The Help Meet Wife

I decided to read What Keeps You Up At Night: How to Find Peace While Chasing Your Dreams by Pete Wilson because I'm going through a lot of transition in my life right now and am trying to discern what exactly God wants me to do with my life - and along with that process comes a lot of anxiety, confusion, worry, questioning, and the desire to make right decisions while not holding back from chasing your God-given dreams. This book sounded like the perfect read for me: “I just can’t ever seem to shut off my brain and rest.” It's easy to feel paralyzed by uncertainty. We want our questions answered, our decisions affirmed, and our plans applauded. But life doesn't come with an instruction manual and rarely follows a straight path. How would your life change if you learned to lean into uncertainty instead of waiting on the sidelines for just the right moment or opportunity? The paradox of faith is that you can't activate it until you act on it. Trust compels us to...

The Art of Losing Yourself by Katie Ganshert is the first book of hers I've read. It sounded like a Karen Kingsbury-esqe type book, which are kind of hit-or-miss for me (some I love, some are just meh), but the plot sounded so intriguing, and the reviews were great, so I decided to give it a try. The back cover reads: "Every morning, Carmen Hart pastes on her made-for-TV smile and broadcasts the weather. She’s the Florida panhandle’s favorite meteorologist, married to everyone’s favorite high school football coach. They’re the perfect-looking couple, live in a nice house, and attend church on Sundays. From the outside, she’s a woman who has it all together. But on the inside, Carmen Hart struggles with doubt. She wonders if she made a mistake when she married her husband. She wonders if God is as powerful as she once believed. Sometimes she wonders if He exists at all. After years of secret losses and empty arms, she’s not so sure anymore. Until Carmen’s sister—seventeen ...

Savor: Living Abundantly Where You Are, As You Are by Shauna Niequist sounded like a great devotional. I love food and recipes and although I've never read any of Shauna's books, she sounded very relatable, so I thought I'd give it a shot. This book is a year-long devotional, containing 365 individual chapters. Each devotional contains a Bible verse, a few paragraphs from Shauna, and then a thought at the end to ponder/journal/pray about. There are also recipes sprinkled throughout. The book description reads: "Sink deep into the everyday goodness of God and savor every moment! In this daily devotional, Shauna Niequist becomes a friend across the pages, sharing her heart with yours, keeping you company, and inviting you into the abundant life God offers. And there are recipes, too, because spiritual living happens not just when we read and pray, but also when we gather with family and friends over dinners and breakfasts and late-night snacks. These recipes are...

What You Left Behind is Samantha Hayes' followup book to Until You're Mine. I read and reviewed Until You're Mine last year and absolutely loved it, so I knew I'd want to snatch up any book she put out next. I was pleasantly surprised to see that she was tying her second book into her first by continuing to follow DI Lorraine Fisher. In this installment, Lorraine is vacationing in the countryside at her sister Jo's house with her daughter, Stella. The book description reads: "A mesmerizing new thriller from the author of Until You’re Mine Two years after a terrifying spate of teenage suicides, the remote village of Radcote has just begun to heal. Then a young man is killed in a freak motorcycle accident and a suicide note is found among his belongings. When a second boy is found dead shortly thereafter, the nightmare of repeat suicides once again threatens the community. Desperate for a vacation, Detective Inspector Lorraine Fisher has just come to Radco...

One Last Thing by Rebecca St. James and Nancy Rue is a very brave novel in today's world. It explores how pornography addiction and its related tentacles (strip clubs, prostitutes) can affect, and even destroy, a relationship. This book isn't afraid to take a hard stand against all of the above, which is really unpopular in today's culture. I admire and appreciate the bravery of basing an entire novel on this topic, which in Christian circles can be a "hush-hush/sweep it under the rug" type of topic. The book description reads: "Tara had always imagined her happily ever after. But her fiancé’s secrets are changing this story into one she doesn’t even recognize. Tara Faulkner and Seth Grissom grew up next door to each other in Savannah’s historic district. Their parents are best friends. They finish each other’s sentences all the time. Their fairy-tale wedding is a foregone conclusion . . . until Tara discovers another side to Seth three weeks before the ...

I tend to enjoy memoirs (although reading ones about loss and death can get depressing after awhile), so I thought We Carried the Mat by Katie Jordan would be an enjoyable read, although potentially a bit of a downer. We Carried the Mat details Katie's journey through her husband's terminal ALS diagnosis. The description reads: "Months before Jay’s first symptoms appeared, I felt compelled to start keeping a journal. Looking back on those fledgling entries, I recognize now that my decision to begin journaling at that particular time was prophetic. Writing in that “safe place” reconnected me to my heavenly Father during the most turbulent time of my life. As Jay was losing his battle with ALS, I found myself groping for the journal and pen. At my lowest times, I found God speaking encouragement to me through others. Countless times I recorded something in my journals spoken from the lips of strangers, friends, mentors, and pastors. These were bits of light and w...

I've heard so many wonderful things about Colleen Coble, but I've yet to have the chance to pick up any of her books. When I read the description for The Inn At Ocean's Edge, I decided to remedy this because it just sounded so intriguing and mysterious. I wasn't sure what to expect since this was my first book of hers, but I had super high hopes based on the genre, other reviews I've read of her books, and the way this one sounded. The back cover reads: "Claire’s visit to a luxury hotel in Maine awakens repressed memories, threatening all she holds dear. In 1989, Claire Dellamare disappeared from her own fourth birthday party at the Hotel Tourmaline on the island of Folly Shoals, Maine. She showed up a year later at the same hotel, with a note pinned to her dress but no explanation. Nobody knows where Claire spent that year—and until now, Claire didn’t even know she had ever been missing. But when Claire returns to the Hotel Tourmaline for a business mee...

Chance of Loving you is an anthology by three bestselling romance authors, including Terri Blackstock (http://mediacenter.tyndale.com/2_authors/author_bio.aspx?authorID=59), Candace Calvert (http://mediacenter.tyndale.com/2_authors/author_bio.aspx?authorID=1166), and Susan May Warren (http://mediacenter.tyndale.com/2_authors/author_bio.aspx?authorID=705). I happen to love all three of these wonderful authors, so I was super excited to see a collaborative anthology featuring them. I was also totally drawn in by the beautiful cover - it just looked magical, so I had high hopes for the book. The first thing I noticed when picking up the book is that two out of the three stories aren't new, they're just repackaged. For Love Of Money by Terri Blackstock was originally published in 2000 in an anthology titled Sweet Delights, and Hook, Line, & Sinker is part of Susan May Warren's Deep Haven series and was published as an ebook novella as book 4.5 in that series in 2011. The o...