miles from any high-rise, the generations-old asphalt crumbles beneath the soles of my borrowed boots, and I wish my story would fall through the hot cracks along with it.

(Goodreads synopsis below.)

My thoughts: I’ve never felt any desire to travel the old Route 66. I have traveled a very small portion of it, though not in many many years. But traveling along with Jade, Bridger, and Bernie made it sound like a worthwhile journey to take.

The trio are traversing Route 66 while shooting a documentary about Benny, who traveled the same route in 1956, headed to Hollywood to become a star. Along the way, they visit landmarks, both well known, and personal to Benny, such as motels where she and Paul, the love of her life, stayed on their journey, or other places they stopped to visit. But the journey is also personal for Jade, who has bittersweet memories of traveling with her father in the summer of 2003. The narrative bounces between those two times and the present day, with each section told in first person POV. I enjoyed Benny’s sections the most, as she and Paul fall in love on the way. I probably would have been happy with a book just about the two of them.

In 2003, Jade is eight years old, and I struggled a little with her narration. If I hadn’t known she was eight I might have thought she was only five or six. But I’m not sure if her narration really came off that way, or if I just don’t remember what an eight year old is like, not having been around one since my now adult daughters were that age.

Adult Jade, however, along with Benny, both her younger self and her current day elderly self, and Bridger, her foster son, were all beautifully written. Bridger is a very quirky character who often made me laugh. In her Author’s Note, Ms. Rosche tells us that she traveled all 2,448 miles of Historic Route 66, and it shows in her writing. She packs in so much interesting and descriptive detail about the road and the towns along the way that THE ROAD BEFORE US could serve as a travel guide.

I very much enjoyed traveling along with this trio, and was sorry to part company with them. Bridger and Jade were about to embark on a new journey when I turned the last page, and I desperately wanted to accompany them.

*Received via the Revell Reads Blogger Program and voluntarily reviewed*

Synopsis from Goodreads:

How far would you go to fix the mistakes you've made and regain the trust you lost? For Jade Jessup, the answer is 2,448 miles. Once one of Chicago's significant financial advisors, Jade lost her credibility when her fiancé (and coworker) stole millions of dollars from their clients in a Ponzi scheme. Now she's agreed to help one of them--an aging 1960s Hollywood starlet named Berenice "Benny" Alderidge--seek financial restoration. 

Jade sets off along Route 66 with Benny and her handsome adult foster son, Bridger, who is filming a documentary retracing the 1956 trip that started the love story between Benny and her recently deceased husband, Paul. Listening to Benny recount her story draws Jade into memories of her own darker association with Route 66, when she was kidnapped as a child by a man the media labeled a monster--but she remembers only as daddy. 

Together, all three of these pilgrims will learn about family, forgiveness, and what it means to live free of the past. But not before Jade faces a second staggering betrayal that changes everything.

Crimson Lake (Crimson Lake, Book One)

 

CANDICE FOX

Stats for my copy: Trade paperback, Forge, 2020.

How acquired: Borrowed from my mom.

First line: I was having some seriously dark thoughts when I found Woman.

(For Goodreads synopsis, scroll down.)

My thoughts: A unique plot, with Ted, an accused child rapist/murderer (his case was dropped for lack of evidence that could sway a jury) teaming up with Amanda, a convicted murderer turned private investigator, to look into the disappearance of a local well known author. Told in first person POV by Ted, a former police detective, we get a deep dive into what his life is like after having spent eight months in prison and losing his job, his reputation, his wife, his baby daughter, and all of his friends. While working with Amanda, a strange and quirky woman who pled guilty to her crime, he begins to secretly look into her case and stir things up.

I love stories set in Australia, though mostly what I've read was in the Outback, so I did not expect to read about people in cities and towns living with crocodiles practically in their back yards. The author did a wonderful job setting the atmosphere, and convincing me I do not want to live anywhere near a croc. Though I wouldn't mind having a goose and her babies for pets, as Ted finds himself doing.

I never knew where the plot would go next, and the last 30 pages or so had me on the edge of my seat. I need the second book immediately!

Goodreads synopsis: How do you move on when the world won't let you?

12:46: Claire Bingley stands alone at a bus stop
12:47: Ted Conkaffey parks his car beside her
12:52: The girl is missing . . .

Six minutes in the wrong place at the wrong time--that's all it took to ruin Sydney detective Ted Conkaffey's life. Accused but not convicted of a brutal abduction, Ted is now a free man--and public enemy number one. Maintaining his innocence, he flees north to keep a low profile amidst the steamy, croc-infested wetlands of Crimson Lake.

There, Ted's lawyer introduces him to eccentric private investigator Amanda Pharrell, herself a convicted murderer. Not entirely convinced Amanda is a cold-blooded killer, Ted agrees to help with her investigation, a case full of deception and obsession, while secretly digging into her troubled past. The residents of Crimson Lake are watching the pair's every move . . . and the town offers no place to hide.

The Last Speaker of Skalwegian

 

DAVID GARDNER

Stats for my copy: Trade paperback, Encircle Publications, 2021.

How acquired: From the author via Cozy Mystery Review Crew.

First line: Lenny Thorsen watched the red pickup roar into the parking lot, a statue propped up in back.

(Goodreads synopsis below.)

My thoughts: I wasn’t really sure what to expect from this book, but the synopsis intrigued me. What I got was an amusing and somewhat quirky story filled with outrageous characters and situations that still came across as believable. I never knew from chapter to chapter what to expect. Well, that’s not quite true. The further I read, the more I did expect twists and turns and the unexpected.

To give you an example, Lenny, our protagonist, lives in an abandoned top floor revolving restaurant, that has a mind of it’s own. Meaning periodically, with just a few warning clicks, the restaurant would begin revolving, often sending items, such as Lenny’s breakfast, flying, while he grabbed onto something to keep himself from flying. Which I thought just sounded like an utterly fascinating and fun way to live! Lenny is a linguistics professor, who is often distracted by words and their origins. For instance:

‘Disperse’ came from the Latin disperses, which was was the past participle of dispergere (‘to scatter’). Lenny wanted everyone in the world to disperse.

Being a reader who often pauses to look up a word I’m unfamiliar with, I began to look forward to those musings.

All in all I enjoyed my time with Lenny and his group of wacky friends and colleagues.

*I received a free copy of this book from the author and have voluntarily reviewed it*

Synopsis from Goodreads: Professor Lenny Thorson lives in a defunct revolving restaurant, obsesses over word derivations, and teaches linguistics at a fourth-rate college with a gerbil for a mascot. Lenny's thirty-four years have not been easy—he grew up in a junkyard with his widowed father and lives under a cloud of guilt for having killed another boxer as a teenager.

Desperate to save his teaching career, Lenny seizes the opportunity to document the Skalwegian language with its last living speaker, Charlie Fox. Life appears to have finally taken a turn for the better...

Unfortunately for Lenny, it hasn't. He soon finds himself at war with Charlie, his dean, a ruthless mobster, and his own conscience.

Empty Stockings

 

DENIS HAMILL

Stats for my copy: Mass market Pocket Star Books, 2003.

How acquired: Via Book Mooch.

First line: Rory Maguire helped get Jack Kennedy elected president.

(For Goodreads synopsis, scroll down.)

My thoughts: A fascinating look at tenement life in 1960s New York. Fourteen year old Rory is such a well defined character. He goes to school, he works after school, and his earnings contribute to supporting the family. His father is a veteran who was wounded in the war, and then later was injured on the job and is now in a wheelchair or struggling with crutches. His mother works in a laundry and does her best to keep home and hearth running.

Rory’s father was in the Merchant Marine during the war. I’ve never heard much about the Merchant Marine, and had always thought it was a branch of the Marine Corps that served at sea. I didn’t know that the Merchant Marine was not actually considered part of the U.S. Military, and its veterans received none of the benefits that soldiers and sailors did. They were not given veteran status until 1988!

Rory is proud of his father, and desperate to find someone who will help him get the benefits he should be entitled to, and this drives much of the story. In the process, he learns a lot about the Merchant Marine, and we learn right along with him. The book left me wanting to learn more, and sent me searching for non-fiction about the Merchant Marine.

But I digress. EMPTY STOCKINGS is about more than that, of course. It’s about the mourning and heartache that followed President Kennedy’s assassination. It’s about the day to day life of a young boy who wants to be a journalist. A young boy falling for a pretty girl, worrying about his family not having Christmas, trying to steer his younger brother away from the rough crowd he hangs out with, from gang life.

Well written and mesmerizing, I enjoyed this book so much more than I had anticipated. I also teared up at the end, which I so had not anticipated.

Synopsis from Goodreads: Rory Maguire is a fourteen-year-old boy looking for a better life for himself and his family in Brooklyn, New York. His father, Harry, had a terrible accident that cost him his job, his ability to walk, and his dignity. His brother, Dermot, is hanging out with a local gang called the Shamrocks, and his two little sisters are growing hungry in the Maguires' frigid tenement apartment. Rory's dreams of becoming a writer seem hopelessly out of reach, as does winning the heart of Carol, the daughter of a prominent Brooklyn lawyer. What Rory needs most this Christmas is a miracle -- and even though he can't bring his hero John F. Kennedy back to life, he might be able to give his father, an ex-merchant marine, the recognition he deserves...and offer his family the gift of hope, health, and happiness for years to come.