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

Best of 2017 – The Emoji Files, Part IV: Got Me in the Feels

Welcome to Part IV of The Emoji Files. So far this week I’ve given you my best of 2017 in the following categories: 😍 The Swoony Awards 😆 The LOL Awards 😼 The WOW Awards Today, I’m giving you a list of books that got me in the feels. Some books are great for escaping into and helping us to forget our daily worries and cares for a little while, and some books confront life’s big worries and cares head on. Perhaps not our specific worries and cares, but the kinds of worries and cares that could be ours one day, or the kinds

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6 January 2018

Top Ten Tuesday – Ten Series Recommendations for Lovers of Small-Town Settings

Top Ten Tuesday is back! The girls at The Broke and the Bookish have given us a certain amount of free rein this week with the topic of Ten Book Recommendations for . . .  After much umming and ahhing I decided I would do some series recommendations for those readers who lover small-town settings. Because when you find a place you really like, you want to be able to keep visiting, don’t you?

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15 August 2017

Romance Tropes – The Love Triangle

Top Ten Tuesday is on a six-week hiatus at the moment, and while I may still come up with some top ten posts for you during that time, I’m taking the opportunity today to do something a little different. If you’ve read some of my recent posts, you’ll know that the final book in the Serena Jones Mystery Series releases today (YAY!), and you’ll also know that it has been much anticipated by me (and countless other readers) because it will give us the answer to the big question: Which man will win Serena’s affection? Nate Butler or Tanner Calhoun?

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4 July 2017

Top Ten Tuesday – Motherhood

Today’s Top Ten Tuesday with the girls at The Broke and the Bookish has a motherhood theme, for obvious reasons. I don’t know about anyone else, but my Facebook feed over the weekend made it clear that Mother’s Day is a day of conflicting emotions for many. For many of us, it is a day of celebration—and at its core, motherhood is a precious gift that should be celebrated—but in this fallen world, it often brings pain as well.

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16 May 2017

Author Interview with Varina Denman

It’s my pleasure to welcome Varina Denman to the blog today to chat about her new book, Looking Glass Lies. If you’d like to read my review of this book, you’ll find that here. As you may have gathered, I like to ask authors to nominate a snack and a drink for us all to share during our chat. As a little side note, I tell interviewees that all dietary restrictions are null and void for the duration. Well, here’s Varina’s response to that:

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13 May 2017

Looking Glass Lies (Varina Denman) – Review

~ About the Book ~ A poignant and relatable novel, Looking Glass Lies captures the war women wage against themselves, and the struggle to see beauty reflected in a mirror not distorted by society’s unrelenting expectations. For most of her adult life, Cecily Ross has compared herself to other women—and come up short. After a painful divorce from her emotionally abusive husband, Cecily returns to her hometown of Canyon, Texas, looking to heal.

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4 May 2017

Top Ten Tuesday – My Spring (Autumn!) TBR Part 2

Top Ten Tuesday is back to its regular schedule today with the girls from The Broke and The Bookish, but if you caught last week’s post you’ll know I got in a week early! When I saw that this week’s post would be a Top Ten list of spring (otherwise known as autumn in my part of the world) TBR titles, I knew there was no way I could fit them all in one post, so I split mine into two parts. If you want to see what made it on to my first-half-of-spring list, you can read last week’s

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14 March 2017

Top Ten Tuesday, er Wednesday… um, Thursday? – 2017 Debuts I’m Excited For

Want to hear a funny story?  I’ve been planning on mixing up my blog posts a bit this year, now that I’m settling into the book blogging community and discovering all the fun things that go on.  One of the things I thought I would do this year is Top Ten Tuesday, masterminded by the gals at The Broke and the Bookish.  Good plan, huh?  Well, I’m good at plans.  But here is a classic example of what happens when plans land in my hands:

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5 January 2017