Just A Second: January 2020

Friday, January 31

Monthly Bookshelf Review - January 2020 with Connect Five Friday

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The Friday Five Link Up is a List Link Up hosted by The Book Date. It can be five connections of any kind. Books can have been read last year or any year. Books can be used more than once. They may not have been read yet. . . It can be as simple or as complicated as you like. Maybe it's not a list of actual books, but things connected to books - e.g. favourite book shops, recipes etc. It might even be five movies related to books or five poems or five poets or five bookish moments, five thoughts about reading - be creative! The link-up will be open each Friday and will close on Thursday. Use the hashtag #connect5books

I reviewed five books during the month of January - read on to find out what they were.

January's Books Completed and Reviewed

Penny For Your Secrets by Anna Lee Huber - This is Verity Kent Mystery #3, and sees Verity and Sidney investigating the murder of a friend's husband which turns out to be connected to another murder and perhaps a large-scale cover-up involving smuggling and fraud. (Read my full review HERE)

She Laughs by Carolanne Miljavac - A testimony and encouragement about the healing and strengthening power of laughter. I highly recommend this book! (Read my full review HERE)

Peter Pan by J.M. Barrie - The classic tale of a boy who refused to grow up and the adventures of Wendy and her brothers during their stay with him in Neverland. (Read my full review HERE)

The Friendly Persuasion by Jessamyn West - A charming collection of short stories following a Quaker couple through the years. (Read my full review HERE)

The Blizzard Bride by Susanne Dietze - Abigail Bracey has to cooperate with her former sweetheart, agent Dash Lassiter, to find the dangerous counterfeiter who murdered her father years earlier. (Read my full review HERE)

During January I started reading:

Warriors Don't Cry by Melba Pattillo Beals - the memoir of one of the Little Rock Nine students detailing her experiences during the year of integration.

Until the Mountains Fall by Connilyn Cossette - Widowed Rivkah resists the expectation that she marry her brother-in-law in order to continue the family line, but she doesn't realize that Malakhi actually loves her.

Emma by Jane Austen - re-reading this classic novel about a heroine that Austen described as someone no one else would like very much.

The Curse of the Healing Kiss by Mark McClelland - a fantasy novella inspired by French fairy tales of the 17th century.

The Next Always by Nora Roberts - Follows the life and dreams of an architect as he and his family renovate a historic hotel in Boonsboro, Maryland.

Coming Up in February!

A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens
From Sky to Sky by Amanda G. Stevens

This post will be linked at the January 2020 Wrap-Up Roundup and Giveaway hosted by Feed Your Fiction Addiction.

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Thursday, January 30

Share Four Somethings - January 2020

This post contains affiliate links - using affiliate links from Just A Second helps supply books and coffee - thank you!

The Share Four Somethings link-up hosted by HeatherGerwing.com continues in 2020 with a couple of changes to the prompts. I'm looking forward to continuing, so here we go with Something Loved, Something Read, Something Treasured, and Something Ahead.

Something Loved

Last week I got to take a trip back to the city where some of my relatives live and visit with the two aunts I roomed with when I was at college. It was a wonderful time with family, of course, but it also included some real treats for me to eat! I enjoyed vereniki and farmer sausage a couple of times, and tried out "Mennonite Poutine" at a favorite restaurant. Now I already know I won't be able to find farmer sausage around here, and making my own vereniki is also a challenge, but the poutine I can do! And I plan to. It's a poutine made with schmauntfat (cream gravy) instead of brown gravy, and in the absence of farmer sausage, I'll use another type of sausage or bacon instead. Are you familiar with poutine? What variations of the dish are your favorites?

My aunt used to bake these very simple White Cookies that I and my kids absolutely loved, and somehow I never got the recipe. Until this visit. I helped her bake the cookies, brought a batch home, and made myself a copy of the recipe.

Something Read

I completed three books in January. (But I reviewed five - two of the ones I finished earlier didn't get reviewed until after the Christmas break!) You can see more about my reading in my Monthly Bookshelf Review for January 2020. I plan to have it up tomorrow.

The Blizzard Bride by Susanne Dietze
She Laughs by Carolanne Miljavac
Penny For Your Secrets by Anna Lee Huber

Something Treasured

It's nothing unusual to have my family featured in these kinds of categories, but this month it's a little different. My travel to visit family was prompted by a milestone birthday celebration, and it allowed me to catch up with a few family members that I hadn't seen in a very long time.

This is me with my one and only cousin on my mom's side of the family. I am the oldest of the children in my family, and she is the only child of any of my mom's siblings. And we almost share a birthday - hers is one day after mine.

Here's my mom and her youngest sister, my cousin's mom. I haven't seen this aunt and cousin in just over six years.

Me and Mom

My two aunts, my mom's older sisters, are in this photo - the lady in front just celebrated her 90th birthday!

Something Ahead

This is the section where we share things that are coming up in the month ahead. Our schedule will get busy - busier! - again in February as college classes begin and we settle into a few new routines to accommodate the girls' classes and all our work schedules. Some fun things I have planned for the month ahead include a Bears hockey game with a group, get-togethers with homeschool moms and with friends, and a double date night.

This post will be linked at Share Four Somethings hosted by HeatherGerwing.com

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Wednesday, January 29

Recent Reads - The Blizzard Bride

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The Blizzard Bride by Susanne Dietze - Things have been tough for Abigail since her father died - was murdered - but she is finally presented with a chance to help federal agents catch up with the killer, a dangerous counterfeiter. She's asked to go as a schoolteacher to a small town in Nebraska because that's where the counterfeiter's young son is, and they expect him to show up looking for the boy. Abby is glad to play a part in bringing the murderer to justice, and she knows she is a good teacher too.

But the agent that has been tracking the counterfeiter, and who will be her contact and protector in the town is none other than her former sweetheart, Dash Lassiter. Abby is still angry over the way he left her without explanation years before, and has hardened her heart against him. And against God too, because she's all but given up on prayer and Bible reading.

Dash is determined to do his job - and to protect Abby from harm - and if he can find a way to make amends and win her back, that's what he really wants. He realizes that he'll need to earn her trust again, and tell her the real reason he left and hope she'll forgive him.

Abby is confronted with the need to extend grace and forgiveness, and to avoid being cold-hearted and bitter; and both Dash and Abby must set aside their own past hurts to work together when a sudden blizzard puts them and all the schoolchildren in danger. And when that crisis is past, will a more immediate danger be their undoing when they identify the counterfeiter?

This is the first novel from Susanne Dietze that I've read, and I greatly enjoyed her writing style. Abby is a flawed heroine with her stubborn hardness, but so likable as the sweet character underneath is revealed in her interactions with her students. Dash is rather like his name - dashing and bold - and the supporting cast in the town are realistic and interesting as well. The characters and their interactions were engaging and very well-written, so I was drawn into the story even though I felt some of the background information and motivations were not as clear as I would have liked. Overall, this is a great addition to the series and tells a story about a historical event (the Children's Blizzard) that I was not familiar with.

From the publisher:

A Blizzard Changes Everything

Abigail Bracey arrives in Nebraska in January 1888 to teach school . . . and to execute a task for the government to identify a student as the hidden son of a murderous counterfeiter - the man who killed her father.

Agent Dashiell Lassiter doesn't want his childhood sweetheart Abby on this dangerous job, especially when he learns the counterfeiter is now searching for his son too, and he'll destroy anyone in his way. Now Dash must follow Abby to Nebraska to protect her . . . if she'll let him within two feet of her. She's still angry he didn't fight to marry her six years ago, and he never told her the real reason he left her.

All Dash wants to is protect Abby, but when a horrifying blizzard sweeps over them, can Abby and Dash set aside the pain from their pasts and work together to catch a counterfeiter and protect his son - if they survive the storm?

Join the adventure as the Daughters of the Mayflower series continues with The Blizzard Bride by Susanne Dietze.

Other books in this series: The Mayflower Bride, The Pirate Bride, The Captured Bride, The Patriot Bride, The Cumberland Bride, The Liberty Bride, The Alamo Bride, The Golden Bride, The Express Bride, The Rebel Bride (Coming in 2020: The Chisholm Trail Bride)

Book Eleven in the Daughters of the Mayflower series.

I received a digital ARC of this book from NetGalley for the purpose of this review.

Saturday, January 25

Scripture and a Snapshot - Coming soon!

Scripture and a Snapshot may be late this week - I'm traveling and may not be able to get a wifi connection to post the link-up on time. Please check back later on Sunday and I'll have it up! Thanks for understanding!

Update: Things didn't go as I planned, so here I am on Monday morning instead. Scripture and a Snapshot will be back to its regular Saturday evening schedule this week!

Thank you for joining Scripture & A Snapshot. Leave a link to your own post sharing a Scripture and a Snapshot. Take time to visit some of the other links and bless each other with comments.