June Bryan Belfie

At first, I liked this book. What's not to like about a girl spending time in Rome, Italy? I didn't like Julia's relationship with her mom. It seemed the two were always at odds with each other.

After a while, the pull on Julia between her fiance and her new Italian boyfriend became repetitive and grating. Her excuses to keep putting off breaking off the engagement were silly. If she really wanted to do it in person, let him come visit you so you can get it over with! Or just break up with him over the phone.

And when I got to the point where I thought, OK, She's going to make a decision now, I realized I was only halfway through the book, and I also realized that I didn't really care which one she chose.… (plus d'informations)

A Long Way to Go is a sweet, heartwarming historical romance in the same vein as Little House on the Prairie or Janette Oke's pioneer stories. I think fans of these books would probably enjoy this one as well. Being a long-time fan of both, I liked it quite a bit. It is also the ultimate “road trip” story with the bulk of it taking place as the main characters journey to Oregon via wagon train. I always love these types of stories, because I never fail to be amazed at the courage and fortitude of the early pioneers who braved hardships in order to settle this great land of ours. In the author's note at the end, she mentions how she drew on actual journals and first-person accounts of pioneers who traveled the same trail as her protagonists. I wondered all throughout reading the book if this might be the case, because I felt like I was right there on the journey with them. This is an area where Ms. Belfie really excelled in her storytelling, so kudos for that.

The only thing that kept me from giving the book a higher rating was that I felt her character's motivations could have been explored a little better. In this area, the author has a tendency to skim over things rather than delving into deeper POV. I would have loved to see more narrative introspection to help me better understand what the characters were feeling and thinking, as well as a little more descriptive narration to better set some scenes. I noticed that the introspection often consists of rhetorical questions that the character asks of themselves or God (eg. Why am I feeling/acting this way?). In this respect, it would have been nice if Ms. Belfie had dug into her character's psyches to actually answer some of these questions instead of merely asking them and then leaving it up to the reader to speculate. Despite this small deficiency though, the characters were extremely likable.

Rachel is one of the main narrators of the story. She is a widow who has been struggling with taking care of her farm and raising her three children. Knowing that she needs help, her pastor brings around a nice man who is staying in the area temporarily while waiting for the wagon train to head west and is willing to work for meals and a place to sleep. She likes David and thinks he's attractive, but she's a little prickly toward him at first. It's a combination of her wariness of strangers and viewing David as being partially responsible for her sister and brother-in-law leaving her to go west. After all she'd been through with losing a husband and a son, I suppose she was entitled to feel that way, because she wouldn't have had any family left other than her three children had she stayed in Missouri. Rachel does warm up to David fairly quickly though, perhaps a little too quickly. She goes from being adamantly against going west, even after finding out her beloved sister is going, to accepting David's marriage proposal and being OK with moving seemingly overnight. She supposedly did it so her children would have a father and because she was afraid of facing another winter with no male help, but there wasn't quite enough substance to her thought processes to fully understand her quick change of heart. This is one place where deeper POV would have been really helpful. The other is that Rachel is unable to tell David she loves him until the very end of the story, even though from all appearances she cares for and respects him deeply. She goes through some kind of guilt process, feeling bad about loving David and enjoying being married to him, because she somehow feels unfaithful to her first husband. Without that all-important deep introspection, this didn't fully make sense to me, but otherwise, Rachel was a likable and admirable heroine. She weathered the grueling journey quite well and without complaint and treated David very well in spite of her guilt.

David was a wonderful hero. Right from the start, it's obvious that he's a sweet, kind-hearted man. He's a hard worker around Rachel's farm, and her kids take to him almost immediately. In spite of having lost his first wife and baby in childbirth years ago and never having experienced fatherhood, he's extremely good at it. He relates to each of Rachel's children at their own level, whether it's holding and playing with baby Helen, fishing with young Josiah, or giving advice to the teenage Lucinda. He's very protective of his new family as well, always looking out for their well-being. David is very patient with Rachel too, giving her the time and space she needs to recover from her losses and adjust to being married to him, while biding his time in hopes that someday she'll come to love him every bit as much as he already loves her. Since the majority of the book is written from the perspective of two female characters, I have to admit to missing the male POV a bit, but what we see of David through the other character's eyes paints a picture of a gentle, loving man who would be impossible not to adore.

The other primary POV character is Rachel's sixteen year old daughter, Lucinda. She gets her own budding romance with Ben, a young man she meets on the trail. Lucinda is a very well brought up young lady who seems to have a lot of self-respect. She also takes a page from her mother's book by being a hard worker and never complaining. Instead, she willing helps out by cooking, cleaning, caring for her younger siblings, or doing whatever needs to be done. Despite her youth, I had no trouble believing she would make a good wife for Ben. Ben was every bit as nice and wonderful as David, and I really enjoyed this sweet secondary romance.

Overall, A Long Way to Go was a very enjoyable read. The other secondary characters who were a part of David and Rachel's group on the wagon train added flavor and interest. Rachel's other two children, were rendered age-appropriately. Little Helen was cute, while Josiah's exuberance was contagious. I thought the story gave a nice taste of what it must have been like for the early settlers as they made their way to a new home. The author even used a few real-life personages who were key players in this westward expansion as background characters. I also liked how the faith message was a gentle, organic part of the story. All in all, A Long Way to Go was a nice, easy read that was well-written. I would definitely recommend it to fans of this type of story.

Note: I received a copy of this book from the author in exchange for an honest review.… (plus d'informations)

A Special Blessing for Sara is a gentle inspirational romance that in some ways is more reminiscent of women's fiction with a strong romantic element. The entire story is told from the third-person POV of the heroine with no male perspective at all (this is pretty rare in romance, but oddly enough, the third one like this I've read in a month). There is also equal, if not more, attention given to Sara's career as a counselor, her volunteer work with her church, and her family life as there is to her love life. With the focus of the novel split there was already limited space for relationship development, but then the author has not one but three men vying for Sara's affections at the same time. I've never been much of a fan of love triangles, much less love quadrangles. They usually take too much space away from the main hero and heroine, and don't allow for enough time to really develop their love. Ultimately, I think Sara chose the right man, but that decision came relatively easily without much depth of thought. Because of this, the romantic content was sweet and tender but only partially satisfying. I think the story holds up better when classified as women's fiction, because it's more about Sara's journey through a short period of her life, in a variety of different aspects, spiritual, emotional, family revelations and romantic choices, more so than a single romantic relationship. Overall, when I think of it in this capacity, I can honestly say I enjoyed it.

Sara is a caring, compassionate young woman who is very good at her job as a counselor but is struggling a bit in her personal life. Jeremy, her long-time boyfriend, who she thought was going to marry her, walked out of her life four months earlier after she refused to become intimate with him, and she's having a hard time getting over him. Sara is attracted to her co-worker, Ken, and he seems to be interested in her as well, but there is also Darrel, the handsome new youth pastor at her church. Then out of the blue, Jeremy comes back, wanting to rekindle their relationship. Decisions... decisions! Sara is pretty much the epitome of a sweet heroine who is simply nice to everyone, perhaps a little too nice at times, but her clients seem to love her, as do the youth at her church and basically everyone else too. I can't say that I really understood Sara's attachment to Jeremy and her willingness to start dating him again when he returned. In my opinion, he was very disrespectful of Sara and her feelings, and without making some serious changes in his life, he was clearly the wrong choice. That said, Sara's decision to go out with Ken if he asked her (before Jeremy returned) seemed a bit abrupt, considering it was Darrel who appeared to be showing the most interest in her at that point. It was also a little odd that she welcomed Ken into her home to visit but didn't really want Darrel there. Additionally, even though Sara and Ken had known each other through work for quite a while, I still thought that some of the information they shared about themselves on their first two dates was a little too personal for a couple who was just getting to know one another. Overall though, I liked Sara and two out of three of her men, as well as where the romance ultimately led.

There were a couple of things in the story that lacked credibility for me. First was Sara giving out her personal cell phone number to her clients and allowing them to call her anytime they needed assistance, as well as acting in a friendship capacity to a client while actively counseling her. I've known a lot of counselors in my life and this type of behavior would definitely be crossing the counselor/client relationship line and could possibly even get the counselor in trouble with the licensing board. However, I realize that some of this was done to set up a plot twist (which I actually figured out really early in the story), so I suppose I can forgive the use of artistic license. The other thing was that for young 20-somethings, the main characters have interests that, in my opinion, are too “old” for their age group. They listen to oldies or easy-listening type music, only seem to watch old black and white movies, and don't watch anything on TV except the news. Not to say that there might not be a few amongst the younger generation who enjoy these things, but I certainly don't know any who do, at least not on a regular basis. Even a middle-aged, 40-something like myself rarely does these things, so I would have preferred to see the characters act a little closer to their age. Lastly, and this isn't really a credibility issue so much as a critique, I felt the author's word choices were sometimes a bit too formal and stilted, and especially stood out when used in dialog.

In spite of a few small criticisms, I did enjoy A Special Blessing for Sara. Sara's close-knit family is very heartwarming, just the kind of family almost anyone would love to have. The multiple romantic connections that occur for the other single characters in the book was cute, and at least left me with a good feeling about no one really getting left out in the cold. I especially loved the way the people of the church reached out to help those in the community who were without power during the storm, particularly ones who were the most vulnerable, like the elderly. Readers who are averse to religious themes may not care for this one, because the faith message is ever-present throughout the narrative. I found it to be a gentle, organic part of the story and therefore, not off-putting in any way, but others may feel differently. Overall, this was one of those really sweet, super-easy reads that makes you feel like you've wrapped up in a warm blanket with a hot cup of cocoa on a cold winter's day. I would recommend it for anyone looking for a simple, uncomplicated story to relax and unwind from the stresses of life.

Note: I received a copy of this book from the author in exchange for an honest review.… (plus d'informations)