Book Review: Downfall by Terri Blackstock

Downfall, the third and final book in the Intervention Series, was my favorite of the three!  Once I started reading it, I didn't want to put it down.  The book was full of suspense and twists all the way to the end!  The Covington family has been through a lot of pain and trials in this series, but I love the way Blackstock opens the eyes of the reader to the reality of what drugs can do to a person and their family.  She writes these books as a mom who has personally experienced these same trials and emotions with her own daughter who had drug addictions.

Emily Covington and her younger brother discover a homemade bomb under her car one morning as she is leaving for school.  That same morning, the wife of someone she knows is murdered.  As she pieces things together, Emily finds herself racing the clock to save the lives of others and trying to track down the killer.  Because of her past with drug abuse, Emily's family has trouble trusting that she hasn't relapsed and brought this upon herself.  I love that the book ends with a wedding and happiness for the Covington family!

I received a copy of this book from Zondervan to read and review.  All opinions of this book are my own.  I highly recommend that you read this book and the rest of the of the series, too!  :)

Book Review: Vicious Cycle by Terri Blackstock

Vicious Cycle will have your attention from the first page!  This is book number two in the Intervention series.  I love reading a book that is hard to put down, and this book is just that!  Blackstock writes this book from the perspective of Lance, the 15-year old brother of Emily from Intervention  (Book 1).

Lance tries to help a pregnant, teenage meth addict and finds himself in a situation he never dreamed he would be in.  He discovers a newborn baby in the back of his car and knows that it belongs to Jordyn.  We follow the family through the snares of drug addiction and the harsh realities of crimes that go on in today's society such as baby trafficking.

We also are able to rejoice as Emily completes her year of drug rehab and gets to come home.  We see how hard it is for her to be released from her "safe place" and be back in society where drugs are so easy to come by.  Drug addiction truly is a vicious cycle.  It is only with God's help and putting 100% of our faith and trust in HIM that one can overcome the evils of today's world.   

I received a complimentary copy of this book from Zondervan.  All opinions expressed about Vicious Cycle are my own.  I hope that you enjoy reading this book as much as I did!  I highly recommend this book to you and look forward to reading book three in this series!  :)

Below is a video clip about Vicious Cycle:

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Book Review: Coming Home by Karen Kingsbury

This is yet another amazing story written by Karen Kingsbury!  I was able to finish this book in just a couple of days (which is a challenge with two little ones always wanting my attention!).  :)   All I can say is "Wow!".  God has truly gifted Karen Kingsbury with a talent for writing!  I want to warn you that you will need a whole box of tissues to get through this one!

In this story, John Baxter is about to celebrate his 70th birthday.  The children all plan to come home with their families to surprise and share this special day with their dad.  The day of the big celebration, as it looks like everything is falling into place, the unthinkable happens.  The lives of each family member are forever changed as they deal with the tragedy that unfolds before them. 

I wanted to be angry with Karen for causing this tragedy occur to the Baxter family and making the book become so sad, but this is an event that could happen to any of us at any given time.  It was truly a blessing to see how she let each of the characters react and lean on God thorough something so horrible.  It opened my eyes to what life really means, what is really important, and what a wonderful future that we have in store for us if we believe in Jesus Christ and have accepted him as our Saviour!  So, I want to thank Karen for writing something that must have been so hard.  Even as Christians, we are not exempt from pain and tragedy.  Praise the Lord that we have a better home waiting for us than what we have here on Earth!!!

I received a complimentary copy of this book from Zondervan to read and review.  All opinions are my own.  I highly recommend this book to you!

Book Review: Intervention by Terri Blackstock

This book was an eye-opener to me about what life would be like having a child addicted to drugs.  So many families have to deal with this in today's society, and this book gives the reader a glimpse of what those families go through.  Told mainly from the mother's viewpoint, Barbara Covington has to make some hard choices when her eighteen-year old daughter is caught in the strongholds of addiction.  Emily is on her way to rehab with the interventionalist, when she disappears from the airport and the woman with her is found dead.  

We follow Barbara and her son, Lance, through the journey that they take trying to find and save Emily.  The detectives think that Emily is just another addict killing for another hit.  Her family thinks she is innocent.  Who murdered the interventionalist?  Where did Emily go?  Each page pulls you deeper into the mystery!  See the extremes that a mother will go to in order to save her child, all of the time keeping her faith in God.

Once I started reading this book, I didn't want to put it down!  I loved the suspense that Blackstock builds throughout the whole story.  It ends with a twist that I wasn't expecting!  I highly recommend this book and cannot wait to get my hands on the next one in this series!  Keep the wonderful, Christian fiction coming, Blackstock!  :)

I received a complimentary copy of this book from Zondervan to read and review.  All opinions are my own.

Book Review: Covenant Child by Terri Blackstock

I just recently finished reading Covenant Child by Terri Blackstock.  Being the first book I have read by this author,  I have to say that I really enjoyed her style of writing.  It was a nice change from the books that I have been reading.  I really enjoyed the fact that the whole theme of the book is like a parable from the Bible.  It did take me a little while to really get into this book, but it was a good read and I was glad that I finished it. 

This book opens introducing the reader to twin sisters who have been placed into the care of relatives that only wanted them for the inheritance money that would one day belong to the girls.  The children lost both  their mother and then father when they were only three years old.  Know as the "Billion Dollar Babies," the girls were taken from their stepmom after their father's death and placed in a home of poverty with relatives that could care less about their well-being.  The horrid details about how the girls had to fend for themselves to survive was sad and a real eye-opener to children who might really live that way. 

The book was very predictable as to how it would end, but I would still recommend you reading this one!  I received a complimentary copy of this book from BookSneeze and Thomas Nelson to read and review.  All opinions are my own.  Since finishing this book, I have also read another one by Blackstock which I could harldy put down!  :) 

Book Review: Loving by Karen Kingsbury

It's finally here!!!  Loving, the fourth and final book in the Bailey Flanigan series, arrived in stores on March 27, 2012.  What a wonderful journey we have been able to travel with Bailey!  In this book, she has some big decisions to make but is finally beginning to see answers to her many prayers unfold. 

A move to L.A. and a move to Bloomington.....   Bailey begins her career as a director over the Christian Kid's Theater.  We watch as her love story unfolds, and she is finally at peace with the choice of her future husband.  I love the fact that she was able to find closure and peace with her decisions.  What a sweet love story and one in which she kept God in the center of at all times!  I don't want to say too much to spoil it for you before you read it, but I highly recommend this book to you!  :)

I received a complimentary copy of Loving to read and review from Zondervan.  All opinions expressed here are my own.  I hope that you enjoy this book as much as I did!  Karen Kingsbury is a truly gifted writer and her love for the Lord comes out in each and every book that is published!

Click here for a preview to Loving.

Book Review: Longing by: Karen Kingsbury

What a wonderful addition to the Bailey Flanigan series!   Longing is the third book in a four-part series.  I have enjoyed following Bailey as she fulfills her dreams of working on Broadway and sharing her faith with her coworkers!  As she works through her feelings for her first love, Cody, and her current boyfriend, Brandon Paul, we are able to see how she looks to God and trusts that he knows what is best for her in this stage of life.  

I know that many people really wanted her to be with Cody in the end, but I love how her mother has instilled in her that she need not to settle for just anyone, and that the right guy will "pursue her like a dying man in the desert looking for water!"  This book has several twists that you won't expect after reading the first two books in the series.  I loved it!  :)

Bailey's dreams on Broadway come to an end, and she is at peace with that.  Will she follow Brandon to L.A. or stay in Bloomington to be with Cody?  I won't reveal any more so that you will read the book for yourself to see what happens!  I can't wait to get the fourth and final book, Loving, which was released on March 27, 2012!  

Karen Kingsbury has such a gift with words, and I have been truly blessed by each one of her books that I have read!  This complimentary copy was given to me by Zondervan to read and review.  All opinions of this book are my own.  I hope that you enjoy it as much as I did!  :)

Click here for a preview of the book...

                                                                                      

Book Review: Smitten by Colleen Coble

If you are looking for a good, clean romance novel, then Smitten is the book for you!  This book was written by four different authors:  Colleen Coble, Kristein Billerbeck, Diann Hunt, and Denise Hunter.   Dividing the book up into four interwoven short-stories, each author focuses on one of the four main characters in the story and tells their section from that point of view.

In the book, the four main characters are best friends.  Natalie, Julia, Shelby, and Reese are four women who embark on a journey to save their small town of Smitten, Vermont.  When the mill, the main industry in the town, shuts down, these four women bond together to try to turn it into the a tourist attraction and the "romance capital of the world."  They each have their own ideas to make it work from a spa and romantic cabins to sweet shops and music being played in the streets of this quaint little town.

I thought this book was a little bit hard to get into at first.  It was very predictable throughout the whole story plot.  I did like that it was clean and fun Christian fiction, though!  I had read books by Kristin Billerbeck and love her as an author, so I was excited to read another one by her.  Although this wasn't a book that I "just couldn't put down", I would recommend it as a good read.

I received a complimentary copy of this book from BookSneeze and Thomas Nelson to read and review.  All opinions of this book are my own.