A fiction stack this week, with comfort reads thrown in for good measure…things have felt too heavy to really engage with non-fiction, so I gave myself permission to take a break.
I *did not* like Arms of Deliverance (Tricia Goyer). I own some of her other books, so when I saw this in the used book bin for pennies I figured, ‘why not?’. I kept reading waiting for it to improve, but it never did. Poorly plotted, rushed, and disjointed, verging on devolving to stereotype. It felt like it could have really sung if the characters had had time to breathe.
I had lent Fair is the Rose (Liz Curtis Higgs)- second in a series- to a friend a long time ago and it never came back home, so I was delighted to find it in a used bin. Which then led to reading the third in the series, Whence Came a Prince. I loved this series when it came out nearly two decades ago now and I still love it (and now own all of them again). Higgs takes the story of Jacob, Leah, and Rachel from Scripture and deftly weaves a Scottish tale echoing their story. If you like the Outlander series but get annoyed with all the constant spicy scenes, you’ll really enjoy these books. (And dare I say, better written than the Outlander series, which is starting to feel positively Dickensian in length and plot twists.)
Picked up Whereabouts (Jhumpa Lahiri) and Our Woman in Moscow (Beatriz Williams) at the library yesterday. Whereabouts was first written in Italian and now translated. Her books always fascinate me, so I am excited to dive in. Our Woman in Moscow is more spy and intrigue. I haven’t read that in awhile (though I secretly savored Tom Clancy novels there for a space), but I started reading the first chapter standing in the stacks and was immediately hooked.