Carolyn Astfalk has a first Wednesday of the month book review linkup!

Dying for Revenge by Dr. Barbara Golder

This book rubbed the salt in the wound of what’s wrong with our culture today, publishing and otherwise.  Here we have a slick but gritty, sharp-edged murder mystery better than most secular crime novels I’ve read, but just because the main character side-eyes liberal culture and is struggling with/considering/reconsidering Catholicism, it’s going to be looked over.  It really shouldn’t be.  Don’t YOU people pass it by, anyway.

Okay, now that I have that off my chest, Dying for Revenge is the first book in a (hopefully well-populated!) series focusing on the work and struggles of Dr. Jane Wallace, a medical examiner and lawyer who has faced crime in her own past and come to hide from it in the mountains and canyons of Colorado.  I finished it in the space of three days and would have taken less time if I could read in the car without getting car sick.  Part cozy, part police procedural, part woman-in-peril (though Jane is so no-nonsense, that when the actual peril comes, I was almost blindsided), and with an enticing, mature, exile-from-The-Troubles, will-they-won’t-they-can-they? love interest in Eoin Connor, Dying for Revenge kept me on the edge of my seat in every possible way.  The climax was perhaps the most surprising–and surprisingly satisfying–part of the plot.  In the end, it’s just as much a mystery to solve as a progression of soul for the main character.  Look for more about this here on June 5, if you’re not already convinced to buy Dying for Revenge.

From Grief to Grace by Jeannie Ewing

We all grieve in some way, because it’s a fallen world: we all need to cope with things not going according to plan, in ways both big and small.  From Grief to Grace is a manual on how to navigate that pain, from simple disappointment to world-changing heartbreak.  Ewing does not focus merely on death-related grief but on any kind of soul-pain that knocks us down to depths we’d much rather not visit.  Instead of looking at grief as something to just “get through,” she gives us tools and the gift of her own personal experiences with grief, so that we can see our own suffering not as something to fear but as rungs on a ladder to God.  How a book like this manages to be both practical and spiritually weighty is a testament to the author’s skill.

At the Crossroad by Amy M. Bennett

I am so excited to read this next book in The Black Horse Campground Mysteries.  I can’t rightly say that I’ve read this and can give a review yet, but it is loaded onto my Kindle and it’s what I plan to have in my waiting and recovery rooms while I’m in the hospital for tomorrow’s gallbladder eviction (in fact, if I can steal a moment today to start reading, I most surely will).  Amy Bennett has the dual gift of writing with a tender touch and a light heart.  Each book is filled with characters facing believable struggles and everyday events but turned in an extraordinary way.  The plot of each book keeps you guessing until the absolute very very very last minute.  In this latest installment, we’ll get to see which direction the love UST triangle takes.  I love JD, but I think I might be Team Rick?  Maybe.  Maybe?  Maybe.  I mean, a man who bakes is pretty difficult to resist…

This month’s audiobooks:

Anne of Avonlea (narr. Mary Sarah) by L. M. Montgomery

I’d read Anne of Green Gables in college for kicks and giggles but never read any of the other books, so this was a first for me as well as for my children… and husband.  We listened to part of it on the way home from a Memorial Day road trip, and he said it made the trip go a lot faster than it would have otherwise.  We even giggled together over Davy Keith’s mischief, the tragedy of the blue hall, and I think hubby laughed louder than I did over a certain package being obediently yet quite reluctantly tossed into the school woodstove.  So far I still like the first installment of this series best, but Avonlea is still well worth visiting, even in this perhaps more episodic tale.  The narration on this one is nice but seems to have less wonder and perhaps too much whimsy, and the different voices of the characters were barely distinct from one another.  All in all, though, it was a well-done production, and I’m glad we got to enjoy it.

Anne of the Island (narr. Barbara Caruso) by L. M. Montgomery

This version has my favorite narrator of the three Anne books we’ve listened to so far as a family.  Caruso’s voice has a timeless quality, and she gives each character a different voice but manages to avoid making any one of them a caricature.  The story itself was typical, delightful Anne, again more episodic than narrative as Green Gables is.  The narration in this production, however, really made it work for me best of the three Anne books we’ve heard.

Have you read/heard any of these yourself?  

What did you read this month?  

Don’t forget to linkup your reviews with Carolyn Astfalk!