This book exhausted me. I'm so glad I finally finished. I thought it would be a like a modern day Agatha Christie when I started, but all it did was confuse the goodness out of me and left me hanging till the very end. Moving on ....
An elderly woman is found poisoned in the upstairs bedroom of her home
whose from door stands 52 steps above the street in an old-fashioned
whodunit that blends clues, red herrings, suspects, and humor. (picture and description at amazon)
O:)
Melissa
In case you are wondering, no I did not read this in two days. We were at the beach last week (holla!) and the Good Hope Road book I had was an old, falling apart book of my mom's and I did not want to take it to the actual beach in case it got more messed up. (Which was a good thing, since thanks to the windy conditions my copy of this book will not be fit for the library now!) So, since this is our Book Club Book for this month anyway I was reading it in between the other.
Loved this book! It was a book that kept me sucked in the whole time, constantly wondering what was going to happen next! There was just enough "Jesus" in it to make me feel good, but not so much that it made me feel like she slathered it on to classify it as Christian fiction. The characters were very believeable and even though the story had a few more details than certain friends would prefer I found it a natural flow and not like she was pushing them on the reader.
All in all I highly recommend it!
When Macy Dillon was five years old her father encouraged her to draw a
picture in the guestbook of a Carolina beach house. The next year, Macy
returned to discover a drawing by an unidentified little boy on the
facing page. Over the next eleven years the children continue to
exchange drawings … until tragedy ends visits to the beach house
altogether. During her final trip to Sunset, Macy asks her anonymous
friend to draw her one last picture and tells him where to hide the
guest book in hopes that one day she will return to find it―and him.
Twenty-five years after that first picture, Macy is back at Sunset
Beach―this time toting a broken family and a hurting heart. One night,
alone by the ocean, Macy asks God to help her find the boy she never
forgot, the one whose beautiful pictures touched something deep inside
of her. Will she ever find him? And if she does, will the guestbook
unite them or merely be the relic of a lost childhood? (picture and description from amazon)
Now its time to decide what's next!!
Happy reading!
O:)
Melissa
Well let me just say this book took some getting into. And getting through. It is supposed to be in a "series" with Tending Roses but I never saw the connection at all until reading the end notes from the author. So this is more like a "connections" series as compared to a "chronological" series. Whatever. I'm just glad I'm done.
Not that this was a bad book, it just isn't what I was in the mood for. After all my precious and light, fluffy pioneers I wasn't expecting to jump into the depths of tragedy and read through a personal growth, letting go of the past story. Man but it wore me out!!
So, in lieu of a review I found several quotes that real stuck out to me.
I thought about all the times I had passed those fancy houses on the lake, and hated those people with their money and their brand new cars and their attitudes. I realized now how wrong that was. It seemed back then that they were so different from us, but now I could see the thin line that separated us -- just houses, cars, clothes. All things that could be swept away in an instant. (Jenilee, p.63)
You have a use for everyone you meet in life, and God don't put in any extras. (Eudora, p. 78)
Except God don't create accidents. We only think there are accidents because we don't know what God has in mind. (Eudora, p. 115)
When you are afraid of everything, the thing you are most afraid of is happiness. You're afraid to step into even a little piece of it, because you know that as soon as you do, someone will slam the door, and you'll be trapped in the darkness again, remembering how the light felt. (Jenilee, p. 217)
"It ain't like either of us have to regret our lives. We had good lives, both of us. Not the lives we might have had, but good lives." [June - a man]
I turned away from Ivy, away from the past, and thought about my life. I thought about Olney and his trains. I thought about the farm, and the children we made, and the grandchildren who ran to me with their open arms. I understood that if I had gone a different path, none of that would be. All of the things that mattered to me, all of the things that would last, would never has come into being. The other life, the one I could have lived with June, might have been good, but so was this one, and it wasn't over yet. (Eudora, p. 269)
Had I not suffered the loss of everything I thought would matter, I would have missed everything that truly mattered in my life .... (Jenilee recalling letter she found, p. 279)
If you are in the mood for a good redemption story, then jump on this one. If not, wait until you are. I might have appreciated it at a different time.
Twenty-year-old Jenilee Lane whose dreams are as narrow as the sky is
wide, is the last person to expect anything good to come out of the
tornado that rips across the Missouri farmland surrounding her home.
But some inner spark compels her to rescue her elderly neighbor, Eudora
Gibson, from the cellar in which she's been trapped. To make her way to
the nearby town of Poetry, where the townspeople have begun to gather.
To collect from the landscape letters, photographs, and mementos that
might mean something to people who have lost everything. Brought close
by tragedy, Jenilee and Eudora will learn lessons about the resilience
of the human spirit and the ties that make a community strong. They
will travel to a place they never would have imagined. (picture and description at amazon)
Keep Reading!
O:)
Melissa
