shelfreflectionofficial's reviews
800 reviews

My seven-year-old daughter is reading chapter books so I wanted to get her into a series that I wouldn’t really have to worry about the content.

I ended up reading this one out loud to my 4-year-old daughter when my oldest finished. She loved it! It probably helped that it had a unicorn. The main character is named Lily and I find her often pretending to be Lily when she plays house.

This was my first long read-aloud. I’m not sure it was the best for 4-year-olds. I think there are quite a few words in there that she wouldn’t know what they mean. She was still able to get into the story and understand what was happening but some sentences were a mouthful.

I realize I am not really an auditory processor. When I’m the one reading out loud it’s hard for me to stay focused on the story. It’s not my preferred method. I read out loud slower than when I read to myself and I was reading shorter chunks of the story and going days in between readings while I waited for my daughter’s attention span to be ready to sit and listen. [We started back in March to give you an idea of how long it took us. I’m sure most can get through it quite a bit faster, especially if you read a little every day.]

That being said, it’s hard for me to review the overall cohesiveness and feel of the story since I read it disjointedly and distracted.

Instead, I can tell you that my daughters both enjoyed it! My oldest was begging me to get the next book in the series and I finally did get around to getting the next two for her to read.

They loved the magical aspects of the story and the bravery of Lily. There were a lot of perilous situations and life-threatening moments that I wondered might be too scary for my 4-year-old, but she didn’t seem bothered by it. It made it more exciting for her.

Plus this series is about hope so I believe there will always be happy endings.



The basic premise of the story:

Lily is 12 and had recently lost her dad while he was on a business trip. One day at school during an encounter with a bully Lily sees a character from another world, she had somehow ‘called’ to rescue the kid being bullied. She then finds herself in the Realm— a fantasy world filled with conjurings from human imaginations.

She is in possession of her father’s soothstone which gives her special creating powers. But in this Realm, and partly in her world, stewards (stone-holders) are being hunted by shrouds who are part of Eymah, the bad guy’s, army.

Along with her creature friends (Cedric the Dragon, Rigel the silvery bird, and Flint the fire-starter) Lily goes on an adventurous quest over the Cascades, beyond Castle Iridyll, across the Desert of the Forgotten, through the Petrified Forest and down into the Catacombs to help protect the other stewards and the good guys of the Realm from Eymah, but also to search for her dad who she speculates may not actually be dead.



There is some spiritual allegory in this story. The unicorn is Pax and seems to be a Savior character. Eymah seems to be a Satan character loose in the Realm. Though I’m not sure where the series will continue to go because Eymah seems to be destroyed by the end of the first book.

The theme of redemption runs through the story as both Adam and Cedric experience some sort of transformation from ‘bad’ to ‘good.’ Cedric has been ashamed of being a dragon, whose kind has done a lot of evil things, and desires to be different than other dragons. By the end he no longer has the ‘bad blood’ of dragons but is good on the inside.

Lily not only can create using her imagination with the soothstone, but she can also call on the help of Pax, the Unicorn. So when she is in danger and all seems to be lost she essentially prays and asks for help. We see Pax coming to her aid, but it seems like for the most part the connection is between Pax and her— not so much the others with her.

There aren’t a lot of overt Christian things or dialogue so I’m interested to see what else shows up in this series. That being said, I think a lot of readers may read this series and not even make the allegorical connections as intended by the writer.


There is a map in the front detailing the Realm which is a nice visual for readers. There aren’t illustrations in this book, but there are little images on the first page of each chapter. Those were nice for my four-year old who still prefers picture books. It helped keep her attention from chapter to chapter.



Recommendation:

Though I can’t speak on behalf of the entire series yet, from what I know thus far this is a great series for kids to read that you can be assured knowing there is no questionable content but has a theme of good triumphing over evil, highlights friendships, sacrifice, love, and redemption.

It is a good option for a read-aloud if your kids have the attention span for it.

There are some harder words but my seven-year-old read the whole book without really asking what words mean so either she knew them or they weren’t detracting from her ability to understand the story.

I think I will continue to read the next one aloud, but will probably strive to read one chapter a day to maintain more cohesiveness in the storyline for us.


[Content Advisory for kids: lots of perilous situations, loss of a parent, bullying, no swearing or using God’s name in vain]

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**Received an ARC via Tyndale House Publishing in exchange for an honest review** 

This book reads like a movie! Non-stop action, art forgery, heists, treasure hunts, chase scenes, and corruption.

Mann did a great job writing this book and creating a unique band of characters that I can also picture portrayed in a blockbuster movie. This book is part of a series and I’m excited to see what comes next!



The plot of this book revolves around two friends— Sophie and Lise— who together run an art gallery and a side, secret business where Sophie acts as an artist version of Robin Hood:

“She wasn’t a thief. Thieves stole things for their own gain. She replaced previously stolen artwork with expertly forged copies and returned the originals to their rightful owners.”

All of that comes to a halt when Lise’s late mother sends her a painting (1 of 3) that had been missing for 40 years. The painting was of a queen and her twin children, all three of which had died in a car accident around the same time the paintings disappeared. (Reminiscent of Princess Diana and her popularity in the public and then her tragic car accident)

The surprising appearance of the painting and the clues it supposedly holds to a treasure brings out all kinds of people out of the woodwork trying to get their hands on the priceless paintings:

including-

- Laszlo who is forced to recover the paintings for an unknown employer in order to save his family’s lives.

- Mac who is hired by the royal Prince himself to recover the portraits of his wife and children and find out more about the supposed accidental car accident. He becomes intrigued, enamored, and suspicious of Sophie and she becomes his little project as he deduces she must be at the center of everything.

The second plot thread revolves around Lise’s work for an organization who helps women and children. She spends a lot of time aiding the homeless encampments nearby and discovers that men are raiding these camps periodically and taking away specific looking women never to be seen again. She is determined to find out what is going on and rescue these girls from potential human trafficking.

Lise ends up getting kidnapped and Sophie is left to figure out what is going on, if the two threads are related, and to try and save her friend before the worst happens.



This book is labeled a ‘Speranza novel.’ Speranza means ‘hope,’ and is the name of a group of people with special skills who have committed to helping women and children in need.

I thought this was a really cool idea. The book begins with a prologue that takes place in 1750 showing a woman helping some captive girls escape. So this group functions a little like the historic freemasons ‘club’ in that it is widespread and secret; this particular group could also be related to the teams of people in the Oceans movies.

Members (mostly women) are identified by the speranza emblem of an anchor and a feather (“hope is an anchor for the soul”) and are willing to sacrifice to help the vulnerable— women and children— who are too often taken advantage of.

While this particular book focuses on Sophie and Lise and their encounter with the Speranza group, the series could easily focus on the ‘origin story’ of any of its core members. It provides this series with a lot of depth and avenues to take in the future.



So I liked the ‘historic group of women helping women’ aspect. I also liked the setting of this book. Mann moves the characters from Munich and Cologne, Germany to Venice. The European scenes fit nicely with the art theme and allowed for the conspiracy revolving around the royal family of Neuhansberg (fictional).

I’ve wanted to visit Venice and watch people paint, and this book re-affirmed that for me!

The art theme was fun for me (an art major). Sophie’s character reminded me a bit of Neil on White Collar as he is also a painter with forging capabilities and a loose loyalty to the law.



My main critique of this book was of the things that got a little lost:

The beginning scene draws you into the story immediately and sets the mood, but then it is pretty inconsequential to the story as a whole and not revisited in any capacity. I was hoping for a deeper connection to that night later in the book but didn’t get it.

In the end when everything culminates and the confrontations occur, I felt like we didn’t get enough explanation for everything that happened. The bad guys get caught and then we get an epilogue that takes place two months later. I would have liked more understanding on what was going on with the taken girls and for what purpose.

I wanted more info on the car accident years ago. Mac is evidently looking into that, and when he finds the car he takes lots of pictures, but then we never go back to that night to know what exactly happened or what he was supposed to have discovered about the hidden car wreckage.

This book read fast and I would have easily read 20 or more pages to get some more information.

One more tiny critique: the Speranza group really relies on secrecy and confidentiality. When Sophie demands information and they need to swear her to secrecy they say ‘Do you swear on Lise’s life?’ and she says yes. And then they divulge everything…

For one—that was too easy! For two— why would she swear on Lise’s life if the Speranza group is also trying to help Lise? Swearing on someone’s life is a silly way to assure confidentiality plus what does it even mean?! There should have been a better process for vetting people and bringing them in then saying- promise? Okay we believe you.



So where is this series headed?

I’m not sure, but like I mentioned before, there are a lot of options.

The romance in this book was pretty light. Some flirting/kissing between Mac and Sophie with hints that their relationship is just beginning, but they can’t really trust each other right now. That could be developed in future books.

I also think that Sophie’s parents’ death could become another part of a future story. They were CIA agents and Sophie wishes she knew more about their lives and their death. I think it would be cool if a future book had a mission connected to that history that brings Sophie more closure about them.

And I think we will find out more about the other Speranza members’ histories and backgrounds and what brought them into the secret group.



One last comment. Lise’s mother’s name is Irmgard. And I could not read that name in my head without picturing Jimmy Fallon saying ‘Ermahgerd!’ Every time. I think Mann should have found a different name.

Okay, I just looked it up and the name means ‘universal protection’ so I guess it’s a fitting name but it’s literally impossible for me not to say it the Fallon way.



Recommendation:

I would definitely recommend this book! There’s nothing boring about it. It’s got action, variety of good characters, cool setting, mystery, and a heart for helping the vulnerable and disadvantaged.

It is a Christian fiction, but I wouldn’t let that keep you away if you’re not used to reading that genre. Other than a clue on the painting and the overall message of hope, there really isn’t much overt ‘Christian’-stuff/talk to the book.

It’s a clean book with moral characters. It is a book people of all walks of life can enjoy even if they don’t ascribe to the Christian faith.

This is a series I plan to continue to read and I think you should too!


[Content Advisory: no swearing or sexual content]


**Received an ARC via Tyndale House Publishing in exchange for an honest review**

“‘You think keeping us safe means walking inside the lines. But I have news for you. The lines aren’t keeping us safe. They're keeping us locked up.’”


Kill Her Twice is a murder mystery set in Los Angeles circa 1930s. It’s not a book you pick up just for the mystery, but it has a unique offering of mystery, Chinese culture and their struggles in America, family dynamics, and an Old Time Hollywood setting.

These things converge in an enjoyable, albeit a little slow, read that gives a lot of avenues for discussion.



The basic premise is this:

A rising Hollywood star, Lulu Wong, is found dead in the horse stables of Chinatown. Cause of death is unknown but many signs point to murder.

“Lulu had been the pride of Chinatown. And now she was its deepest sorrow.”

Chinatown is on the verge of being dozed for a new rail station and this kind of publicity is sure to turn the tides further out of their favor.

“A whole world of sights, smells, and sounds would vanish, and who would miss us? No one. They’d just be glad to see us go.”

Sisters May and Gemma, afraid the police won’t do the work to find the truth because of social perception of Chinese Americans, decide to take the investigation into their own hands to find justice for their friend and clear Chinatown of this stain on their name.

“Lulu’s wealth and fame would give the investigation a push. But for how long and how far? In the end, she was just a dead Chinese woman, without even a father to speak for her. Would she matter enough?”



A big part of the story is the family dynamics of the Wong family. The story is told in alternating POVs of May (the oldest sister) and Gemma (the middle sister), but there is also a third sister, Peony, and another baby on the way.

The sisters’ bond reminded me a little bit of the To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before. They still have both parents but because their dad is at a sanatorium, the home is currently a one-parent home, causing the sisters to be bonded in a close way and to be picking up extra responsibilities for their family and taking care of their mom.

There is a decent amount of character development with May and Gemma. They both have the stereotypical personalities of a first born and a middle child. May is the responsible, sensible, rule-follower and people-pleaser. Gemma is the outspoken, bold do-what-you-gotta-do-even-if-it-breaks-some-rules action-taker: “Life gave us plenty of opportunities to be afraid, and an equal number of chances to punch those fears in the nose.”

“If the family was a dragon, Ba was the head, providing direction; Ma, the body, connecting all the parts; and May, the wings, helping us fly the course. I was the tail. Though the wings thought they were in control, it was really the tail that steered. The tail was also capable of striking on its own.”

In their attempt to find Lulu’s killer they need both personalities to navigate this dangerous unknown territory, still occupied by the killer. But they also learn from their mistakes and channel the other sister’s tendencies at various times to pursue justice.

I liked the family bond and that even though their dad was away, he was still leading their family and his family still loved and respected him, wanting to honor him and help take care of their family.



If you’re wondering why the title is ‘Kill Her Twice’ here is a quote from the book:

“It was bad enough that someone had killed her… A second death would come in the form of scandal, her twisted body held up for viewing like some circus sideshow, her fame recast as a cautionary tale. They would kill her twice.”

Another theme in the book is the exploration of the perception of the Chinese people during this time in the United States, particularly LA and Chinatown and Hollywood.

Her second death was the perpetuation of the negativity surrounding Chinese Americans and prejudice against their culture.

In the 1840s, the Chinese immigrants came to the US— the first Asian immigrants. They took on a lot of labor jobs, including helping build the transcontinental railroad. Perception of them in America turned negative and many laws were created out of that prejudice making life in America more challenging for them.

The 1930s was actually a turning point for the Chinese in a lot of areas of the US as they made considerable effort to become more involved in politics and wanting to vote and pushing for change.

Lee says Lulu’s character is loosely inspired by Anna Mae Wong (1905-1961): “considered the first Chinese American Hollywood movie star, whose career, spanning forty years in silent film, talkies, radio, stage, and television, had been largely unrecognized until recently.”

We know the influence Hollywood has on shaping cultural perception of any number of topics, ideas, and people for better or worse. Their portrayal of Chinese Americans in the 30s was usually negative. They were the villains, the cheats, the thieves, and Hollywood played up the Chinese stereotypes. Often white people played Asian characters and taped their eyes to be slanted. This portrayal is mentioned in Kill Her Twice.

Lulu’s fame came on the villainous roles she took, but what might have played into her murder was her newest film in which she would be the heroine and pushed for scenes and dialogue that was generally outlawed.

Just as Hollywood can shape perception negatively, it can shift and shine a positive light and Lulu was striking out, trying to show America the values, principles, and skills of the Chinese people from the stage.



I learned a lot about the Chinese culture and about the struggles they faced during that time period. It is not something I have read much about so I enjoyed the insights into that.


I will say that this story took place during the Great Depression, but I didn’t really get any sense of that while reading. There was some talk of needing to make money, but it was very different vibe than what I’ve read with other Great Depression era stories.

I don’t know enough about the Great Depression to know if Hollywood was hit differently than other parts of the country.

It seems weird that people were still able to buy flowers during this time or host big parties— even for the wealthy. Weren’t they experiencing financial strain as well?

I’m also not sure how the Wong family was able to afford to send their dad to a sanatorium for so long! I don’t know how those things work or what it costs, but it seems like a big expense and not one that would be waived for Chinese people at that time.

I suppose Lee was more trying to focus on the Chinese American struggle rather than the Great Depression struggle, but it would have been interesting to see more interaction between both with that of the Chinese community and the Hollywood elite.



I have not read any other Stacey Lee books, but I would look into them after reading this one. It was written more for YA, which was fine because that meant it was a cleaner read.

I thought it was a bit too slow-going. It seemed like it took forever to develop clues and lines of investigating. We didn’t really make much significant progress until about the last 20% of the book and then all of a sudden things came together and it was solved pretty abruptly.

I didn’t guess who the killer was because Lee did a good job of creating suspicious characters and red herrings along the way. However, the downside of that is that it didn’t really feel like a case that the reader really could have figured out very early because we got so few clues and even the ones we did get we weren’t sure of their significance.

I think it would have been better with a more aggressive handling of the investigation throughout the story. But that’s me who tends to read stories more for the thrills and mysteries than the other aspects.



Because of the abrupt ending and quick wrap-up, I feel like there were several things that didn’t really get resolved!

Like: what about the script-stealing and the ‘You’re next!’ that was written on May’s script? Did we ever really find out who did those things and why?

Or Lulu’s Cadillac? We know who got ownership of it, but it seemed a bit shady and we never really found out if that was proper or not.

And then several reviewers have lamented the lack of romantic resolution at the end as well. I can see their disappointment. The romance areas of the book fleshed out the character development a little bit and provided new avenues to take the plot, but it felt like that thread of story fizzled out a bit by the end and didn’t give us much to go on.



Recommendation:

If you only like to read stories for the mystery or the thrill of it, this book may be a little disappointing or slow for you.

But if you enjoy the historical fiction aspect of the book and diving into new cultures, the combination of themes provided in this book is a nice mix for a reader who doesn’t need constant action.

There were a few things I would change with the pacing and the ending, but overall I enjoyed this book and would be interested in reading more from Stacey Lee.


[Content Advisory: no swearing or sexual content]

**Received an ARC via NetGalley**

“To date, my performance was an obvious one star. Could be worse, but only as a result of gross incompetence.”


This was a bit of an odd duck of a book.

It is my first Brandon Sanderson one so I am not sure, but I get the feeling this may be a bit divergent from his typical work in terms of tone.


So here’s the sitch.

‘You’re a wizard, Harry!’

Just kidding. Wrong book.

Picture this instead: infinite other dimensions that you can purchase for yourself and can access at your will that will be versions of Medieval England.

“Your life isn’t unremarkable. You are merely living in the wrong time. Embrace your destiny— whether it be to bring Promethean light or exert relentless domination— and travel the dimensions.”

Now, as you can imagine, such an endeavor seems pricey, but fear not! There are FRUGAL ways of horizontal time travel. They are all outlined in the handy-book written by Cecil G. Bagsowrth III which is what this book is named after.

Do be aware though, that this handbook will not, in any meaningful way, help you survive whatever you may encounter. It will just scare you into all the upgrades as good marketing is meant to do.

“One star. Barf up some alphabet soup, and you might create a more useful text.”

Now picture this: You haven’t bought a dimension but you find yourself exploded into one with no memory of who you are, why you’re there, or what’s happening. And there are marauding Vikings, wights, skops, boasts, and no internet. Pretty vivid imagery, right?

That’s the premise of this book and the predicament of our main character, John West, who is a combination of 10% Adam West, 10% John Wayne, and 80% Peter Quill. (But he does have nanobots that make him nearly invincible which always helps when you’re not down the road from a hospital or even a Walgreens.)

“I’d woken up in the middle of a burning field. The review almost wrote itself. An ideal experience, if you happen to be a pyromaniac cow. One star.”



I think my favorite part of the book were John’s inner reviews of various things he was experiencing.

“Was that a clue to who I was? Some kind of… reviewer?”

[As a reviewer myself, this was truly inspiring.]

“Five stars. Hiding place sufficient, despite the lack of trees.”

“Four and a half stars. Might be better with puppets.”

“that guy could be profound. And depressing. Five stars. Should be narrating documentaries about disasters like Chernobyl. Or my love life.”

As a potential tourist to interdimensional travel, it definitely helped me make the decision to throw away my brochure and be content with living vicariously through him instead.



Thrown into this warring era, with some of his coworkers that are total monsters (can I get an amen?), John eventually ascertains the full dilemma he finds himself in:

“These poor people, crushed between forest and ocean, with a god that didn’t like them and an evil mobster from the future looking to dominate them. It was like the rock and the hard place had been joined by a bulldozer and a jackhammer.”



This book had the easiest character development a writer could wish for. He literally has no idea who he is so there’s only one direction to go.

It was a radical transformation from shockingly oblivious to powerfully self-aware and we got to watch every devastating blow as John Adam West Wayne goes from realizing the depth of his cowardice to deciding he can be the nanobot hero this dimension never asked for, is actually killed by, but also desperately needs.

“Turns out, even a coward can save the world. So long as you leave him with no other options.”

“I was moving toward something I believed in, rather than away from what I feared.”

And this moving scene:

“‘I’ve learned to fear someone else more than I do you.’
He frowned. ‘Who?’
'The man… I used to be.’”

(And yes, right after he says this with that heroic Chris Pratt-like scowl he crushes something like a boss and 80s rock music ensues.)



You may be wondering— but where are the wizards?! And are they always frugal?!

This is also the cool part of the story. Anyone who lives in the present can go back in time and be a wizard. Not with magic…

“While modern pop culture has co-opted the term to evoke the image of long beards, pointy hats, and the occasional bescarred boy with a wand, in ancient times it wasn’t so much the magic that identified these individuals. It was knowledge.”

Wizardry is really just having new and advanced knowledge that others have not obtained yet. Or crazy high-tech blasting guns like any good space movie even if it’s in Robin’s ‘Hood. (Get it?)

And turns out, frugality really doesn’t move the plot forward so we’re going to slowly back away from that term like it’s not even there.



The worst part of the book is hopefully just my personal experience and won’t affect yours at all— I read an advanced reader’s copy in digital format. Well this book includes sections from the incepted-frugal-wizard-handbook thing including pictures and footnotes and such (as far as I can tell).

But apparently we don’t have the technology to create a digital version where you can see pictures in full or whole sentences. Everything was sliced like a loaf of bread and then stacked up like Jenga.

I’m sure those parts of the book are real fun and neat and everything, but sadly, I’ll never know right now.

I’m sure the real deal book will have all the pieces.



Overall, I enjoyed this read. Interesting concept. Good, unique characters. Fun setting. I love a good redemption story and a crazy old lady in stealth-mode. The lore of the world there was hard to grasp and since I believe in one God, the mythology of the gods didn’t do much for me and felt very watered down, but hey, it’s totally fiction and from another dimension so I'll give it a pass.



This is part of a series that Sanderson wrote during the Covid years, but they are all stand-alones.

Sanderson said on the Kickstarter page: “These books are an excellent place to start into my work, as they are each standalone novels that require very little previous knowledge of anything I've written before… you're going to get a sampling of the many different types of things I like to do.”

His many books take place in the ‘Cosmere’ shared fictional universe that he created (like the Marvel universe). I plan to read more from this series and just other Sanderson books in general. He seems like an author I’m going to like and I’m curious what else this Cosmere has to offer.


In the author’s note Sanderson described this book as “a whiteroom story, where a character wakes up with no memory and has to figure out who they are along with the reader.”

He mentions another “excellent example” of this in the book Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir, which I agree is a fantastic book and as such I am happy to market here as well.



Final Review:

The building blocks were solid, but would have preferred less Jenga. 4 stars.



[Content Advisory: 0 f-words, 1 s-word, 54 uses of ‘hell', 47 uses of the d-word; no sexual content]



**Received an ARC via NetGalley**

[I’m not sure if this influences your interest in this book or not, but Sissy Goff is, as far as I know, not related to or married to Bob Goff.]

“It’s never been more important to talk about how the trouble your child will experience can lead to resilience. We want her to learn how she can see difficulties as opportunities. And, ultimately, how God can and will use hurt in her life—even big hurt—for her good and His glory.”


This is an excellent book and resource for parents to use to help their kids cope with anxiety and worrying. I can see myself referring back to it a lot over the years as different worries manifest for my daughters. I would definitely recommend owning this one and sharing it with your parent-friends.

You can also get the workbook that goes along with this that your daughter works through. There is one for younger girls and one for teens. I got the younger one and at first glance (she hasn’t gone through it yet) looks easy for her to follow and understand. I think she will like having her ‘own’ book.

This would still work for boys but I think the root of their anxiety may come from different places. It is written specifically for girls. David Thomas works in the same counseling practice as Sissy Goff and has written the book Wild Things and Raising Emotionally Strong Boys for boys that may be a good option if you’re a parent to boys. I plan to read at least the first one of those as well.

I should disclaim first as Sissy does herself in the book— this book is NOT meant to replace therapy or counseling for kids with severe anxiety disorders. Some kids may need extra help.


I will also say that I have plans to read Bad Therapy by Abigail Shrier and The Anxious Generation by Jonathan Haidt that both talk about anxiety. I’m curious to see how those correlate (or not) with this book.

Sissy’s book is meant to provide tools and understanding for parents to handle their children’s anxiety and worries. She mentions how there is an epidemic of anxiety. When she started counseling she said maybe 1 in 20 kids came in wanting to talk about anxiety. Now it’s 16 in 20.

I believe Shrier and Haidt’s books speak to this epidemic and exploring what may be causing it. One of those reasons is the popularity and trend in being able to say you have anxiety or depression. It may be a parent’s overemphasis on their feelings and ruminating on them, trying to figure them out. I’ll learn more once I read those books.

In light of that, I think as you read Sissy’s book you should be careful not to project feelings on your daughters that they may not have. Sissy even says that just because they experience anxious thoughts or worries or sad thoughts, doesn’t mean they have anxiety or depression. Those are all normal things everyone deals with. We don’t want to make the worries bigger than they are. We want to help our kids as they struggle, but use your best judgment on whether your kids just need a few reminders or tips on calming down, they need more therapy, or they’re somewhere in between.



Raising Worry-Free Girls is broken into three parts: Understanding, Help, and Hope.

Understanding: These chapters talk about what anxiety/worry is and why she may be struggling with it (i.e. technology, peer pressure, genetics, environment, temperament, parenting styles, experiences etc.) It assures readers that this book will help create perspective for both the parent and the child which is essential for knowing how to move forward.

Help: These chapters talk about how ‘The Worry Monster,’ as she calls it, affects our children’s bodies (logic, reasoning, breathing, tummies, amygdala in the brain’s response), minds (catastrophic thinking, exaggerated thinking, underestimated ability, etc), and hearts (safety, comfort, bravery, etc). There are lots of practical tools/exercises/questions here to help her start fighting and ‘bossing back’ her Worry Monster.

Hope: These chapters look at what the Bible says about fear, worry, courage, trust, waiting, wisdom, etc. Anxiety is essentially a lack of trust. What bolsters our trust? Knowing the One who created us and this world, the One who holds it together, the One who holds us and our futures in our hands, and why that is the most comforting thing. And our ultimate hope is eternal and cannot be taken away from us. There is security in that.I like that she encourages your daughter to find her own verse that speaks to her heart and have her write it down and memorize it to bring back in troubled times.


She does talk a tiny bit about the Enneagram. I know there are mixed feelings about the Enneagram. I tend to fall on the side of not putting much stock in it or spending much time trying to understand or utilize it. I won’t get into that now, but if you’re like me, be assured, the foundation of this book is not founded on that material even though she mentions it. I didn’t feel uncomfortable with any statements she made.



I won’t re-explain all the tools she does in the book. It’s better if you read them yourself along with the real-life examples of girls she has seen in her office and how these tools helped them, but I will share a few of the things that stuck out to me.

“Much of a child’s response to trauma has to do with ours.”

“Children of anxious parents are as much as seven times more likely to develop an anxiety disorder than children who don’t have anxious parents.”

Even if your kids aren’t showing signs of anxiety now, if you are an anxious person, this book may be helpful for you to read before your own anxiety influences them! They learn how to respond to things by watching us. We need to do the work, ourselves, to manage our stress or worries and model for our kids a healthy perspective. It’s not just our emotional response or physical response but also the language we use around those things. It shapes how our kids understand and learn how to perceive their own struggles.

For that reason, I recommend this book to any parent regardless of where their child is on the anxiety spectrum.



Another way parents hinder their children’s ability to deal with anxiety is by helping them avoid the feeling.

“they rescue, they fix, they help her avoid the situations that trigger the fear. But when you rescue her, you’re communicating to her that she needs rescuing. You’re telling her the situation is a frightening one and she’s not capable of handling it.”

“If we solve our kids’ problems for them, they don’t develop the ability to problem-solve, which I believe is one of the primary deterrents of anxiety.”

Just like exposure therapy, our kids can’t learn how to handle something if they never experience it. It’s okay for them to feel fear and worry and anxious thoughts. Then we help them use their tools to navigate it. Avoidance will only make it worse and ingratiate in her the idea that she doesn’t have what it takes to overcome it.



One of the activities she suggests doing is creating a number scale (1-10) to help her identify where her feelings are on the scale— they initially feel like 10s, but using this scale helps her to see that most of her worries really aren’t that major. She leaves the scale open for our own creation, but I would have liked to see an example scale of what she would put for the numbers. I might see things bigger than I should too!



“Your pain is important, but you don’t have to make it bigger than it is just for me to hear you or to make it valid.”

I found this particularly convicting for me. I’ve been pondering how to show my kids I care without coddling them. I want to create in them perseverance and resilience. I’ve heard them say ‘You don’t care about me!’ because of my ‘builds character’ parenting style when it comes to hurts, especially ones that happen after adamant disobedience.

But there has to be a balance. This quote reminds me that if I remove too much of my attention from her, she may escalate her ‘pain’ to get my attention back or exaggerate her feelings or experiences to make it ‘worth my time.’ I don’t want to do that to her. I need to acknowledge and listen to her pain— not indulge it— but still let her know I will always listen to her so nothing gets blown up.



“Anxiety always involves an overestimation of the problem and an underestimation of herself.”

“The Brave Theory is where we want her to land— and it says she’s capable and strong and that God has already given her all that she needs. She can do the scary thing… We want her to use her smart brain against her worry brain and boss it back.”

This is really what it all boils down to. Giving her the tools and language she needs to identify what’s going on in her body, mind, and heart, and helping her stand up to the voice of lies and find her confidence in the Lord to do the hard things.



“The girls I see who live with anxiety are some of the most hard-working, caring, intentional, kind, and brilliant girls I know. Things matter to them. Everything matters to them which can make life hard. And it can make it hard to know when or how to turn that kind of care off.”

This is a good reminder to me as I deal with one of my daughters in particular. It gives me language and encouragement to use with her— that she struggles because she cares and caring isn’t wrong. But helping her not be trapped in looping thoughts of perfectionism and getting everything ‘right’ but giving her freedom to not be perfect. Perfection is an unrealistic expectation that will only cause more worry and disappointment.



Recommendation

I would definitely recommend this book to everyone! Really, I think even people who aren’t parents would still benefit from some of the tools she talks about. But in particular, this is a great resource for parents and gives direction to help them help their kids.

I love how Sissy combines both the psychology behind anxiety but also biblical principles. You can only do so much ‘symptom-treating’ without also having a hope and trust in something bigger than ourselves. Real security is found in Christ so that component is essential in any discussion about anxiety and worrying.

‘Do not fear’ is used enough times in the Bible to recognize that the cure for that is Jesus.

I’ll leave with one more quote which assures any parent— it’s not too late:

“There is always hope. It’s a journey. And not only are you and she still on it, but God is still going before you in it.”

“The fact remained, there was more to what happened to them when they were children than even they knew.”


This book had a different kind of domestic-thriller vibe than the other books I’ve read by Sally Hepworth.

She tackled some hard-to-read topics like child abuse and the foster care system. It made the stakes feel a little higher and the ending more important.

Even though I had the twists figured out pretty early on, it was still a really compelling and hard-to-put-down book. I was deeply invested in the pursuit of justice and getting the ‘bad guy’ held accountable.

The main reason a person would not want to read this book would be if they were triggered by child abuse or their own experiences in foster care. I can see how this might not be a good fit for that.



The basic premise is that three sisters (not biologically, but bound by their shared trauma) spent a few years together in the foster home— Wild Meadows— under the care of Miss Fairchild who was anything but fair to children.

They eventually found a way to get out from her abusive hand.

Now, 25 years later, they’re forced to relive their trauma as old human remains have been found under the foster home. They have to confront their past, their fears, and their trauma, as they are both witnesses and suspects in the new investigation.

“Her testimony is compelling… You three had troubled childhoods and Norah has well-documented issues with violence. We’ve also seen enough to know that the three of you would do just about anything to protect each other. A lovely trait among sisters— but also a pretty powerful motivation to lie.”



Hepworth did a good job of creating three distinct personalities for the sisters and the ways they coped with their childhood.

We had:

Jessica: She lived with Miss Fairchild the longest and had experienced more of her narcissistic behvavior and manipulation. As an adult she is a home organizer which pairs well with her OCD. She battles her OCD with taking Valium, often from her clients’ houses… because most of them apparently need them too.

“No one repressed more toxic emotions than she did… All that repressed anger and nothing to show for it. She’d been repressing anger about it ever since.”

“Panic was her constant state of being, as familiar to her as breathing.”


Then there’s:

Norah: She was second to arrive at Wild Meadow having come from a mixed-bag of foster homes prior; she had learned to use violence to both protect herself and cope with her trauma. Her adult job is ‘helping’ people pass psychometric screening tests for employment by cheating and doing it for them. She also dates, not for relationship, but transactional sex that results in handyman chores done around her house.

“If there was one thing Norah had learned from growing up in foster care, it was how to take care of things. Her methods were a little unorthodox, perhaps, but they had to be.”

“One of the things that Alicia had always admired about Norah was the fact that she was a committed liar. Not to be confused with a good liar; Norah’s gift was the ability to come up with a lie on the spur of the moment and remain committed to it against all logic and reason.”


And lastly:

Alicia: Meant to be there only while her grandma was in the hospital, worse came to worse and her grandma died, forcing her into foster care for the duration. As an adult Alicia is a social worker, seeking to care for foster kids better than she was.

“Alicia wasn’t known for her wise, well-thought-out decisions. She was the one who threw caution to the wind, who took risks, who acted first and thought of the consequences later.”

“If there was one thing foster kids needed, it was fight.”


Jessica takes charge, Norah was the fight, and Alicia was the heart.

It was heartbreaking to read about their stories— what led them there— and what happened to them after.

Hearing four-year-old Jessica think that her mother died of sadness and worrying that she might too if she was too sad just wrenches you.

“Jessica didn’t know you could die from being sad. She remembered being very careful not to cry about her mother in case she died too.”

Even though I don’t share Norah’s love of dogs or care for some of her decisions, when you read a story like this you really love a character like Norah. Her strength and her fight is essential and it bolsters the reader and gives us hope that she won’t let her or her sisters be taken down. You cheer for her fight, for her resilience, for her spirit.

I love how Hepworth shows how even in trauma, relationships matter so much. Their sisterhood was what got them through. They had each other. Resilience is a really interesting and inspiring thing to study in real life when you hear people’s stories and how they came out of it.



The chapters of the book go back and forth between present and ‘before’ and change between the three sisters’ POVs. Hepworth did a good job of writing distinct voices for each character.

We also have these ‘mysterious’ chapters of a woman speaking with a therapist about her childhood. We aren’t told right away who it is, and even after we find that out, there is suspicion to be cast on the verity of what we are reading.

[I have a spoiler comment about that at the very end of this review.]



I don’t know much about the foster care system and how it differs (or not) from the US to Australia, but I think Hepworth did a good job in her portrayal. Obviously the story revolved around the hellish side of foster care, but she also shows Alicia as a social worker and really caring about the kids and wanting to sincerely help them.

I know several families who do foster care. In the healthy and right way. Hepworth acknowledges the ‘heroes’ of the foster care system in her acknowledgements at the back of the book which I think is important. It’s not all bad. And there are lots of people who are diligently fighting for these kids and for making the system better that we can’t forget about that side too.



It was really poignant to ponder how the social workers had told the girls they were ‘lucky’ to find that home with Miss Fairchild.

Jessica contemplates it: “If you were lucky, it implied that your good fortune hadn’t been earned. You couldn’t question it, or take it for granted. You had to be grateful. Because what had been given to you could just as easily be taken away.”

I like how Alicia is honest about it with the kids she works with: “Trish is a wonderful foster mother, and it’s very generous of her to keep you on [after you turn 18]. but you’re not lucky. You lost your parents. You lost your grandmother. You’ve spent the last few years living in uncertainty. Having a stable home until you finish school is actually a lot less than you deserve.”

“Love and security were the most basic of rights. Forcing these kids to believe they were lucky to have that was even more damaging than what some of them experienced in care.”

It really puts things into perspective, doesn’t it?

It reminds me of my significant role as a mother and the job and privilege I have to be the adult in my home to provide a safe, secure, and loving environment for my kids. Being a parent is much more than that but it can’t be less. And the significance of that is monumental. My heart aches for the children, young and old, who have been robbed of those basic needs.

Whether tragedy or parental neglect and selfishness, so many kids have been led to believe that they are not worthy of love. That they have to earn it and that it can easily be taken away.

More than anything I pray those kids find Jesus. He is the only one who will never disappoint and the hope he brings more than makes up for the losses they’ve endured. In him they find unconditional love, joy, grace, peace, mercy, comfort, patience, kindness, and gentleness. And his hope is secure- it can’t be taken and it can’t even be earned. It’s only a gift to be received. An eternal home for them to belong and be cherished.

To know how much I’ve found in Jesus, I can’t imagine how freeing and life-changing that would be for someone who never even knew a shadow of that love and security!

The Bible even uses the language of adoption when it comes to being part of his family. Each of us is grafted in, adopted as sons and daughters! (Romans 8:14-19; Ephesians 1:5; Galatians 4:5-7; Psalm 27:10)

At the very least, I hope if you read this book it can cause you to pray for the foster kids and families in your community.



Recommendation

This is a heavier book than some of her others and at times hard to read. But if these topics aren’t triggers for you, I would recommend this book.

It’s a fast-paced story with characters that will have you investing in either their triumph or their demise.

It reminded me a little bit of Ashley Audrain’s The Push.

Hepworth, of course, has her signature ‘gasp-inducing’ last chapter, but I feel satisfied with the ending and my spoiler comment below will explain why.


[Content Advisory: 24 f-words, 18 s-words; a little bit of sexual content in the form of a brief sex scene and a character sexting; two characters are in a lesbian relationship and it’s a somewhat prominent part of the book]


SPOILER COMMENT

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[ Okay so let me just talk about Dr. Warren for a sec. At first blush he is a terrible therapist and we eventually find out that Fairchild is playing him and manipulating him to better her defense at trial because he’s a sadistic pervert. BUT… I have a different theory. 

And this is where I’ve landed because I think it’s plausible, but also because this kind of story requires justice in a big way and for me to end the book thinking Fairchild is getting off is just not going to work. 

So here’s the deal… Dr. Warren isn’t incompetent.. he’s actually brilliant and devious. He knows what she is and he knows how to get her to talk. HE is playing HER. She thinks she has pulled one over on him, but I picture her experiencing a rude awakening when he’s actually gotten her to confess something in her sessions that he is able to help the prosecutor use to put her away for a long time. She was arrogant and thought she could get away with it, but nope. She dug her own grave. 

Dr. Warren was pretending because he could see through her; he wasn’t pervertly drawn into her antics. Somehow he has trapped her in her own game. And justice is served. 

Hepworth leaves this up to the imagination and this is what I’ve come up with. Feel free to adopt this theory as well. 

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SPOILER OVER

“There is always a cost to doing what’s right. Sometimes it costs you everything you have. But it should not cost you everything you are.”

“‘If you want peace, prepare for war.’”


This book takes place about a month after book one—Broker of Lies. It can probably be read as a stand alone but I would recommend reading the first book first for background and context. He reminds us about part of what happened but I think it will be more cohesive for you to have all the information.

It was a great sequel that leaves you on a cliffhanger so I’m ready for book three to be out!

Similar to Broker of Lies, there are a lot of characters and there is some complexity to the plot. Hopefully my review can help you keep it straight (or myself when I go to read the third one and can’t remember what was going on.)

[There was a fun Easter egg referencing Patrick Bowers and if you haven’t read Steven James’ Patrick Bowers series and you enjoy serial killer thrillers, definitely check that one out!]


Plot Basics

Our main character is Travis Brock, redactor with a photographic memory who works at the Pentagon. After stopping the Pruninghooks Collective from detonating a bomb in Knoxville, TN last book he and his team are still chasing the woman behind it— Janice Daniels.

His team is made up of Adira (former secret service and executive protection at Homeland Security) who is also a love interest for Travis, and Gunnar (military and private security consultant who also happens to be writing a romance novel).

Their boss is Clarke and they’re running a somewhat off-books operation running down leads on Daniels and what she is planning next.

Turns out she’s after the Project Symphony device which is focused on “surreptitious ways of exfiltrating data from air-gapped computers to obtain administration privileges, record keystrokes, detect or hash passwords, upload files, discover log-in credentials, or obtain access to closely guarded root system files.”

Pretty powerful. Obviously very bad to get into the wrong hands.

Pretty early on in the first book I suspected that Travis’s wife, Sienna, didn’t really die in the house fire 18 months ago. By the end of that book (SPOILER- she didn’t) we find Sienna speaking to Janice saying she was “preparing for what’s next. With Ivan.”

In Fatal Domain, Travis discovers this hard truth. That if Sienna didn’t die in the fire, she lied to him and she very well could be his enemy.

Not only do we have Janice, Sienna, and Ivan as players, we are introduced to a man named Soren who Daniels blackmails into doing some of her dirty work. He was probably the most disorienting part of the book because I wasn’t sure how he was going to connect with everything. I also wasn’t sure if I felt like the circumstances around his blackmailing made sense to lead to that point. I don’t know why he wouldn’t have just called the police and said he wasn’t sure what he hit and couldn’t find it. At least there would be a record of him trying to help. I guess I don’t know if you can still get prison time for that. But anyway, his chapters were the most disconnected until the end. I don’t know what his deal was. I guess James was taking a character and showing us in real time the progression from ‘normal’ to a choice to descend into darkness.

“When we play God, there are always unintended consequences that make it clear we’re not up to the task. He creates life in his own image. We create monsters in ours.”

We also have Maia Odongo, a doctor researching cognitive function and memory at a humanitarian refugee camp in Uganda.

“Ever since she agreed to do the procedures she’d been struggling to convince herself that she was making choices that were aligned with what she believed in, with what was right.”

Maia is the counter to Soren, someone who has made the descent, though with good intentions, and seeking to come back to the light knowing the destruction darkness causes and knowing it’s not the right path.

From South Carolina to Wisconsin, all paths eventually collide in Washington D.C..



I will say, it felt a bit strange that Janice was invested in anti-nuclear escapades in the first book but here in the second book she is also invested in tech and pharmaceutical industries. I guess she can have diverse interests and can shift between them so fluidly while she is being hunted by the DOD…

I thought it was interesting how we don’t really know what Janice Daniels is up to until the end. We have the pieces but we’re not entirely sure what the endgame is. So it was hard to tell how close Brock and his team were to thwarting her plans.

Sienna’s part was also vague. It seemed like Sienna and Ivan had other plans with the device than Janice. They were working together for the moment, but Sienna had a different ultimate plan. We never do find that out in this book. I suspect that we are gearing up for an ultimate showdown between Travis and Sienna, husband and wife, lovers to enemies? There is not much closure for her here so there has to be something more on the horizon.

There is also more to happen between Travis and Adira. Now that Sienna is still alive, that puts a pause on their romance. So the showdown with Sienna will also be the indicator of what direction Travis goes.



Deeper Thoughts

I love that Steven James always wrestles with deeper questions when he writes his thrillers. This one is no different.

In Fatal Domain, one of the characters ponders the difference between humans and animals. The traits we don’t share with animals: worship, prayer, guilt, culture, art, regret. I think this is really interesting to think about. Especially for evolutionists. These traits don’t jive with that. There is something special about humanity that points to a Creator God who desires relationship with us. Those things are important to our nature.


Another character reflects on the verse that says “He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more…” (Rev 21:4). He points out, “If God wipes away our tears in heaven, it means some people will arrive there with tears still in their eyes, that maybe their lives were so full of pain that some of their tears spilled over into paradise.” I don’t know how theologically accurate this thought it, but it is interesting to think about.


James also explores what we are willing to sacrifice for the good of others.

“Sometimes we keep secrets to protect interests greater than our own, and sometimes we have to carry the burden of our secrets as the price for extending compassion to others.”

This isn’t an obscure moral dilemma and is explored in many books. It is a tricky one because every life is precious. It’s easy to see how the ends justify the means and how we draw lines around what we are willing to do or allow to reach those ends.

I also think it’s different from an individual perspective vs a governmental perspective. What a country must do to protect its citizens is different than what an individual should do. God gave governments the sword of justice to wield— rewarding good and punishing bad— that is not right for us as individuals to undertake on our own.

There is also the tricky aspect of accountability vs national security. What can we do to keep our powerful government accountable without divulging secret information that puts our country at risk? This book also explores that a little bit. Morals and ethics are complex when it comes to things like that and I’m not sure where I stand. I like seeing different scenarios with this at play to think about how I view it.


Lastly there is a big theme of forgiveness. What does it mean to forgive? Especially when someone has done something so egregious and repeatedly.

“Revenge is being honest about the action but not loving toward the person. On the other hand, if you just excuse their behavior you might be showing them love, but you’re not being honest about the pain they caused. Denial has no place in forgiveness.”

“… it’s about freeing yourself.”

I have just come off of reading Homecoming by Kate Morton where I did not like how she handled the concept of forgiveness. To me it felt like excusing the behavior which like this quote says, feels dishonest. I really like how James makes this distinction and writes this complexity into his characters where they can wrestle with knowing forgiveness is the way but also dealing with the real and deep hurt that person caused.

It’s less about letting the person off the hook as much as allowing yourself to be free from the “cage of unforgiveness.”



Learning Corner

When you read a Steven James novel, you can tell that he does his research. I would love to meet some of his sources!

So here are some of the interesting things I learned while reading this book!

The NSA has a National Crytoplogic Museum in D.C. and it’s now on my list of places to visit. If this part is true there is an Enigma machine there where you can enter and create your own code. Sign me up!


Apparently it’s a thing for people to soak magazines in drugs and dry them up and send them to inmates in prison to either ingest or smoke or use as currency. Some prisons test for this.


If you Google the word Illuminati backwards the NSA website comes up. I’m not sure what the significance of this is but I’m sure there’s some people that could get some mileage out of that information.


There was a blurb about dark matter in this book which is interesting because I just recently read the book Dark Matter. In Fatal Domain he talks about the scientists who are researching dark matter. This is done by building a chamber a mile underground to block out cosmic rays. It also requires a lot of Xenon. “Whoever controls the Xenon controls the future of this type of research.” I’m still not entirely sure if I need to care about this kind of information or what I think about this mysterious substance, but I’ll keep an eye on it.


I had no idea that coffins were put in burial vaults— cement vaults to protect the coffin from the pressure of the ground and machinery above them. I’m wondering how common these are.


There is a riddle in the book: “What is the only word in the English language that starts with what we desire most and ends with what we want to avoid becoming.” You’ll get the answer if you read the book but if you want to know ahead of time, share any review from my website to your social media and message me a screenshot of it and I’ll give you the answer to the riddle! :)



Recommendation

Fatal domain is “the dominion of darkness and death and self-imposed chains.” This book continues the suspenseful saga of Travis Brock and how his team fights against this fatal domain, saving people and understanding humanity in deeper ways. 

It’s a little more complex than your average thriller but still one I would definitely recommend to any reader! 

The main characters are loveable, the stakes are high, the opponent formidable, the pursuit of justice and compassion on every page. 

Steven James is one of my favorite authors and I will always recommend his work because he is a fantastic storyteller that can weave in deeper concepts into a thrilling story without any language or sexual content. Can’t beat that!

“There were times when she felt terror at her own desolation, the gnawing sensation of having lost something she could not name and therefore could not hope to find.”

“Home is where the heart is, and the heart could be a dark and damaged place.”


Tragic.

That’s how I would describe this book.

Homecoming is a dual-timeline family drama that takes place in Australia. It’s a book about loss, motherhood, mother-daughter relationships, and what it means to come home.

I’ve only read one other Kate Morton book— The Clockmaker’s Daughter— back in 2018, and I don’t remember a single thing about that one, but my review of it says I probably wouldn’t read Morton again because it was basically too long, too slow, too descriptive, and not worth the work.

I don’t feel all that much different about Homecoming, though it wasn’t as hard to keep the characters or timelines straight.

The writing style and descriptions didn’t really bother me this time around. I’m actually really interested in visiting Adelaide Hills now as she drew me into the setting! I didn’t realize Australia had green hills and trees that change color. I only think about the bush and the poisonous snakes:

“This continent was one where beauty and terror were inexplicably linked. People died here from thirst if they took a wrong turn. A single spark of fire could grow to consume an entire town.”

I think what I didn’t really like about this book is that even though there was somewhat of a happy ending, it still just fell all so…. tragic. I can’t really think of a better word for it. I’ll explain some more in my spoiler comments below. It’s hard to articulate it without giving part of the story away.

Like a lot of other reviewers, I thought the last 100 pages were the best of the book so I’m glad it picked up in the end.



The dual timelines are 1959 and 2018.

In 1959 a man named Percy stumbles upon a mother and her four children, seemingly asleep at a picnic, but are actually dead. And then they discover the baby was missing. The small community reels with the knowledge that their deaths may not have been an accident and someone might have taken the baby.

In 2018 we have Jess, a journalist who is forced to return to Australia after her grandmother, Nora, who raised her, takes a severe fall and is in the hospital with very serious injuries. The return brings up a lot of emotions about her mother who abandoned her when she was ten. When Jess visits Nora in the hospital Nora mumbles some nonsense about someone “taking her away from me!” The circumstances around her fall are also suspicious and Jess takes it upon herself to find out what had made Nora so upset.

Intermixed with these timelines are newspaper articles and large sections from a book called ‘As If They Were Asleep.’ The book is a true-crime novel Jess finds in Nora’s house that was written about the Turner Family Tragedy of 1959. These chapters detail the investigation and the lives of the people during that time.

The book within the book feels odd to read because it tells thoughts, motives, and is written in a way that feels unbelievable that an outside person could write. Jess questions this as well but the answer she gets about it felt unsatisfying to me.

Really, I guess it’s better it was written that way because it made it more interesting to read for sure. With how long the book was I think we needed it to be that way, but I think I would have preferred learning that information organically as it played out rather than from a book. But that would have made the book even longer.

I did figure out the reveal pretty early on, but as more information was revealed I still wasn’t entirely sure how they got to that point so I was still invested in reading.

It’s definitely a book you have to settle in for. It’s not a quick read and it’s meant to be atmospheric and drawn out.



I like the concept of exploring what it means to ‘come home.’

She says:

“When someone said, ‘I want to go home,’ what they really meant was that they didn’t want to feel lonely anymore.”

I think that’s true. Home is less about a physical place but more of a community. A person or group of people that gives your life purpose or meaning. They know you and understand you.

When I go back to my home town I like the nostalgia of the school or the church or the main street, but what feels good about being there is the people. And I get that feeling coming back to my people where I am now. Home can be in more than one place.

I think this book took the direction of this exploration in a different direction than I was expecting given the secrets Jess discovers. It felt more like it should have been- ‘how do you cope when what you thought was home is ripped away from you?’

I also think ‘home’ takes on new meaning as a Christian. Belonging is a human need. But really, earth and its inhabitants are broken and ‘belonging’ fluctuates. Sometimes it’s full but sometimes it’s disappointing. But as a Christian I always belong in God’s family. My meaning and purpose is found in him.

God created us for relationships. That’s why loneliness is so devastating. To our core we are meant to be in community with people. But even if we are alone, we are still in relationship and belonging with Christ. A home that is never far away. A home that is unchanging and fills you up rather than takes from you.

The ‘homecoming’ we experience here is but a glimpse of what we will feel when we go to heaven to be in the presence of the Lord.

So as tragic as this book is, it reminds me that I never have to fear the tragedy of loneliness because my belonging is secure.



Spoiler Comments

Okay these are major spoiler comments so scroll past if you don’t want to know stuff.

[ Well first I will say that I’m glad the deaths of the family wasn’t just an accident or a misunderstanding. That sounds bad. I don’t love murder. But I also don’t like when I read a long book about a mystery with suspects and whatnot only to find out it was some fluke accident or a miscommunication. That makes me feel jilted.

For some reason I don’t want to read about people’s innocent mistakes, I would rather read about someone’s purposeful evil and then the finding of the killer and the bringing of justice. Because books are fiction. In real life I would rather not have rampant wicked everywhere but I’m reading over 500 pages. An accidental poisoning just isn’t going to cut it.

So I’m glad that there was a legitimate mystery here.

The thing I hated the most about this book was that it felt like Nora got a pass for what she did. She was manipulative and narcissistic and her choices hurt a lot of people, but in the end she dies without ever having to own up to them. I also think Polly and Jess somehow decide to just forgive her and move past it. Which is probably best for their actual lives, but as a reader I wanted to see more of their anger and hurt about it.

Even if Nora acted out of grief and in love, that doesn’t excuse what she did; it doesn’t make it okay.

Jess reflects that “Nora’s firm ideas were never firmer than when describing what it meant to be a good parent: the sacrifices required, the elevation of one’s child’s needs above one’s own.”

Which is ironic because it’s clear that Nora made her choices to benefit herself. I can’t believe she gaslights Polly into believing she’s a fragile person and a bad mom and teaches Jess that same narrative. If Nora really wanted to be a mother so bad and would do anything for her kids than why did she push Polly away like that and take Jess’s mom from her?

And knowing what Meg did to Nora’s family is awful— why would Nora keep such a secret? She probably would have gotten custody of the baby anyway because she was family. Telling the truth in the moment would have been hard, but the destruction and heartache it caused down the road is just not worth it.

Speaking of Meg— her behavior with the baby didn’t really jive with her knowing it was the product of her husband’s affair.

With all the people who knew parts of the tragedy it seems nonsensical and unbelievable that they could have all kept it a secret for so long. The damage it caused to so many people and the community is again—- tragic.

Even though Jess and Polly find each other again by the end, so much time has been lost. So much distrust had been sown by Nora that it feels hard to be that happy for them. You still just feel sad that Nora did that to them.

“Life doesn’t always work out the way we plan, but it does work out in the end.”

I guess it’s true it didn’t work out the way we would have liked, but I’m not sure it ‘worked out’ in the end after all.

The ‘homecoming’ of this novel seems a bit romanticized. They maybe got to a place of belonging and I’m glad they found each other, but overall I think love requires honesty and if we’re going to go down the path of romanticized homecoming, I’d rather it be with honesty or sincere regret and forgiveness about the effects of their dishonesty. Nora dying brought Polly and Jess together but without full disclosure or a solid ground to stand on. (hide spoiler)]



Recommendation

I’ve only read two of Kate Morton’s books so I have limited information to go off of, but if you didn’t like her other books, I don’t think this one will change your mind.

If you already enjoy Morton’s writing style, dual time periods, lots of descriptions, and a not-so-extremely-happy-ending, you’ll probably like this book! Some people like to read about the unfairness and the tragedies of life. If that’s you, you will probably appreciate the feelings journey this book will take you on.

It didn’t actually feel like a slog to read this one. But I just didn’t get the feeling of justice or happiness that I prefer to have at the end of these kinds of books.

So I think this book is a hit or miss, depending on your reading preferences.

[Content Advisory: can’t recall much swearing or sexual content; there are a couple affairs]

“Candor helps us build relationships because it requires us to be courageous, vulnerable, and willing to offer feedback. It leverages openness and honesty to increase trust.”


If you came to this book to read about one of the five factions of the Divergent series, you’ve got the wrong book, but if you’d like to learn more about candor and how to use honesty and transparency to benefit your relationships, your home, and your workplace, then you’ve come to the right place!

“My goal in writing this book is for the reader to learn to overcome personal fears and cynicism when speaking and to develop skills in wielding candor so that it becomes habitual and others-centered. My goal is also for leaders to learn to be willing to hear things they don’t like without feeling threatened, lashing out, and punishing well-intentioned honesty.”

I will say that I think this book is written more for people in leadership positions of a ministry, organization, or business, or employees/members of said ministries, organizations, and workplaces, rather than a stay-at-home mom. There were a lot of examples given about speaking up in meetings and how to receive criticism as a leader, etc.

While I wasn’t super engaged in the content regarding leaders and employees as it no longer pertains to me, I did find a few of the chapters more relatable. There were chapters on family, friends, difficult people, and charm vs character that I thought were particularly good.


I think if I was going to be in a faction of Divergent, Candor would have been up there for my top picks just because the truth is so important to me. I don’t like having to decipher people’s answers or ‘opinions’ and would rather people just tell me what they think, even if I don’t like it.

How else does one get to know someone? Or make a good decision? Or keep resentment from building in a relationship?

I want the most information. Which is why I feel like I’m tied between Erudite and Candor, but I already told you that’s not what this book is about so I digress.


The definition of candor that the book works out of is this:

 “Candor, at its essence, is to speak truth, as a source of encouragement and according to the need of the moment, in order to give grace to the hearers.”

I think it’s also helpful to talk about what candor is NOT:

“Candor does not involve being critical, attacking someone else, or demonizing a person to others.”

“Candor is not gossip. It is not lying. It is not slander. Speaking with candor has a purpose.”

“The opposite of candor is camouflage, a disguise to cover over the truth instead of exposing it… diverting attention away from what is really there.”

I like that Causey makes this distinction because I think people use the excuse of ‘I’m just being honest’ to say hurtful things, or true things in a hurtful way as if they get a pass on whatever they say as long as it’s true.

There are boundaries that are good. Is now the right time to tell the truth? Is it with grace and encouragement with a constructive purpose? Or am I just mad about someone or something and using it as a license to blast them directly or indirectly and claim it’s a truth bomb as if it’s a good thing?

Social media is probably the platform candor is most often misused or used wrongly as a label.



I felt a little bit called out when I read this part:

“We are not to be the conversation police. We are not to correct every wrong thing spoken. In attempting to do so, our need to ensure every fact, stat, and detail is thoroughly communicated takes precedence over loving the people with whom we are speaking.”

This reminded me of Oscar from The Office being the ‘actually’ guy and I know I have the tendency to be the conversation police. The truth is so important to me that I often let it take priority over people and this was a good reminder to me that it’s OKAY for someone to say something minor wrong without it needing to be corrected. Candor is not the most beneficial option in that instance.

“Without love, candor becomes rooted in pride, fear, cynicism, or coldness.”



I also thought these distinctions were good:

“Our candor is either tethered to our character or to our ego.”

Before we speak, we should do a self-check and see if our motives for saying whatever we’re about to say comes from a place of character or ego. The former obviously being the target rather than the latter.

“People are not the enemy. A lack of honesty, poor communication, and fear are the enemies of relationships and all organizations.”

It’s easy to see people as the enemy. They are the ones saying the words or not saying the words. But viewing people as enemies makes it that much harder to come to agreement or understanding. We need to correct our narrative and use the tools in this book to use better communication and in so doing, inviting others to join in, not ‘keeping them out’ as you would an enemy.



This book has a lot of features meant to really help people work on their candor. Each chapter ends with a summary, candor strategies, reflection questions, and then a commitment statement towards using the principles talked about within each chapter.

At the end of the book there is a list of the 22 candor strategies, 8 commitment statements, and a list of discussion questions for groups. I’m assuming this book is often used in the workplace settings to help build a culture of respectful honesty and transparency.

Causey has also included a lot of diagrams to illustrate his points. I admit that I didn’t really find those very helpful. In some cases they seemed distracting to me because they were difficult to interpret. And once I did interpret them they seemed a bit superfluous and I didn’t feel they added much to the book.

I would have preferred to have less diagrams and more conversation examples.

He includes some examples of what people said in meetings or to their spouses, etc, but they are short and don’t really show you how the entire conversation would play out. They felt vague and I think more details on how the solution is reached or what comes next in a dialogue would have been more helpful.



Recommendation

I’m not sure the entire book is for every person, but I think most readers will come away with useful information to enhance their personal and/or working life.

It’s not quite what I was expecting going into the book as it felt more self-helpy and workplace-oriented. I think I had thought it would be more gospel/truth-oriented in speaking truth into controversial situations. It’s still similar, but the approach is just a bit different.

I think it for sure has a place for those who are employees under hard-to-work-with supervisors or leaders who desire to cultivate a culture of honesty.

For readers like me who are stay-at-home moms, the application may not be as robust. But, this book is short, just over 150 pages, and I think good things can still be gleaned. Or at the very least, just read the chapters that pertain to you.

Because we don’t want to be people who are weaponizing truth or hindering growth by staying silent.

“Lives without candor can lead to hypocrisy, bitterness, lying, gossip, and downright division. Lives with candor are more interesting, expectant, truthful, and exploratory.”

"In war, often the first strike is best, when the prey is still unaware of the imminent danger.”

Last summer I read Marr’s book The Family Bones which was about a family of psychopaths. The Alone Time also deals with a family, but the vibe is more mystery and trauma about the past than surviving in the present.

Both books are compelling and fast reads. The Alone Time probably doesn’t have as much action as The Family Bones, but it doesn’t really feel like that when you read it.

It also has a disturbing/haunting kind of tone to the story that I think threw off some readers about what they were reading. The story is a little out there, I believe intentionally, so go into it without trying to hold Marr to a completely realistic unraveling. Let it do its thing.



The main characters are Violet and Fiona, sisters. (Ironically, I just finished The Garden Girls which also features two characters with these names.)

Violet and Fiona, though now a bit estranged, are bonded by a traumatic experience from their childhood:

“I survived a plane crash that took the lives of my parents, that left me and my younger sister, Violet, to fend for ourselves for months.”

The pair (13 and 7 at the time) survived Olympic National Forest after their small plane, piloted by their father, crashed on the way to Canada for a family trip.

Since then, they both grew up and dealt with their trauma in different ways. Violet has battled drug and alcohol abuse and general aimlessness in life though now picking up writing again.

Fiona is part of the art scene making sculptures with organic materials:

“As my art dealer likes to promote my pieces: the tangible manifestation of trauma using the very source of trauma itself— nature. I’ll never be more than one of the girl-survivors, and I’ll never be allowed to work through my trauma on my own terms, via my sculptures. All they or I will ever be is an object of fascination and fear.”

It’s been 25 years since ‘The Alone Time’ but when a woman becomes breaking news claiming to be their father’s mistress the months leading up to the crash, the case of their parents’ deaths that was never closed has new energy, a pursuit of more answers as to what really happened out in the woods.

A filmmaker set on making a name for himself with a tell-all documentary is hounding the girls to tell their story, to tell the truth about what happened out there. Did their parents actually die on impact like they’ve always claimed? Or did they survive that first night and potentially more?



The formatting of the book is all first person POVs from alternating viewpoints of the four family members.

Janet and Henry (the parents) have chapters from ‘the wild.’ Fiona and Violet have chapters in both the past and the present. We also get snippets from the notebook Violet wrote in while they were stranded.

Elle Marr does a really good job of making you second guess what happened and who is really the dangerous person. They all have motives or suspicious behaviors. There was one reveal that I had figured out shortly before it was revealed and I thought it was an excellent twist!

Janet’s motive is the infidelity she has recently discovered about her husband who has largely been absent and selfish both as a husband and a father.

Henry’s motive his is life with a different woman whom he had asked to meet at a special spot on this trip. He also battles severe PTSD from his military career that often leaves him disoriented.

From Henry’s chapter he observes:

“Fiona’s emotions have pivoted from sobs to anger within seconds. Violet has remained stoic even through quiet tears. Which reaction is the more appropriate one, given the horror scene we all stumbled on? Could one of my kids actually be responsible for their mother’s death?”

And then we have Violet in the wild saying ‘the woman is back’ and we might have someone else out there with a motive to kill her mother.


I really enjoyed this book. I found it hard to put down.

I am a little surprised by some of the poor reviews of this book.

There are a few things that I agree didn’t make enough sense:

- That the sisters would be too worried about the case being re-investigated because I don’t think there could have been enough evidence to lead to any sort of conviction plus they were minors at the time and it’s been so long that I feel like any retribution wouldn’t have been too harsh. Also does seem odd that the woman would just now be coming forward with information— that trigger makes sense for what comes after it, but the ‘pushing’ of the trigger is absent.

- One reviewer commented on Violet’s poor spelling in her journal and I would agree with this, though I know my seven-year-old is quite advanced for her ability to spell. At the same time, though, I don’t think I minded it too much because it just drove home that Violet was a fragile little girl having to grow up to fast.

- The ‘deal’ with Violet and Wes seemed like a weak addition that either should have been removed or should have been played up more. It was too little that it just felt confusing and out of nowhere.

- I’m still not entirely sure how they survived for how long they did or that they weren’t rescued sooner. But I understand that’s a bit beside the point.


Overall though, I guess I disagree with the reviewers who complain about the logic and the out-there aspect of it. It is a bit of a crazy story. So is The Family Bones. I think Marr just likes to write about insane or disturbing types of scenarios.

This isn’t really meant to be a book where you can picture it happening in real life. It’s not meant to be an academic discourse on mental health. It’s also not necessarily to endear you to the characters.

It’s a thriller that is meant to be mysterious, to freak you out a bit, and to cycle through mistrust and wondering about each of the characters.

Marr says in her own Goodreads review of it: “This story was influenced by my wildest dreams and nightmares”

And that’s how I read it.

Also I really like the title. It’s an eerie reference and very fitting with the tale.


Recommendation

When a book has a ‘what really happened in the past’ premise with flashbacks, I am always leery if the reveal will be worth the anticipation. I do feel like this one holds up.

Sure, if you’re the type that wants to read stories you may find in the newspaper, this probably isn’t the one for you. But if you have a little bit more imagination and are willing to let it be what it is, I think you’ll enjoy it.

This seems to be a hit or miss book for people, but there really wasn’t anything that stuck out to me to be annoying or jarring me out of the story. It was compelling from start to finish and I would recommend it.


[Content Advisory: couple handfuls of f-words, a few s-words, one very brief sexual encounter that doesn’t go very far]