Rhonda's Doings !

Review of The Locket by Amanda Tru Hannah suddenly finds that she has time travelled once again, but this time is different. After helping save a woman's life, Hannah discovers that she has completely altered the timeline and thrown her very existence into jeopardy. Facing life-threatening effects upon returning to her own time, Hannah is then given a death sentence: if she time travels again, she will die. Now, Hannah must solve the clues to her own identity and find a way to save her own life before she is once again sent spiraling through time. Will her mother's locket hold the key to both her past and her future? Has she just found the love of her life only to lose him? Could God have a plan for Hannah amidst the chaos? My Review of The Locket: Wow, for any readers who enjoyed The Time Traveler's Wife, this book is one you definitely need to read.   After reading Yesterday,  I was dying to know the significance of "the locket" that Hannah's ...

Review of Yesterday by Amanda Tru Her yesterday was five years ago. What will her tomorrow bring? When HANNAH KRAEGER saves a family injured in a car accident, she has no idea she has changed events in the past. Waking the next morning, Hannah discovers her yesterday was really five years ago. Each trip Hannah takes through time changes the timeline and her own life. With help from DR. SETH MCALLISTER, Hannah must unravel the mystery of why she time travels and who she actually is before the strange ability costs her future, the man she loves, and even her life. YESTERDAY is a thrilling Christian Romantic Suspense filled with unexpected twists, mystery, and romance My review: Are there days when you wish you could go back to some former time and redo things?  change something?   I know there are days when I feel that way, but Hannah Kraeger does not wish for this to happen and yet it does.   What she experienced as yesterday really happened years previously....

Review of The Memory Jar (Seven Brides for Seven Bachelors) byTricia Goyer Every year, 30--40 young Amish men descend on the cozy little town of West Kootenai, Montana, arriving in the spring to live there for six months and receive 'resident' status for the hunting season in the fall. They arrive as bachelors, but go home with brides. Sarah Shelter has lived in West Kootenai for the last ten years and wonders if she will ever fall in love.  Since the tragic death of her best friend, she carries her memories in a jar along with the small items connected to them. For just as long, she's also been carrying around her emotions instead of allowing them to penetrate deep into her heart. Now she's met a kind and gentle man who may be able to break down the wall. But can Sarah risk her heart to finally achieve her dreams? My thoughts about The Memory Jar: I really enjoyed this book but for some reason, it was a bit slow for me to "get into".    As I...

Review of Where Love Grows by Jerry Eicher (Book 3 in Fields of Home series) In Jerry Eicher's conclusion to his popular Fields of Home trilogy, readers will be delighted to attend the wedding of Teresa, the young Englisha girl who has come home with Susan Hostetler to learn the ways of the Amish---and in fact to become Amish herself. But Teresa is not the only young woman to find romance in these pages. Susan, long estranged from Thomas Stoll, the young man she had intended to marry from her childhood, reunites with him....just as another man appears on the scene with designs on her heart. Which man is the one Da Hah has chosen for her? Amidst the happiness, there is also turmoil as Menno Hostetler, Susan's father, must face church discipline for a past sinful transgression he's hidden for many years. At his age, can he endure the humiliation and the path to restitution? With more than 350,000 books sold, Jerry Eicher's many fans eagerly anticipate each new ...

Everyday Matters Bible for Women, NLT Review for Christian Women's Affiliates   LLC Hendrickson Publishers Marketing| Everyday Matters Bible for Women ISBN-10:  1598567055 | ISBN-13:  978-1598567052 | Format: Hard Cover  | Pages: 1603 Today’s Christian Woman is so busy handling the challenges of day-to-day life that spending time in the Word can easily become yet another ‘should’ buried in that growing list of daily ‘musts.’ Created in partnership with Kyria.com, Christianity Today’s  women’s magazine, the  Everyday Matters Bible for Women  is designed to help women develop  spiritual  practices that will make their lives richer, not harder. It offers practical encouragement and tools to renew, reinvigorate and restore meaning to everyday life. This Bible features twenty-four disciplines—or practices—that position us to receive power and strength to do those things that we cannot possibly do on our own and mak...

Review of Doing Well at Being Sick by Wendy Wallace Based on her twenty-year journey through chronic illness, Wendy Wallace shares practical suggestions for dealing with illness, helping others understand the struggles of the chronically ill, changing personal attitudes, navigating the medical system, and relying on God for strength. She encourages her readers to draw as much as they can from modern medicine but focuses on truths about life, death, joy, pain, and eternity. The author reminds the chronically ill to keep their physical, emotional, and spiritual selves in balance while facing the daily challenges of loving others, working with vast medical bureaucracies, and growing in their relationship with God. My thoughts after reading Doing Well at Being Sick: Wendy Wallace is truly an inspiration to readers.   Having chronic illness myself and being forced to quit teaching at age 49 and go on disability was very discouraging.  I actually am dealing with grief at...

Review of Susanna's Christmas Wish by Jerry Eicher From the pen of bestselling Amish fiction author Jerry Eicher, (more than 350,000 books sold), comes a truly delightful and inspiring Christmas novella. Fans will be delighted by this peek at an Amish Christmas, complete with the romantic wish of Susanna Byler to spend the holidays with the man of her dreams. But who is the man of her dreams? Is it the competent but plain Amishman she married for convenience....or is it her first love--an Englisha man with whom she has recently had an unexpected encounter--and who wants her back in his life? A perfect holiday delight for lovers of Amish fiction...and those who love a heartwarming and tender Christmas tale.  My review of Susanna's Christmas Wish: A wunderbar book !!!   Jerry Eicher has once again stolen my sleep as I have not been able to put  Susanna's Christmas Wish  down to close my eyes to get some sleep!   I am a big Jerry Eicher fan, to begin...

Review of Amish Snow by Roger Rheinheimer At the tender age of sixteen, Amish youngsters can choose to partake of the world’s pleasures during their infamous  Rumspringa   (literally, “running around”); fast cars, drugs and wild sex. About half of these naive, sheltered kids recklessly fling themselves into this church-sanctioned wildness, but almost ninety percent give it up and rejoin the comfort and security of the rigid Amish way of life. The vast majority of Amish are hard-working, God-fearing, family-loving citizens. But within the closed Amish community there are abusers, virtually unknown to the outside world. In this Über-Religious, ‘husband-is-the-head-of-everything’ secretive sect, they usually go unchallenged and unpunished. Fifteen-year-old Ezra Neuenschwander finally reaches his breaking point. He strikes back at his violent, alcoholic father, knocking him down to the ground, an unforgivable sin. Ezra flees to Philadelphia on the midnight bu...

Review of Almost Amish by Kathryn Cushman Julie Charlton is at the breaking point. She's overwhelmed and burned out, and in today's unrelenting society, her kids are, too. When her sister-in-law Susan, a Martha Stewart-in-training, lands the chance to participate in a reality TV series promoting simple living, and needs another family to join her, it seems like the perfect opportunity.The location is an idyllic farm outside an Amish community in Tennessee. Julie, with her two children, joins Susan and her teenage daughter for a summer adventure. Susan needs to succeed in order to become self-sufficient after an ugly divorce, Julie needs to slow down long enough to remember what her priorities are and regain a sense of purpose and meaning. It becomes clear from the start that "living simple" is no simple matter. With the camera watching every move, Susan's drive for perfection feels a lot like what they left behind, while Julie suddenly finds herself needi...

Review of Amish Lilies By the Lakeside by Teresa Ann Phillips Esther Schwartz has suffered from loneliness, fear, and guilt ever since her baby sister was abducted and killed. Making things worse, she and her windowed mother have a huge farm to run, and her brother's son has a mysterious illness.   When an apple orchard is suddenly given to her and the orchard manager's secrets are unraveled, she learns that her close-knit Amish community is being tested: will they fall apart or lean on the three things that they are known for: forgiveness, love and faith. Esther's worked alongside Trey Peachy for years, but when the community is on the lookout for a killer, she is forced to help him. As they hunt down a killer, they each discover that God had planted a seed of love many years earlier. Can they still bond with so much tragedy and with different faiths? My thoughts about Amish Lilies by the Lakeside: I enjoyed this story very much!  It begins with a very sad hap...

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Review of Point of Origin by Amanda Tru "I should have killed you when I had the chance. You have no idea, do you? Life is just a crazy coincidence? That's fine. I have a feeling even mercy has a limit"  The terrorist's words haunt Rachel Saunders. Are they the ramblings of a psychopath? Or is there someone else out there who is watching Rachel and deciding if she should live or die?  When Rachel stumbles across something she was never meant to see, she discovers all the random events from the past year have connections that are much closer to home than she ever imagined. Now she must elude terrorists intent on killing her and piece together the clues to identify her enemy before time runs out and many more people lose their lives.  When all the secrets and lies are revealed, will Rachel be able to handle seeing her world as she know it fall apart? Will she be able to forgive one last betrayal from the man she thought she loved? My thoughts about Point of ...

Review of Be Still My Soul by Joanne Bischof Gideon only ever cared about himself. Now that Lonnie is his wife, will he ever be worthy of her heart? Night’s chill tickled her skin. Lonnie pressed her hands together and glanced up. He was even more handsome up close. Having grown up the shy, awkward daughter of Joel Sawyer, she’d hardly spoken to any boy, let alone the one who had mothers whispering warnings in their daughter’s ears and fathers loading shotguns.   Pretty Lonnie Sawyer is shy and innocent, used to fading into the background within her family, and among the creeks and hollows of the Appalachian hills. Though her family is poor and her father abusive, she clings to a quiet faith.  But when handsome ladies’ man and bluegrass musician Gideon O’Riley steals a kiss, that one action seals her fate. Her father forces her into a hasty marriage with Gideon—a man she barely knows and does not love. Equally frustrated and confused by his new responsib...

Review of The Quilter's Son by Samantha J. Bayarr Liam Yoder has been leading a double life ever since his dad was killed in a buggy accident.  Will a chance encounter with his mother cause him to rethink his decision to leave the Amish community behind? What about Lucy, the bakery owner he left behind when they were teenagers? Will she be able to convince Liam to change his mind?  Find out in this tale of bittersweet love. My thoughts about The Quilter's Son: This is a sweet Amish Christian romance which left me filled with hope and a huge smile on my face and in my heart!   Samantha Bayarr never fails to tug at my heartstrings with her stories.   I found this to be a beautiful story of hope and forgiveness.   Love never fails and I definitely felt that way as I read.  There are so many families today who need reconciliation and forgiveness within their relationships, and this story offers a chance to those families.   It shows that it c...