Quick Lit, Reading, Reviews, Young Adult

Five Star Books (and a Few Others), Part 1

Posted on

Hi friends! Last week I launched back into book reviews with a post about new favorite authors. Today, I bring you some quick reviews of books I read last year that are in the contemporary literary fiction and historical fiction categories. As I looked back on my 2025 reading, I was surprised to see so many in the fantasy or magic genre…so stay tuned for a round up of those next time!

Contemporary Fiction

The Correspondent – Listen, I know rave reviews of this book are everywhere, and you don’t need another one, but I have to say it: this book is everything. I loved it. It’s the most delightful modern book I’ve read in a long time. Fans of Fredrik Backman, Anne Tyler, or Ann Patchett should definitely try this book, but also anyone who likes reading fiction at all (and maybe even some of you who don’t). I read it way too fast the first time and am already looking forward to reading it again. 5 stars.

Theo of Golden – Rave reviews of this book are everywhere, too. And I get why so many readers adore it; the aura around the main character and everyone else is, well, golden. Still, I had a hard time getting into it, and an even harder time believing Mr. Theo and the characters could exist in any world, but especially not ours. However, with so many five star reviews, you probably shouldn’t take my word for it but read it yourself! (If you have already read it, we need to talk about the ending…) 3.5 stars.

The Unmaking of June Farrow – I loved this book. It was like a mail-order bride plot mixed with a mystery of disappearing/reappearing memories. It’s set in the present day in mountainous North Carolina, and though it does have some magical realism elements, it’s going here with the contemporary fiction. The writing was amazing – I felt like I was right there alongside the main character. 5 stars. (Content warning for mature language)

Broken Country – DNF – I have plenty DNF’s throughout a reading year. It’s important to remember we aren’t required to read much of anything as adults, but get to be our own guides and filters! For this one, the writing was good, but I found that the plot included two themes I try to avoid for the most part.

Historical Fiction

Born of the Gilded Mountains – I have been meaning to read something by Amanda Dykes for years. Last fall, I got this on audio book and listened to it through a painting project. It kept me in great company! I found the plot and setting to be absolutely involving and the characters thoroughly likable. Though Dykes doesn’t shy away from some heavy themes, over all it is a lighthearted, gentle book, perfect for either literary fiction or historical fiction fans. 4.5 stars.

Isola – This fictional account of a real person was potent and striking. About a third of the way through, I thought I wouldn’t end up liking it with all its painful realities for the main character in that day and age, but by the end, I gave it 5 stars. As far as tone goes, I would liken it to a book like Kristin Lavransdatter, though shorter and not quite as dark. Isola has plenty of tragedy, but the resilience of the main character and themes of religion and friendship were really well done. I couldn’t stop thinking about The Count of Monte Cristo. It was also so neat to pick up this book right when we were studying the discovery and development of the islands off the coast of Canada in our homeschool history lessons (we were in Volume 2 of The Story of the World at the time). 5 stars.

The Hired Girl – I would really have loved this book as a teenager girl! And even as an adult, I still loved the setting and the surrounding characters. 4 stars.

The Frozen River – I don’t like to give hot takes but…I did not love this book. I do like Ariel Lawhon’s other books I’ve read, especially Code Name Helene, and I was prepared for some graphic subjects or descriptions. The darkness of human nature shows up very starkly in her books. Still! Still. The story arc of this book is…a lot. It was just too gruesome, right down to the ending (what in the world…if you have read this, could you actually believe that ending?). I did some research on the main character’s history, and yes, it was great to see such an amazing woman dramatized in a novel. I enjoyed learning about Martha Ballard (though I thought her husband was too perfect to be believable for that time period). Overall, this book was just not for me.

I hope you’ll find a great read for you in this list today, and that you’ll let me know if you’ve found an amazing book lately (or in the past, or just whenever). Come back next week for a venture into the fantastical!

Happy reading!

Nonfiction, Reading, Reviews, Young Adult

Measuring a Year – New Fave Author Reviews

Posted on

“Five hundred twenty five thousand six hundred minutes.
How do you measure- measure a year?” -Rent

The answer is, of course, in books read!

I was sorry to have paused on sharing books here in 2025, but I have changed my mind! As I look back on the whole year, I can see themes of authors and series emerge in a way I wouldn’t have if I were reviewing book-by-book every few weeks/months. Turns out, in 2025 I discovered some top-notch new-to-me or actually new authors. These are the kind of authors who write books I want to hug when I’m done reading. Here’s a rundown of who kept me company last year; I’ll start with the new current authors I loved and round out the list with some vintage authors that have won my reading heart.

New and Current Authors

Kristen Perrin – Perrin writes The Castle Knoll Files, and I cannot think of a more sparkling, witty, charming, and perfectly paced present-day mystery series than this one. The third book comes out in April and I cannot wait.

Elizabeth Lowham – I listened to the audio books of the Casters and Crowns series and I loved it. The first book was especially good on audio! I really appreciated the fully developed characters and the way Lowham put together a completely believable and realistic fantasy world that did not take much effort to feel at home in as a reader.

Elisabeth Aimee Brown – What Comes of Attending the Commoners Ball was one of my favorite books of 2025. I adored the main characters, the setting, the twisty plot, all of it. It isn’t mind blowing and it isn’t going to make it onto a classics-everyone-should-read list, but it is a just-right, slightly fantastical novel to keep you company and in good spirits. You might have gathered that I like a gentle fantasy novel, but don’t want to commit to 500 years of reading a series OR get drug through a lot of gore or “spice,” AND if I have to memorize a complicated family tree, I am probably out. This book read more like a Dickensian setting novel with some magic thrown in. I am putting Brown on this favorite author list even though I only read one of her books because she was just that good and I am eagerly awaiting Brown’s second book coming out in April.

Gabrielle Meyer – The Timeless series by Gabrielle Meyer was surprisingly absorbing from page one. Honestly, I was not expecting a five star read when I picked up When the Day Comes last January, but that is what I got! Books 2-4 were more like 3.5-4 star reads, but I still enjoyed them and was pleased with the depth of historical detail; the time periods involved came alive to me. I haven’t been so fully immersed in history since I read Meet Molly at age ten.

Joy Marie Clarkson – I gained a great deal of solid perspective from Aggressively Happy, and went on to enjoy the thoughtfulness of You are a Tree. Joy Marie Clarkson’s writing style makes her the friend I didn’t know I needed. It’s amazing how she can write about what she has learned in a conversational way, without sounding like she is trying to teach you something. I loved both her books.

New-to-me Vintage Authors

O. Douglas – Since I adore D.E. Stevenson, I am not sure how I ignored this writer who was her contemporary and close friend for so long, but what a delight that I am just now beginning to enjoy her books. I started with Penny Plain which was wonderful, but when I found The Proper Place and the other Rutherford Novels, I became a die-hard fan. They are full of the kind of bright and steady, Scottish (or border-country English), midcentury characters that I love, and the focus on home as the center of the world speaks to me.

Susan Scarlett – Try as I might, I always end up despising winter by the end of January, but last winter was one of the coziest, happiest I can remember and I credit Susan Scarlett and this puzzle for much of that. Together, they taught me I can almost enjoy winter. I now own three of these literary world puzzles and they are the best puzzles ever. But I digress! Susan Scarlett is actually a pen name for Noel Streatfeild of The Shoe Books fame (and many other books). Under the Rainbow hooked me as a fan forever, and though Scarlett’s books can be a tad formulaic, and you might know what you expect to occur by the last page, how the stories unfold is always entertaining and enjoyable. The characters and settings are so likable.

Margot Benary-Isbert – How to put into words the loveliness I found in Benary-Isbert’s accounts of the Lechow family in post-WWII Germany? Germany was a grim place at that time, and that is clear in The Ark and Rowan Farm, but these are gentle books full of kindness and courage. The tone and content gives The Sound of Music vibes. I liked how these books gave me a sense of what life was like for a middle-class German family. The shift in Germany to communism is just starting to make its effects felt in the form of laws and new government, and it’s not a huge part of the story, but those details stood out to me and stuck with me. There are two more books in the series I need to get my hands on!

Honorable mention goes to Molly Clavering – I liked Susan Settles Down and Touch Not the Nettle pretty well, and would definitely recommend if you are a D.E. Stevenson fan, but I will admit Clavering’s books are slower-paced and the dialogue a bit dated so possibly hard to connect to for modern readers. Still, I will read more of her works! Even if the titles seem like odd choices to me…

That rounds out the new favorite author discoveries of 2025. If you’ve read any of these or are adding them to your TBR, let me know! For authors whose works I just read one of last year, look for a post next week. Also upcoming will be a review of middle-grade novels, some I read to myself and some I did for read-alouds.

Happy reading!

Everyday Life, Home Renovation

A Long Overdue Life Update

Posted on

Thirteen years ago, I wrote my first blog post. It’s been over a year since I wrote here last, so this post will probably go out into the “dear void,” (ala Kathleen Kelly), but I find myself drawn back to the ancient art of blogging anyway. If you’re reading this, thank you for being here.

There’ve been some changes…

First off, we’ve moved into our fifth house.

After fixing up our last house for eight years and falling in love with it (me more than anyone), my husband and I felt it was time to reach for our dream of owning some acreage closer to our extended family. It was a wrench for me in a lot of ways, but we said goodbye to this finally finished fixer-upper:

and hello to the next one (maybe the last one? Who can say…).

We have done a lot inside (removed a wall, put in a new kitchen, and more) and have many more hopes for renovations, but the land and the street we live on…they are already absolutely wonderful. It has been healing and life-giving to live on 5 acres off of a quiet country road surrounded by so much more nature than I have ever had around me to call my own before.

It’s a lovely place, but the whole transition had me reeling mentally and emotionally, along with life changing and kids growing and all of that…middle age is so slushy.

My location has changed, but much about life looks the same. I still homeschool my kids. It looks a little different than it did when I started blogging, for sure. My youngest is now five, the oldest sixteen, and life in this mixture of stages is sweet and challenging. I teach almost all the main school subjects at home to my 4K, 3rd grade, and 6th grade students (the 6th grader does grammar and science at a homeschool academy where all the kids go for art, P.E., and Bible once a week). My high school students do a mix of academy classes and home based classes for their high school credits. It’s so hard to believe after this year I will have a senior in high school! I can barely stand the thought.

And of course, I still read books constantly. I need a t-shirt that says, “While I breathe, I read.” The next post I am working on will be a very concise recap on what I read and enjoyed last year, and maybe a few mentions of books that fell below expectations.

Thanks for joining me on this life update, and I hope you’ll come back for some book catch up next week.

Happy reading!

Homeschooling, Nonfiction, Parenting

The Middle Years – My Favorite Parenting Books

Posted on

When I began this blog in 2012 or so, my parenting journey was in the new, shiny, rosy stage. I was full of optimistic ideals. Homeschooling was the plan but not the reality yet, as my two children were just 3 and 1 years old. In my memory, that time of my life was a time of very little sleep yet comparatively lighthearted days in ways I couldn’t even be grateful for at the time.

This current parenting stage is a bit more…muddled. I am still in those young children days, with a 3-year-old keeping us both laughing and on our toes, but I also have a high school student, middle school student, and two in elementary school. If you lost count along the way, that’s five. To put the icing on the cake, the fifth child of our family is a handsome, healthy, robust handful. Now that he’s three, I have fewer nightmares involving him jumping out of top story windows or swallowing button batteries, but those 2:00 a.m. night terrors still are about a once monthly occurrence for me. This kid is wild. Like, got straight up yelled at by a librarian yesterday wild. (Was I, a lifelong library addict, absolutely mortified? Yes, yes I was, and also very thankful we were not at our usual library; in this librarian’s defense, it is spring break in our school district and her last nerve had probably already been shattered). I am so very grateful for five healthy children; I don’t take that for granted for one second.

Without taking on a complaining tone, for life is indeed so beautiful and full of gifts I don’t deserve, I wanted to take a minute to be honest here that this current parenting stage I am in is a bit more muddled than shiny and idealistic. I’ve always heard that the middle years are full of mixed emotions, but it’s pretty dizzying to actually be in those years, realizing you have been working hard, but have so much work left ahead, yet somehow you have hardly accomplished anything you set out to, or so it seems many days. A lot of my current thoughts when I compare who I was as a mother twelve years ago and who I am now look something like, “How did I get here? I wasn’t always this grumpy/stressed/frazzled/unengaged.”

So though there used to be occasional posts here along the lines of “here’s a gem of a parenting thought or tip I have this week” mixed in with book recommendations, now there’s been a years-long complete quiet on the topic, and an absence of assuredness that I can offer any wisdom at this point. For now, while I don’t have the answer for how to thrive in the middle years fully worked out or a whole lot of confidence in any part of my mothering “methods” at all, I have found great hope and direction from two books in the last few months that I would love to share with you.

Remaining You While Raising Them is the number one parenting book I’d recommend to moms today, now that I am in the middle instead of at the idealistic beginning. I have read many, many parenting books, but this one is really the most encouraging, refreshing, and practical. I highly recommend the audio, and listening to the podcast episode of Don’t Mom Alone when author Alli Worthington is the guest. For anyone worried that this book will focus too much on a mom’s me-time or encourage you towards selfishness rather selflessness, I cannot stress more how pleasantly surprised I was with the way Worthington handles the topic of a parent’s health (mental, physical, and spiritual) without becoming in any way unbiblical (in my opinion, at least) or unbalanced.

Mothering by the Book is just absolutely a kindred spirit book for me. Not only does it draw from examples in novels and nonfiction books at homeschooling mom and author Jennifer Pepito has read aloud to her kids to combat the fears that mothers face on a daily basis, but it met me exactly in that middle years parenting place I have been struggling to figure out lately. Everything Pepito has to say on parenting is deep yet thoroughly practical and easy to understand. If you’re a homeschooling mom like I am, I also can’t recommend her podcast episode on Read Aloud Revival enough. The lay out of the book is brilliant, and I truly loved the book recommendations and scripture to memorize at the end of each chapter.

I’ve read many parenting books, and will continue to do so, but I really can say that these two books have been more helpful, refreshing, and applicable to my life than any others have in years. I’d love to hear from you on what parenting books you’d put at the top of your list! Or anything you’ve enjoyed reading at all lately. Until next time, happy reading!

{ Befriend me on Goodreads! }

Children's Books, Homeschooling, Parenting, Reviews, Summer Reading

Read-Alouds for The Rest of Summer

Posted on

Reading aloud with my kids is one of my favorite parts of parenting. Ever since they were small, we have made it part of our days. We read aloud during the school year most days at 10:00 a.m. That also happens to be snack time, ensuring at least a little bit of quiet from the toddler. Exploring books together is magical, like walking into the Narnian wardrobe together; it creates a connection and family culture that is invaluable to us. During the summer, reading aloud gets more sporadic, but we’re still drawn to it during the hottest days when everyone is at loose ends in the late afternoon, or the grumps from not enough structure and a lot of free time together set in.

The best read-alouds for us have been the ones I’ve read by myself and loved so much, I immediately read them again to my kids. If a book is good enough to read twice in a row, it’s a winner! Sarah Weeks’s Pie was one of those books, and I can’t recommend more that you read it in the summer. It is so good. We found that treasure two summers ago. This summer, the gem has been Howl’s Moving Castle. I read it in June, adored it so much I went on and read the whole series (which didn’t live up to the first book but was still pretty fun!), then started reading it aloud to my kids last week. I would rank it well below the Narnia and Harry Potter books as far as deep themes and fully developed fantasy worlds go, but Howl’s Moving Castle is a light-hearted and perfectly wonderful with very original characters. Though published as a children’s book, it is absolutely captivating and fun for all ages.

Another discovery we made was Winter Cottage by Carol Ryrie Brink, author of Caddie Woodlawn. In this historical novel, an eccentric father and his two daughters, one very practical and one an adventurer, find themselves lost in the woods during the Great Depression as they are traveling to live with a dreaded aunt in Chicago after not being able to make ends meet in their own home town. They find an abandoned cottage, and a nice, long adventure ensues. It’s a fun book for all, a nice imaginary trip away from the sweltering summer we’re having, and especially good if you like to explore historical eras with your kids through fiction. For us, there has to be an even mix of girl characters and boy characters to appeal to all my kids, and this book checks that box, too, after a couple of chapters. Note: this book is out of print, but can easily be checked out for free on Internet Archive, one of my favorite websites ever.

Honorable Read-Aloud Mentions from this spring go to The Wednesday Wars by Gary Schmidt and 100 Cupboards by N.D. Wilson. Both of these books are geared toward older kids, I’d say ideally ages 10 and up.

The Wednesday Wars is another 5 star read from Gary. Schmidt. It is set in the 1960s and will help readers understand that time period during the Vietnam War and even maybe develop an interest in Shakespeare. But I need to warn you, Schmidt knows how to throw deep emotion and tear jerking scenes into books that mostly seem written for 11-year-old boys. It’s kind of miraculous. My oldest son especially liked it (and also loved Pay Attention, Carter Jones, my personal Schmidt favorite). I really appreciate how Schmidt breaks down age barriers in the friendships his characters develop and how the tween boy protagonists learn to see life through others’ eyes. Particularly powerful in this book is the friendship between a teacher and student (it’s completely appropriate, rest assured). I deeply appreciate the noble character qualities included such as the courage it takes to stand up to peer pressure and bullying, and what heroism is in every day life…I could go on and on. I hope you read some Schmidt for yourself!

100 Cupboards is another fantasy novel we just finished that was almost an enjoyable page-turner, but falls short at creating a secondary world that makes sense in the first book of the series. Also, I was surprised by the amount of blood and gore and scary characters. I read it aloud without previewing it first on Sarah Mackenzie‘s recommendation, and while it was still good, I wouldn’t choose it as a read aloud for families with young kids. Did it leave me wanting to read the next book in the series to fully understand what’s going on? No, not really. My oldest son might explore the series further on his own, though, and I know lots of readers who love the books, so don’t go on my opinion alone!

During the spring in the school year we also read aloud The Secret Garden. This was a re-read for my oldest two, now ages 14 and 12. It’s still a favorite of my 14-year-old daughter, but my 12-year-old son complained it was boring (he secretly enjoyed it, I could tell); he liked it a lot when he was 6 and all my girls (currently ages 14, 8, and 6) thought it was “the best.” When my oldest two were ages 7 and 5 we read-aloud Heidi, and that’s another classic that is a beautiful and meaningful piece of literature I’d like to pick up and read again for the benefit of my younger girls.

And for the bonus review section, here are some other “kids” books that I read on my own recently.

The Star That Always Stays – 5 Stars! Loved it, and so did my 14-year-old daughter. See review here.

Treasures in the Snow – This book was beautiful. If you like Heidi, you will love this book. I am now realizing that I am a big fan of books set in the Alps and Nordic countries!

The Boy in the Striped Pajamas – As a piece of literature for a class, this book could be very useful in its symbolism, character contrasts, points of view, etc. Also, it has obvious value in discussion of the time period and awful history of Auschwitz. But, dear publishers, classified as a children’s book? With the alcohol misuse, extramarital affair, and decidedly tragic and grim themes throughout? No. Teens and up. I absolutely hated the ending, but I know it is the point of the whole book, so I will try to reconcile my dislike with the message of the author.

That wraps up the read aloud list from us for now! As always, share your read-aloud wins in the comments if you’d like!

{All of these are Amazon links, but full disclosure we get 99% of the books we read from the library. These are not affiliate links, please support whatever bookstore you love!}