Your Chariot Awaits - Lorena McCourtney

Andi McConnell is not having a great week. She was just laid off at her job and feels there are no new prospects for her career. Her boyfriend has decided they should stop seeing each other. To top it all off, this just happens to be the same week that Andi is turning sixty.

Adding to the craziness of her week is a surprise visit from a distant relative who gives Andi an unexpected and strange inheritance. A rich uncle Andi knew nothing about has left her a limousine. She has no idea what to do with such a gift. While still trying to figure out how to proceed with her jobless state and her new vehicle, Andi receives the biggest shock yet. A body is found in the trunk of her new limousine.

Andi quickly finds herself in the midst of her own investigation guided by Keegan Fitz, a quirky former T.V. private investigator. What follows is a surprisingly fun attempt to solve the mystery that has brought itself to Andi’s front door.

I tend to shy away from the mystery/suspense genre because I simply don’t have the stomach for it. With YOUR CHARIOT AWAITS, Lorena McCourtney has taken the concept of a murder mystery and created a clean, entertaining novel.

YOUR CHARIOT AWAITS is described as the first in the Andi McConnell mysteries. I am looking forward to additional novels from this series and more from McCourtney!

Till Morning Is Nigh - Leisha Kelly

If you've never read any of Leisha Kelly's novels, there are a series of books revolving around Julia Wortham and her husband Samuel. Falling upon hard times, Julia and Samuel are befriended by a charming older woman and wind up owning her home. So while food may be scarce in the 1930s, the couple are lucky enough to be given a roof over their heads. Over the years, the couple have not only raised their own children, but they are also raising their abandoned niece and helping to raise a neighbor's children--the Hammonds. After George Hammond's wife died, he would rather spend his time alone, drunk than acknowledge he has ten children who need him.

TILL MORNING IS NIGH is a Christmas novella. The plot moves swiftly and there are two main conflicts. One occurs when a number of the Hammond children become sick. Obviously, this evokes fear because their mother's illness led to her death. The other issue occurs when Samuel goes to round up George Hammond to go with him to fetch the doctor. Samuel returns with the doctor following, but no George. George disappears in this novel, taking the family's money with him.

One thing I like about Leisha Kelly's novels is that nothing is cut and dried. Sure this novel is set in Christmas, but this series is also set in the Depression. As much as we'd like to make everything sunny, life throws curve balls that make existence seem futile at times. TILL MORNING IS NIGH is no different. I won't tell readers how it ends, read it and find out, but there is definitely a trace of realism that today's men and women will be understand. While salaries for many today have not changed in years, heating bills, electricity bills, gas (auto) bills, car payments, and mortgages have skyrocketed. By no means are things as bad as they were in the depression, but they definitely are not great either. In a way, TILL MORNING IS NIGH helps put today's woes into perspective--things are bad, but they could be worse.

If you want a thought-provoking Christmas novel, Leisha Kelly's novel is a great choice.

An Irish Christmas by Melody Carlson

This September, Melody Carlson offered her inspirational Christmas tale. In the story, a mother and son are both hiding important secrets that once revealed threatens to change their relationship entirely. Colleen Frederick is a recent widow and her son’s silence as he nears his college graduation date bothers her, but she realizes she cannot push him. Now that she is all alone, she decides to sell her late husband’s shoe store and their family home and settle for something smaller near the ocean.
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Meanwhile, Jamie, her son, is hiding the fact that he dropped out because he never wanted to get his business degree, music is all that matters to him. When he learns that his mom has sold the store and is planning to sell their home, he is furious, but most of this is an act. He simply doesn’t want to reveal the truth about his own future. On a whim, Colleen books a trip to Ireland for the two of them. She has a secret to share about Jamie’s past that she feels is best told in Ireland.

I love Melody Carlson’s books, but found AN IRISH CHRISTMAS to be harder to get into. The writing was just as emotional as always, but I think my compassion for the characters was lacking. Had they been up front from the start, they could have saved themselves a lot of pain. Either way, by the time they headed for Ireland I was totally engrossed to the storyline. The reader is aware of secrets far before the characters so it is enjoyable to see how they play out.

I have to admit that I was all ready to argue the legal drinking age in this review, but I always research items first. Turns out the author knows her stuff and I learned a thing or two. The legal drinking age was 21 until the 70s when it was lowered for a little more than a decade. So this is an eye-opening piece of history that I never would have known had I skipped reading AN IRISH CHRISTMAS.

Moving Things Over

While WordPad might be the preferred blog for many, I found them to be a pain. It would not take my HTML codes and images due to some conflict with the template I was using and though there were instructions on changing it to allow for HTML, it wasn't working. I'e never had a problem with Blogger, so I'm moving things to this format.