Quarterly Round-Up: January-March

        Here is my quarterly round-up of all of the books that I have read the past three months. It’s actually a pretty impressive number, 32 to be exact, but I’ve also listed the books that are in my pictures but I either never got a chance to read or didn’t finish. Also, if you click on any of the green-colored titles, it will take you to my full review of that book. So, without further ado, let me get this long post underway.

Betting on Hope

        Betting on Hope is the first book in Debra Clopton’s Four of Hearts Ranch Romance series, and was also the first book I had ever read by her. I have to say, I really enjoyed this novel; in fact I couldn’t get enough of it. 

My Bookshelf: Love Arrives in Pieces by Betsy St. Amant

For so long, Stella was known for her beauty. Now, with her heart stripped bare, she must discover who she really is.

        Former pageant queen Stella Varland doesn’t trust beauty anymore after her divorce. Her appearance betrayed her and led to brokenness, so instead of being beautiful, now she tries to make beautiful things, but she always falls short. So she keeps her passion for art to herself and focuses on her interior design work. But if she doesn’t get another job soon, she’ll be stuck living with her parents.

        Contractor Chase Taylor is determined to live a life of no regrets after losing his fiancée. Now he lives life at full speed, striving to see how much he can accomplish. He knows if he slows down, he’ll fall apart. So he returns home to Bayou Bend to renovate the town’s old theater and is shocked to discover that the designer for the project is his old flame, Stella.

        Forced to work together, Chase and Stella battle their chemistry and past as they struggle to compromise and work together on a vision for the theater. Their wills clash as they attempt to hide their brokenness—and their unresolved feelings for each other—until Chase discovers the hidden parts of Stella, while losing her trust in the process.

        A near catastrophe, a fire, and a small-town gossip mill finally force Stella and Chase to realize that they have a choice—to hold on to the shards of their pasts, or surrender their fragmented pieces to the One who makes a beautiful masterpiece from their brokenness.

Top Ten of My Most Recent 5 Star Reads

Today’s Top Ten Tuesday is all about my most recent 5 star reads. Fortunately for me, I’ve read TONS of books I’ve loved in the past few weeks, though that makes my decision all that much harder. So I’ve just gone down the list of books I’ve read and added the last ten books I’ve read that I gave five stars to. If you want to see my full reviews of each novel, just click the coral-colored titles in my descriptions. So, here we go…

Love Arrives in Pieces by Betsy St. Amant

Love Arrives in Pieces comes after All’s Fair in Love and Cupcakes.

Must-Have April Releases

        Can you believe it is already almost April?! I don’t know how this happened; in my mind I’m still on winter break! However, before we know it—at least for me—school will be out and we’ll have the whole summer stretching before us. Just think how much reading we’ll be able to do then! So, here are the new novels I’m so excited to see release in the coming month!

Hope in the Land

        When Henry Edison turns up in Lancaster County to survey farm women about their domestic contributions during the 1930s, the last thing Amish housewife Gloria Grabill has time for is the government agent’s unending questions. Gloria’s hands are already full with a farm to run alongside her husband, a houseful of children, and an English neighbor, Minerva Swain, how has been trying Gloria’s patience for forty years. Gloria’s oldest daughter, Polly, wants nothing more than the traditional path of an Amish farmer’s wife, but everything she does seems to push Thomas Coblentz further away. While the Great Depression shadows the country in gloom, can Amish and English neighbors in Lancaster Country grasp the goodness that will sustain hope?

Crazy Little Thing Called Love by Beth K. Vogt

        Paramedic Vanessa Hollister has put her adolescence behind her, including the unwanted label of being the new kid in town over and over again, thanks to her father’s military career. She’s overcome what her mother called “the biggest mistake of her life” and is planning an elegant destination wedding in Destin, Florida, with her new fiancé. But will the reappearance of her first husband from her what-were-you-thinking teenage elopement disrupt her dream of an idyllic beach wedding?

        As a professional storm chaser, Logan Hollister is used to taking risks. However, a reckless decision during the last tornado season has him questioning the future of his team, the Stormmeisters. Coming face to face with his ex-wife eight years after their divorce compels him to confront his greatest regret: losing Vanessa. Does their past give him the right to interfere with her future?

My Bookshelf: The Hearts We Mend by Kathryn Springer

For young widow Evie Bennett, moving forward will mean deciding what to leave behind…and what to keep.

        Widowed at the age of twenty-five when her firefighter husband was killed in the line of duty, Evie Bennett has spent the last thirteen years raising their son, Cody, in the close-knit community of Banister Falls. As the women’s ministry director of her church, Evie encourages women to boldly pursue God’s plan for their future…while she is content with her memories of the past. But Evie’s well-ordered life begins to change when she meets Jack Vale.

        As Evie gets drawn into Jack’s world—a world that isn’t as safe and predictable as the one she’s worked so hard to create—he challenges her to open her eyes to the problems in the community…but will Evie open her heart to love again?

        Because even though Jack isn’t anything like her late husband, he just might be everything she needs.

I Definitely Don’t Talk About These Enough

Today’s Top Ten Tuesday is all about books that I really love but feel like I haven’t talked about enough or in a while. I picked books I haven’t reviewed yet either, and I’m honestly not sure if I’ve ever even mentioned these books on my blog. They’re definitely all books that I love, as I pulled them from my all-time favorites list, and I hope you’ll eventually love them as much as I do.

Love Lifted Me by Sara Evans & Rachel Hauck

The third book in Sara & Rachel’s Songbird series, coming after The Sweet By and By and Softly and Tenderly.