Through Water and Stone

Author: Karen Barnett
Genre: Fiction
Publisher: Kregel Publications, 2025
Pages: 352
Rating: Recommend

Synopsis: In 1948, Zion National Park ranger Henry Erikssen and his wife, Alma, are less than one year removed from their infant son's sudden death in a flash flood, and the weight of the loss hasn't diminished with time. When Henry discovers an abandoned baby in a hatbox on his morning rounds, he's unsure how to react, but Alma is delighted, and she reignites with purpose at what seems to be a miracle from God.

Nearly eighty years later, Talia Erikssen leaves her job at an athleisure company in Palo Alto, California, in disgrace and returns to Zion National Park to reconnect with her grandfather and review her life goals. But when an at-home DNA test exposes family secrets, Talia and her newfound friend, law enforcement ranger Blake Mitchell, work together to search for answers.

Talia navigates the rocky path into her past with Blake by her side, what she discovers may alter everything she knew to be true about herself. With the uncertain future looming, Talia must learn that family is deeper than genetics and that trusting God can mean being still and clinging to the Rock.

Review: This is a "typical" Karen Barnett novel, an author I really enjoy. Loss of a child, an abandoned baby, family secrets, all heavy topics with a rosy spin. Set a novel in a national park and I'm here for it.

Other Karen Barnett Novels
Vintage National Park Series
Book 1, The Road to Paradise
Book 2, Where the Fire Falls
Book 3, Ever Faithful

Stand-Alone Novels
Through Water and Stone
When Stone Wings Fly

Evenings at Five

Author: Gail Godwin
Genre: Fiction
Publisher: Random House Publishing, 2003
Pages: 128
Rating: Recommend

Synopsis: Every evening at 5:00, Christina and Rudy stopped work and began the ritual commonly known as Happy Hour. Rudy mixed Christina's drink with loving precision, the cavalier slosh of Bombay Sapphire over ice shards, before settling across from her in his Stickley chair with his glass of Scotch. They shared a love language and music (she is an author, he a composer, after all), a delight in intense conversation, a fascination with popes, and nearly thirty years of life together.

What did I think? That we had forever? muses Christina, even months after Rudy's unexpected death. While coming to terms with her loss, with the space that Rudy once inhabited, Christina reflects on their vibrant bond, with all it's quirks, habits, and unguarded moments, as well as her passionate sorry and her attempts to reposition herself and her new place in the very real world they shared.

Review: This novel got me thinking about the routines and habits my husband and I have. Our evenings together generally start about 8:30 pm with tea (for me) and popcorn (for him). We cycle through our shows, chat, and then go to bed. I look forward to 8:30, always. Sometimes I'll even ask him if it's 8:30 yet just because the day has been so crazy, or I need a break from life.

Hour of the Witch

Author: Chris Bohjalian
Genre: Historical Fiction
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, 2022
Pages: 406
Rating: Do Not Recommend

Synopsis: Boston, 1662. Mary Deerfield is twenty-four-years old. Her skin is porcelain, her eyes delft blue, and in England she might have had many suitors. But here in the New World, amid this community of saints, Mary is the second wife of Thomas Deerfield, a man as cruel as he is powerful. When Thomas, prone to drunken rage, drives a three-tined fork into the back of Mary's hand, she resolves that she must divorce him to save her life.

But in a world where every neighbor is watching for signs of the devil, a woman like Mary - a woman who harbors secret desires and finds it difficult to tolerate the brazen hypocrisy of so many men in the colony - soon becomes herself the object of suspicion and rumor. When tainted objects are discovered buried in Mary's garden, when a boy she has treated with herbs and simples dies, and when their servant girl runs screaming in fright from her home, Mary must right to not only escape her marriage, but also the gallows.

Review: I read Secrets of Eden in 2011 and was not sure I cared to read another Chris Bohjalian novel. However, this book came up as an October suggestion and I do like this period in American history so I gave him another chance. Regrettable.

Chris Bojahlian is not an author for me, but I stuck with this book to meet a Goodreads Reading Challenge. That said, there are some takeaways. The Puritan world of the 1600s was rife with hypocrisy behind their masks of piety and religious zeal. And please, if you believe woman have it so bad in 2026, research life in Colonial America. This was a difficult novel to read, from the author's writing style to the subject matter.

Chris Bohjalian Novels
Secrets of Eden

He Falls First

Author: Jill Shalvis
Genre: Fiction
Publisher: Sourcebooks Casablanca, 2025
Pages: 352
Rating: Do Not Recommend

Synopsis: Ryder Colburn has his hands full running the family business and caring for the ailing father who's a virtual stranger from the cold, heavy-handed man he used to be. He's got zero free time for hobbies or women. Or so he thinks until one walks into his life. . .and the path of an oncoming car.

Ryder doesn't mind playing the hero for the skittish, scarred chef Penny. Maybe it's the secrets in her eye or the scar on her chin. Whatever the reason, he's compelled to get closer.

Penny's learned her lesson and how she's paying the price. That's why she's sharing a dilapidated house in a tiny California town with her feisty grandmother and tween brother living off the leftovers from her catering job. It's a far cry from her dream life. But he who needs dreams. . .or love. . .or sex when there's amateur plumbing projects to tackle and breakfast casseroles to bake.

One thing's for sure, she's never falling in love again. Not even with the sexy, snarky contractor who keeps testing the walls she's built.

Review: Perhaps I didn't understand what subgenre I was choosing when I saw this book on a must-read list. I don't mind sex in a book, but it has to make sense for the story. For me, the entire plot shouldn't be progressing to yet another sexual encounter by two characters who either try to deny their attraction, or they downright can't stand each other. It's an eyeroller.

Eleanor & Park

Author: Rainbow Rowell
Genre: Fiction
Publisher: St. Martin's Publishing, 2013
Pages: 336
Rating: Recommend

Synopsis: Set over the course of one school year in 1986, this is the story of two star-crossed misfits-smart enough to know that first love almost never lasts, but brave and desperate enough to try. When Eleanor meets Park, you'll remember your own first love-and just how hard it pulled you under.

Review: I added this novel to my "TBR" list in 2013, and there it has sat for 13 years. I had it out from the library a few years, but didn't get around to reading it at that time. So, here we are. What a cute novel, and a bit heartbreaking too. I felt for Eleanor and for kids I went to school with that likely didn't have the best home life. 

I'm glad I kept this novel on my To Be Read shelf all these years and that I finally got around to reading it.

The Lincoln Highway

Author: Amor Towles
Genre: Fiction
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group, 2023
Pages: 592
Rating: Do Not Recommend

Synopsis: In June, 1954, eighteen-year-old Emmett Watson is driven home to Nebraska by the warden of the juvenile work farm where he has just served fifteen months for involuntary manslaughter. His mother long gone, this father recently deceased, and the family farm foreclosed upon by the bank, Emmett's intention is to pick up his eight-year-old brother, Billy, and head to California where they can start their lives anew. But when the warden drives away, Emmett discovers that two friends from the work farm have hidden themselves in the trunk of the warden's car. Together, they have hatched an altogether different plan for Emmett's future, one that will take them all on a fateful journey in the opposite direction - to the City of New York.

Review: The title of this book piqued my interest and was right up my alley, but it's deceptive too. While The Lincoln Highway was a part of this book, it wasn't the focus, which was disappointing. Over the course of this novel, I learned one important thing - epic journeys/odyssey's/coming-of-age novels annoy me. Stop making one bad decision after another. Stop letting the characters around you make bad decisions. I just can't.

Telling myself that this was 1954 didn't do anything to ease my frustration.

Woolly's brother-in-law should have read the riot act to all of the participants in this ridiculous novel, but at least someone in this novel had a modicum of common sense.

The Lincoln Highway was superior to This Tender Land, which I did not enjoy at all, but I'll be avoiding this subgenre in the future. I feel like I miss the point and I need to ask someone who loves this genre, what exactly they like about it. I just end up completely unsatisfied.

Meet Me in Paris

Author: Kristin Harmel
Genre: Fiction
Publisher: Gallery Books, 2026
Pages: 368
Rating: Highly Recommend

Synopsis: Julia Glover has brought her twenty-three-year-old daughter, Piper, to Paris for the first time - but they know it will also be their last trip here together. Julia is dying, and as the mother and daughter desperately try to make memories together as the clock ticks down, the world opens up around them. Piper meets a cute French waiter, who might just understand her better than anyone she's ever met, and Julia meets a man at a dive bar and struggles with how to tell him the truth about her future.

Rock star Jackson Quick's glory days are behind him. He had a handful of hit songs thirty years ago, but he hasn't toured in a decade. This week, he'll launch his reunion tour in Paris, the city where it all began. But he wants more out of life than being defined by fame. When he meets a woman who finally sees him for who is as at his core, the ground shifts beneath his feet.

Henry McGee has been writing hit songs for decades - including Jackson Quick's biggest hit, City of Light. But his secret is that every love song he's ever written is for a woman named Celeste, whom he loved a lifetime ago, when they were both teenagers in Paris during World War II. He has spent eighty years believing she died - but when a letter arrives telling him the opposite, he's on the first flight to France. Can he break through the haze of her dementia, using the songs he's written all these years, to remind her of who they once were to each other - and to tell her he came back for her.

Henry's granddaughter, Melanie, has just discovered that her husband of twenty years, Gilles, a French cosmetics executive, is having an affair. When she confronts him, he tearfully apologizes and begs her to forgive him. But can she? And, perhaps even more importantly, does she want to? Or is there a different kind of life out there for her if she chooses to be alone.

These intertwining stories - plus several others - unfold over a few breathtaking spring days, as an unforgettable group of Americans in Paris must find their way to their own versions of happily ever after in the City of Light.

Review: Kristin Harmel was an author of fiction prior to falling into historical fiction. I like her as a fiction author, and I enjoyed my armchair getaway to Paris. Fiction doesn't have to be fluff, and I wish she would have given us more depth. That said, highly recommend.

Kristin Harmel Novels
The Paris Daughter
The Sweetness of Forgetting
The Winemaker's Wife