General Market Fiction – Fiction Aficionado

Cover Reveal! Before Time Runs Out (Amy Matayo)

Welcome to the cover reveal for Before Time Runs Out by Amy Matayo.

Graduate student Bree Sanders is failing the one class she needs to get her degree. So when her professor gives her an ultimatum—ace her dissertation or risk having to repeat her final semester—she knows she has to pull out all the stops. After scrambling for an idea, she decides to create her own Ghost Club, a club that blames ghosts for unsolved crimes, the same type of club originally founded two centuries ago by Charles Dickens.

What she doesn’t expect is to find an original copy of one of Dickens’ early works, or to be transplanted into Dickens’ actual ghost club meeting, circa 1870, the instant she picks it up.

30 January 2021

Top Ten Tuesday – Most Anticipated New Releases Jan-Jun 2021

Happy Tuesday, reading friends, and happy new year! It’s time for another Top Ten Tuesday post, thanks to That Artsy Reader Girl, and this week we’re getting excited about what’s coming up in 2021—specifically, the new releases we’re most looking forward to reading in the first half of 2021. I have a mixture of Christian fiction and general market titles this year, having discovered a few general market authors I’m keen to read more from (Kate Quinn, Anna Lee Huber, and Ashley Weaver).

Of course, this is only a smattering of the books I’m looking forward to this year, but I was firm with myself in limiting this list to ten!

5 January 2021

The Book of Lost Friends (Lisa Wingate) – Review

Bestselling author Lisa Wingate brings to life startling stories from actual “Lost Friends” advertisements that appeared in Southern newspapers after the Civil War, as newly freed slaves desperately searched for loved ones who had been sold away.

Louisiana, 1875: In the tumultuous era of Reconstruction, three young women set off as unwilling companions on a perilous quest: Hannie, a freed slave; Lavinia, the pampered heir to a now destitute plantation; and Juneau Jane, Lavinia’s Creole half sister. Each carries private wounds and powerful secrets as they head for Texas, following roads rife with vigilantes and soldiers still fighting a war lost a decade before. For Lavinia and Juneau Jane, the journey is one of stolen inheritance and financial desperation, but for Hannie, torn from her mother and siblings before slavery’s end, the pilgrimage west reignites an agonizing question: Could her long-lost family still be out there?

13 April 2020

First Line Friday – The Book of Lost Friends (Lisa Wingate)

Happy Friday, book lovers, and welcome to First Line Friday hosted by Hoarding Books. This week, I’m looking forward to reading Lisa Wingate’s upcoming release, The Book of Lost Friends. Her previous novel Before We Were Yours was an emotional but fabulous read, so I’m looking forward to becoming thoroughly engrossed in this one as well. It releases next Tuesday, 7 April 2020.

3 April 2020

The Winter Companion (Mimi Matthews) – Review

She Needed to be Seen…

As a lady’s companion, Clara Hartwright never receives much attention from anyone. And that’s precisely how she likes it. With a stormy past, and an unconventional plan for her future, it’s far safer to remain invisible. But when her new employer is invited to a month-long holiday at a remote coastal abbey, Clara discovers that she may not be as invisible as she’d hoped. At least, not as far as one gentleman is concerned.

24 February 2020

First Line Friday – The Winter Companion (Mimi Matthews)

Happy Friday, book lovers, and welcome to First Line Friday hosted by Hoarding Books. I’m so excited that The Winter Companion by Mimi Matthews is next on my TBR. If you love historical romance and you haven’t discovered her, go and get the first book in her Parish Orphans series now! (The Matrimonial Advertisement)

21 February 2020

First Line Friday – A Waltz for Matilda (Jackie French)

Happy Friday, book lovers, and welcome to First Line Friday hosted by Hoarding Books. Many of my international friends and readers have heard about the bushfires that have been devastating Australia over the last weeks and months. While I have not been in danger personally, I have friends and family who have had to be on constant alert or even evacuated, and it has been heartbreaking to see reports of the loss and suffering in other beloved parts of our country. As a family, we have made the twelve-hour drive to Melbourne from our home north of Sydney many times, and so many of the small towns and rural landscapes we enjoy visiting along the way have been severely impacted by the fires.

17 January 2020

Top Ten Tuesday – New-To-Me Authors I Read in 2019

Happy Tuesday, reader friends, and welcome to another Top Ten Tuesday post, thanks to That Artsy Reader Girl.

I’m actually doing a double post today, because I read so many new-to-me authors last year that I can give you ten new-to-me Christian fiction authors and ten new-to-me general market authors! I had no idea I’d read so many, and five of them are Australian authors as well! I’m hoping to read more from these authors in the future.

14 January 2020

The power of fiction, the beauty of words, and the God who made us to wield them for His glory.