Book Review: Before Women Had Wings by Connie May Fowler

Before Women Had Wings

by 

Connie May Fowler

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Quote:

" Listen to me, Bird, dreaming is for fools, and I don't ever want to be accused of raising up a little fool."~ Mama(Glory Marie) pg. 45

Started: September 23, 2018

Finished: September 26, 2018

304 pages/paperback

From the cover:

My name is Avocet Abigail Jackson. But because Mama couldn't find anyone who thought Avocet was a fine name for a child, she called me Bird. Which is okay by me. She named both her girl children after birds, her logic being that if we were named for something with wings then maybe we'd be able to fly above the shit in our lives...

My Review:

I have to admit I was intrigued by the cover of this book. I grabbed it and couldn't wait to get reading.

It did not disappoint. It had everything I had hoped it would.

There is struggle from the beginning. Trials and errors made by many. It has innocence of  childhood, yet children seeing and living such things they never should have to.

It is written showing a clear and honest character in "Bird".

The story starts out with Bird vividly recalling the day her daddy walked into the General Store, revolver in hand and threatened to kill himself in front of her mother, sister, and herself.

She was just six-years-old.

From there, the story takes you through her days, living in an abusive home. A drunkard father, a mean tempered mama, a brother that comes and goes, and a sister that loves or hates her depending on the day.

After tragedy hits their home, Mama decides to head south. To take the girls on a journey that will change all of their lives.

While things don't get better, they definitely change.

A new place, new school, and...a new friend.

Miss Zora, befriends Bird, not knowing that Bird has been forbidden from being around her.

Their secret friendship is exactly what Bird, and her family needs.

Will these women ever get their wings?

This is a must read!

Grab your copy here:

Before Women Had Wings by Connie May Fowler

Be sure to let me know what you think of this wonderful book! Leave a comment!

Book review: My Heart Belongs in the Superstition Mountains: Carmela's Quandary

My Heart Belongs in the Superstition Mountains:

Carmela's Quandary

by 

Susan Page Davis

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Quote:

"I don't understand why some people are so eager to hear about other's troubles." Deputy McKay

 pg. 70

Started: September 8, 2018

Finished: September 21, 2018

paperback 256 pages

From the cover:

A chance for escape takes two unlikely allies on a romantic adventure along a desert trail.

Orphaned at age twelve, Carmela Wade has lived a lie orchestrated by her uncle, pretending to be a survivor of an Indian kidnapping and profiting from telling her made-up story. But as she matures into adulthood, Carmela hates the deceit and longs to be free. On a stagecoach in Arizona Territory, Carmela and her uncle are fellow passengers with US Marshal Freeland McKay and his handcuffed prisoner. The stage is attacked. A chance to make a new life may suddenly be within Carmela's reach...if she can survive the harsh terrain and being handcuffed to an unconscious man.

Journey now to Tuscan, Arizona, and into the Superstition Mountains of 1866, where freedom will come at a high price for two determined individuals.

My Review:

This is the first book I have read in the My Heart Belongs series.

It was a light, easy read. I have to admit it was a big change for me. I've mostly been reading more thriller, dark, and mystery types.

This book was a total switch for me.

Normally, I do enjoy something lighter from time to time. This really was a sweet, innocent, well written, Christian fiction. Which is exactly want it was intended to be.

I can't say it was one that will go into my top 10 list.

I felt after reading the synopsis...that was pretty much it. That was the whole story, minus a few details. It sort of ruined the book for me. 

Everything was pretty much already there. Too predictable, no suspense...at all. I mean, you would think, wild west, captive characters, a stagecoach robbery, a lying uncle and the rugged terrain; there would be some action. I don't know,...just something.

I just felt like the whole book was drug out. A little back and forth with Carmela retelling her story to different characters as they showed up in the book, but nothing new.

And, the romance was too easy. The big, strapping Marshal, the damsel in distress....

Their time apart, hearts longing, and you guessed it...they make their way back together and ride off into the sunset.

Okay, I don't want to sound so harsh. It just wasn't for me.

I will say it was well written into short chapters. It had a few great characters( Mrs. Finney was my favorite). And, the good guys come out on top.

Overall, it was a sweet romance. Just don't be expecting any big wow moments.

I will check out the others in the series, just to see how they fair. 

Sometimes, it's nice to switch it up with something lighter. 

I would still recommend this book for those I know would enjoy it.

You can easily purchase a slightly used copy of this book,

My Heart Belongs in the Superstition Mountains:Carmela's Quandary

or many of the other, My Heart Belongs books, from my link provided.

Book List of Witches, Magic, and Superstitions

Welcome.
I am finally getting into the Fall season. I wasn't quite ready to welcome all the changes last week.
I was clinging to the last bits of summer. Trying to wrap up all the tasks I was working on. Which included cleaning up my Goodreads account. I had a few books I wanted to put into new categories and ended up making a new "shelf".
I realized I had a few that really didn't fit anywhere, except plain old fiction or my "read" books.
I decided to add a "witches" category/shelf.
I thought, now is the perfect time to share that list here with all of you.
I'm not into gore or horror so much, but I am intrigued by old time witchcraft. As in healers and using mother nature instead of modern day, first world medicines. I also love anything about superstitions, rituals, old wives tales. The sort that make you question what could be. What you've heard or been taught. Maybe even a little chill up your spine. 
Those things, to me are what make a book more of storytelling. A good old fashioned..."Grandma used to say..." kind of story.
If those are the types of books you enjoy or are looking for, then you will love this list!

*post contains affiliate links

Bloodroot by Amy Greene

Named for a flower whose blood-red sap possesses both the power to heal and poison, Bloodroot is a stunning fiction debut about the legacies- of magic and madness, faith and secrets, passion and loss-that haunt one family across the generations, from the Great Depression to today.

The Peach Keeper by Sarah Addison Allen

The New York Times best selling author of the Girl Who Chased The Moon welcomes you to her newest locale: Walls of Water, North Carolina, where the secrets are thicker than the fog from the town's famous waterfalls, and the stuff of superstition is just as real as you want it to be.

Garden Spells by Sarah Addison Allen

The women of the Waverley family--whether they like it or not--are heirs to an unusual legacy, one that grows in a fenced plot behind their Queen Anne home on Pendland street in Bascom, North Carolina. There, an apple tree bearing fruit of magical properties looms over a garden filled with herbs and edible flowers that possess the power to affect in curious ways anyone who eats them.

Sugar Queen by Sarah Addison Allen

In this irresistible novel, Sarah Addison Allen, author of the New York Times bestselling debut, Garden Spells, tells the tale of a young woman whose family secrets- and secret passions-are about to change her life forever.

The Witch of Blackbird Pond by Elizabeth George Speare

Sixteen-year-old Kit Tyler is marked by suspicion and disapproval from the moment she arrives on the unfamiliar shores colonial Connecticut in 1687. Alone and desperate, she has been forced to leave her beloved home on the island of Barbados and join a family she has never met. Torn between her quest for belonging and her desire to be true to herself, Kit struggles to survive in a hostile place.

Dark Witch(#1 Cousins O'Dwyer Trilogy) by Nora Roberts

From Nora Roberts comes a trilogy about the land we are drawn to, the family we learn to cherish, and the people we long to love... With indifferent parents, Iona Sheehan grew up craving devotion and acceptance. From her maternal grandmother, she learned where to find both: a land of lush forests, dazzling lakes, and centuries-old legends. Ireland.

Also Books #2 and #3

Shadow Spell

Blood Magick

A Break with Charity by Ann Rinaldi

Susanna desperately wants to join the circle of girls who meet every week at the parsonage. What she doesn't realize is that the girls are about to set off a torrent of false accusations leading to the imprisonment and execution of countless innocent people. Susanna faces a painful choice.

The Winter Witch by Paula Brackston

Fledgling witch Morgana must defend her love, her home, and her life in this enthralling tale perfect for fans of Discovery of Witches. In her small early nineteenth century Welsh town, there is no one quite like Morgana, who has not spoken since she was a young girl. Her silence is a mystery, as well as her magic.

I hope you all will enjoy these books as much as I did. You can also check out my shelf and any reviews I have done on them.

Goodreads and books about witches

Happy reading and Happy Fall!

Book Review: A High and Hidden Place by Michele Claire Lucas

A High and Hidden Place

by 

Michele Claire Lucas

*This post contains affiliate links

Quote:

"I had a family, a big family, I had a town. I had a best friend. I had a house with a garden. I had a grandfather who was a printer. I had a grandfather who was a bookbinder. Isn't that a wonderful thing to be?"~ Christine pg.202

Started: August 26, 2018

Finished: September 6, 2018

hardback 288 pages

From the cover:

(prologue)

I was brought, at the age of six, to a convent, a cloistered place of asylum from the world that was roiling and thundering and awash in blood. I did not know then, of course, that the whole world was teeming with the motherless, the fatherless, the homeless, the dispossessed. I did not know then that I was an orphan among orphans, one of so many everywhere in the world, made so by events beyond my sight, beyond my awareness, in any case beyond my six-year-old ability to comprehend...I soon enough forgot my mother and the rest of my family. They had disappeared from my sight in a day, and then gradually, with the months and then the years, from my mind and my heart. The angel mothers became my parents, the other orphan girls, who were indeed no angel children after all, became my siblings. It may be difficult to believe, but my childhood, both before and after the terrible day of the fire, was a very happy one. But though I did not know it, I would forevermore be Christine of Oradour, with all that that appellation implied.

My Review:

I absolutely loved this book! I really felt it. It was by far one of the best written, although fiction books that I really believed.

"Fiction by fact" is one of my favorite types of books.

Michele Claire Lucas has done an amazing job of creating the character of one girl who lived through actual events.

While Christine of Oradour is fictional, Oradour-sur-Glane, France is an actual place, where a very heartless massacre occurred.

On June 10, 1944 by order of  Waffen SS officer Adolf Otto Diekmann, all residents, mostly farmers, shopkeepers,  housewives, children, and elderly were summoned to the town square, where they were then separated men from women and children.

The men were corralled into barns while the women and children were sent into the church.

The men were mostly shot in the knees or legs first to keep them from running, and for torture and later the barns were caught on fire. The women were burned alive inside the church.

Read on here for more on the actual events:  Oradour-sur-Glane massacre

The photo was taken some years after the massacre occurred. My understanding is the town was left as is, as a memorial to those lives lost. The village is abandoned.

In the book, Christine Lenoir is a journalist during the 1963 assassination of President Kennedy, and is watching the television when Lee Harvey Oswald is shot. The scene and sound on the television trigger memories Christine has long forgotten. While, she has no idea what they mean, she knows that they are very real. She has seen a man killed before. But how? And when?

Her parents died of influenza when she was only six years old and she then lived a quiet, un-tormented childhood inside the convent, raised by peaceful nuns. 

Christine goes back to the convent, the safest place she knows. She doesn't understand the images she sees over and over, but she must find out what they mean.

The Sisters must know something. Is Christine ready for the answers?

Get the book here!

A High and Hidden Place

Don't miss out on this wonderful story!