Rhonda's Doings !

Review of Daily Wisdom for Women 2016 Devotional Collection by Barbour Publishing, Inc. Experience an intimate connection to your heavenly Father with the  Daily Wisdom for Women  devotional collection. Featuring a powerful devotional reading and prayer for every day of 2016 ,  this beautiful volume provides inspiration and encouragement for your soul. Enhance your spiritual journey with the refreshing readings—and come to know just how deeply and tenderly God loves you. MY REVIEW:   This book includes nice devotional collections with a scripture and short sentence prayer for each day of 2016.    The stories are applicable and Biblically sound but I would have liked to see more personal stories in the devotional readings.   The readings are short, about the length of one page each and would make a nice devotional to accompany daily Bible study time and prayer.    I would recommend adding some other scriptures to the daily collect...

Review of Forgiven by Terri Roberts with Jeanette Windle After a son does the unthinkable, how can a mother go on? On October 2, 2006, a gunman entered an Amish one-room schoolhouse, shooting ten girls, killing five, then finally taking his own life. This is his mother's story. Not only did she lose her precious son through suicide, but she also lost her understanding of him as an honorable man. It was a trauma that none should ever have to face. But the biggest headlines came when her Amish neighbors did the unimaginable, reaching out to the family of the shooter with comfort and forgiveness. Today Terri lives in harmony with the Amish and has built lasting relationships beyond what anyone could have thought possible. From the grace that the Amish showed Terri's family from day one, to the visits and ongoing care Terri has given to the victims and their families, no one could have foreseen the love and friendship that have been forged from the fires of tragedy. ...

Review of A Shenandoah Family Christmas by Lisa Belcastro Where is Christmas? Disease, freezing temperatures, and the Revolutionary War bring bitter reality to the Reed home in December 1777. Captain Benjamin Reed is ordered to sail a supply shipment south to General George Washington. Days before Shenandoah’s scheduled departure, Ben’s first mate succumbs to smallpox. Rebecca Reed had never feared the dreaded disease until her one-year-old daughter Felicity breaks out in the telltale rash. In the cold, dark days of Advent, Rebecca, Ben, and the Reed family wait in prayerful hope as Felicity fights for her life and they wonder who could be next. With the rest of the family at risk, they decide to obtain the forbidden cowpox vaccine. Ben's brother Jonah, his uncle Isaiah, and Shenandoah’s cook Adam Greene venture off in search of the outlawed vaccine. A blizzard hits. A tree crashes. Jonah crumbles to the ground. A woman with the face of an angel aids Jonah, but is it too l...

Review of Another Way Home (Chicory Inn #3) by Deborah Raney Grant and Audrey are adding grandchildren to their family left and right, but middle daughter, Danae, and her husband, Dallas Brooks, have been trying for years with no baby in sight. Though Danae is ready to consider adoption, Dallas will not even discuss it. Despairing of ever having a family of her own, Danae decides to pour her passion and energies into volunteer work with a newly opened women’s shelter in town. Looking for a good cause to fill her lonely days, she never expects to give her heart to the hurting women she meets there. She’s finally learning to live her life with gratitude, but then heart-wrenching events on Thanksgiving weekend threaten to pull the entire Whitman clan into turmoil—and leave them all forever changed. MY REVIEW:   Deborah Raney has gotten right to the heart of the painful emotions of infertility for Dallas and Danae, and their extended family, who is hurting right along wit...

Review of Return to Christmas by Kathi Macias Return to Christmas beautifully blends the two struggling worlds of a former marine and a little boy with attachment disorder. Former Marine Chet is having a hard time adjusting to civilian life. He doesn't need help. He needs employment. He doesn't have issues. The little boy his friends adopted has issues. But there is something about that little boy that draws him. Will the events leading up to this Christmas be able to melt his soldier heart or will he spiral into a dark depression? MY REVIEW:   Kathi Macias has written a beautiful, stirring tale of PTSD, death, attachment disorder, and forgiveness.   This is such a timely story as we currently have so many young soldiers are returning from deployments with PTSD and desperately need counseling and love.   The families are also deeply affected by the emotions and actions of the veterans.   Jeneen and precious little three-year-old Kevin are dealing with th...

Review of An Amish Christmas Gift:  Three Amish Novellas by  Amy Clipston, Ruth Reid, and Kelly Irvin Naomi's Gift by Amy Clipston Naomi has started to think that she isn 't meant to find love, but she might receive more than she ever hoped for this Christmas. Twenty-four-year-old Naomi King, who has been burned twice by love, has all but given up on marriage and children. As Christmas approaches a time of family, faith, and hope for many others Naomi is more certain than ever her life will be spent as an old maid, helping with the family's quilting business and taking care of her eight siblings. Then she meets Caleb, a young widower with a 7-year-old daughter, and her world is once again turned upside-down. An Unexpected Joy by Ruth Reid Abigail has driven other suitors away, but can Micah find a way to show her he cares? Abigail Kemp has managed to frighten off every bu who has ever driven her home from a singing. Sure she will live to be an old maid, Abigail...

Review of Promise to Keep (The Promise of Sunrise #3) by Elizabeth Byler Younts World War II Marine Joe Garrison returns home from war longing to be a father to his deaf daughter, Daisy, only to find that she is attached to Esther Detweiler, the Amish woman who has raised her since his wife’s death in this touching historical romance. Orphaned as a child, Esther Detweiler is used to caring for herself and her ailing grandmother. They made the best out of a hard life and poverty without asking for help. They even take in her shunned cousin’s deaf daughter, Daisy, when her mother dies and her father goes off to war. When Esther’s grandmother dies, Daisy is all she has. When war veteran Joe Garrison returns, all he can think about is recovering from the horrors of war and building a relationship with his seven-year-old daughter. Daisy, however, is unwilling to leave Esther, whom she loves. Joe and Daisy get to know each other again, but Joe struggles with nightmares and fatherhood ...

Review of My Brother's Crown by Mindy Starns Clark & Leslie Gould From Christy award-winning authors Mindy Starns Clark and Leslie Gould comes a brand-new sweeping family saga. Close-knit cousins are individually led on a redemptive journey as they follow the threads of their family's mysterious past and discover how it impacts the future. Renee Talbot, a director in her family's 350-year-old paper company, is facing a huge problem: how to stay afloat in an increasingly paperless world. When her grandmother asks for her help in finding answers to some unsettling family-related questions, Renee's search for truth takes her to Europe, where she learns the story of Catherine Gillette, an ancestor who lived in seventeenth-century France. Headstrong and independent, young Catherine's brave actions saved the original paper company--and various members of the family--during a time when the French Huguenots were being persecuted by Louis XIV. As Renee tries...

Review of Rising Darkness by Nancy Mehl Romantic Suspense to Keep Readers Guessing Until the Last Page Sophie Wittenbauer left her strict Mennonite hometown under a cloud of shame and regret. After a rough childhood, her teenage poor choices harmed others, leaving her with no choice but to change her life. Her entry-level writing job at a newspaper puts her in the right place at the right time to overhear office gossip about a prisoner who has information on a decades-old unsolved crime. While the other reporters write off the tip as the ravings of an angry criminal, Sophie can't ignore it because she knows the name of this prisoner from her old life.  Upon learning from the man that one of the other suspects is hiding out in the Missouri town of Sanctuary, she takes on a false identity to investigate and meets the young pastor of a local church--the very man she'd loved as a troubled teenager. As she gets closer to finding the suspect, will the truth of her own pa...

Review of An Amish Year by Beth Wiseman Spend a year in Amish country with four sweet romances. Rooted in Love Rosemary Lantz is doing her best to run her family's household. She excels at all her tasks except one: gardening. Saul Petersheim has pursued Rosemary for years, but Rosemary keeps turning him down. What Saul doesn't know is that she has good reason—something no one can know—especially not him. A Love for Irma Rose The year is 1957, and young Irma Rose has a choice to make. Marry the man who loves her? Or go after Jonas, the high-spirited, yet noncommittal man her heart loves? Patchwork Perfect Eli Byler has been a widower for two years when he chooses to make a fresh start in Paradise, Pennsylvania. Eli's children are determined to keep their family the way it is, but they aren't in Paradise long before the available ladies begin to show an interest in Eli. As Eli juggles the admiration of two women, he meets Miriam Fisher—the most uncon...