July 2025 Books

 Personal Reading

Dakota Series Book 1: Dakota Dawn

Dakota Series Book 2: Dakota Dream

Dakota Series Book 3: Dakota Dusk

Dakota Series Book 4: Dakota December

Dakota Series Book 5: Dakota Destiny

by Lauraine Snelling

A series of 5 novellas that feature the intertwining lives of five women, all who live in the early 1900s in the mostly Norwegian farming community of Soldahl, North Dakota.  Each of them faces circumstances they didn't expect and each finds (or strengthens) their faith in God through trials.  And, of course, each finds their true love and gets married. The audiobooks were well done.  The theology is typical of this author ("we are all God's children").

Someday Home

by Lauraine Snelling

Three middle-age women in the midst of various life crises become housemates, navigating the challenges of new friendships, responsibilities, and roles while also dealing with grief and bitterness.  The audiobook was well-narrated, except it makes one of them sound like an old woman rather than the 50+ woman that she is.  Some of the ways the characters interacted seemed unrealistic. It was an OK book, but not one I'm likely to read again.

The Shoe Box

by Francine Rivers

A short story about a boy in foster care who carries around a shoebox full of "things."  He never elaborates on what "things," but he gives it as an offering to baby Jesus when he plays the part of a wise man in a Christmas play.

Team Burger Shed

by Tavin Dillard

The author describes a season of small-town adult-league softball.  The description of the team's misadventures on and off the field is laugh-out-loud funny sometimes. It sounds like the author is doing stand-up comedy.  There's no bad language, but there are guys pursuing girls and other stereotypical "macho" behavior that seems more appropriate for adults rather than the "8 years and up" reading level that it is listed as.

The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society

by Mary Ann Shaffer & Annie Barrows

This is an engaging historical fiction novel is written in epistolary style. Letters and telegrams between various characters tell the story of how resident of Guernsey (one of the Channel Islands between England and France) survived five years of German occupation during WWII.  I was in a reading slump (not excited by the books I'd been reading) when I picked this one up.  It was very enjoyable. Some favorite quotes: 

• Reading good books ruins you for enjoying bad books.
• That's what I love about reading: one tiny thing will interest you in a book, and that tiny thing will lead you onto another book, and another bit there will lead you onto a third book. It's geometrically progressive -- all with no end in sight, and for no other reason than sheer enjoyment.
• None of us had any experience of literary societies, so we made our own rules: we took turns to speak about the books we'd read. ... the purpose of the speakers was to goad the listeners into wanting to read the book themselves. Once two members had read the same book, they could argue, which was our great delight. We read books, talked books argued over books.
• Booksellers really are a special breed.  No one in their right mind would take up clerking in a bookstore for the salary, and no one in his right mind would want to own one -- the margin of profit is too small.  So, it has to be a love of readers and reading that makes them do it -- along with first dibs on new books.

Content considerations: some mild profanity and using God/Christ as exclamations; some descriptions of wartime atrocities; one character declares in a matter-of-fact way that he is homosexual.

Middle Grade Fiction

The Clock and the Boulder

by Karin Fisher-Golton

I received this book in a giveaway in exchanged for a review.  From the cover description: Sixth-grader Kerstin Bellini is so sick of moving around the USA that she avoids making friends so she won’t have to lose them. When her mom drops the bad news that their family of two is about to move again, Kerstin is devastated. But the next morning, when she wakes up in a forest she doesn’t recognize, things are definitely worse. Now Kerstin must break her loner habits to accept the help of Maja, a clever farm girl who longs to experience life beyond her tiny village. How can Kerstin find her way back to Minnesota in 2016 when no one even has a phone? And why does Maja think the answer might be found in the woods? Kerstin draws on her love of animals and interest in sewing crafts as she deepens her trust in herself and others—and finds that some things are timeless.

I found this to be a somewhat strange time-travel novel, similar to "The First State of Being" by Erin Entrada Kelly, but not as engaging to me.  The writing style seemed a bit choppy to me. The book contains not-so-veiled references to an agenda of "tolerance", "that must be your truth," and "I'm my own best friend."  There were also unnecessary references to bras and urinating. The main character also talks about being "donor-conceived." I have nothing against children conceived in such a way, but parents should be aware that this is discussed in the book and should be prepared to discuss this with their children if they choose to let their children read this book.

Read-Aloud

The Monster in the Hollows

by Andrew Peterson

Book 3 of the Wingfeather Saga. See my original review of the series.