I’m way behind on posting reviews of some books I’ve read during the last few months, so thought I’d share about two of them today – A Love of Her Own by Maggie Brendan and Katy’s Debate by Kim Vogel Sawyer.
A Love of Her Own concludes Brendan’s Heart of the West series. We met the hero and heroine (Wes Owen and April McBride) in previous books of the series. (I love when authors take a supporting character from one book and tell his or her own story in a later book. It’s like getting to know surface-level friends better.)
April’s father is a wealthy rancher, which means she has everything she could ever want … that money can buy. She’s quite spoiled and used to having things her way. She surprises everyone by traveling to Montana without her parents (who are traveling abroad) when she gets word that her brother Josh is about to get married. April fights circumstances (and people!) all along the way, including having a run-in with Wes as soon as she reaches town. Wes is independent and stubborn in his own right, so it doesn’t take much for them to aggravate each other. The only common denominator they seem to have is Josh, who counts Wes as a close friend. The longer April stays in the small town of Billings, Montana, the more she learns about who she really is and what she really wants. And no one is more surprised than April and Wes are when they finally realize how God had a hand in their lives all along.
Katy’s Debate is the second installment of Sawyer’s Katy Lambright series. Katy is a Mennonite girl who gets permission from her community to extend her education and attend public high school. Just as Katy begins to feel somewhat settled at school, her personal life goes through an upheaval. Katy’s mom left the Old Order years ago, so she and Dad have been on their own for years. And they’ve done quite nicely, so far as Katy is concerned. But now Dad has decided that Katy needs a mother and has started courting a woman from another Old Order community. It’s the last thing Katy wants, so she sets out to prove that she’s responsible enough to keep going without a mother’s guidance. Dad realizes what Katy is up to, but doesn’t know about some of the other struggles she’s going through – namely, her growing crush on a boy from the debate team. As nice as he is, Katy knows Dad would never accept him because he isn’t Mennonite. Her familiar Old Order ways and the new things she’s learning in the “outside world” play quite a game of tug-a-war in Katy’s heart and mind. And even though her life as a Mennonite girl might be completely foreign to many of today’s teen readers, her struggles aren’t. I’ll be keeping this series for my daughter to read when she gets a bit older.
Both books were enjoyable reads and ones that I would pass along to friends. Check them out for yourself at CBD.com or Amazon!
(Disclaimer: I received my copies of A Love of Her Own from Revell Publishing and Katy’s Debate from Zondervan for the purpose of review.)
