Tuesday, June 8, 2010

BOOK REVIEW & CFBA Tour: A Hopeful Heart




This week, the





Christian Fiction Blog Alliance





is introducing





A Hopeful Heart
Bethany House (June 1, 2010)





by
Kim Vogel Sawyer






ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Kim Vogel Sawyer is the author of fifteen novels, including several CBA and ECPA bestsellers. Her books have won the ACFW Book of the Year Award, the Gayle Wilson Award of Excellence, and the Inspirational Readers Choice Award. Kim is active in her church, where she leads women's fellowship and participates in both voice and bell choirs. In her spare time, she enjoys drama, quilting, and calligraphy. Kim and her husband, Don, reside in central Kansas, and have three daughters and six grandchildren.





ABOUT THE BOOK



Dowryless and desperate, Tressa Neill applies to the inaugural class of Wyatt Herdsman School in Barnett, Kansas, in 1888. The school's one-of-a-kind program teaches young women from the East the skills needed to become a rancher--or the wife of one.



Shy and small for her twenty-two years, Tressa is convinced she'll never have what it takes to survive Hattie Wyatt's hands-on instruction in skills such as milking a cow, branding a calf, riding a horse, and cooking up a mess of grub for hungry ranch hands. But what other options does she have?



Abel Samms wants nothing to do with the group of potential brides his neighbor brought to town. He was smitten with an eastern girl once--and he got his heart broken. But there's something about quiet Tressa and her bumbling ways that makes him take notice.



When Tressa's life is endangered, will Abel risk his own life--and his heart--to help this eastern girl?



If you would like to read the first chapter of A Hopeful Heart, go HERE


My Review:

I have always loved a good prairie romance. A HOPEFUL HEART goes beyond good and into great!


A group of eastern girls being taught on the open prairie how to be good prairie wives-- that alone snagged my attention, but once getting into the book you are opened to a world beyond the setting. The characters are real and alive, worming their way into my heart. Tressa, the heroine is a young woman searching for her place in the world and through each circumstance she must learn to stand strong in God. I loved her journey on all counts.

I can think of nothing I did not like about this book. I truly believe it is the best book by this author to date. The setting was vividly described, bringing me right there. The characters danced upon the screen of my imagination with a real life persona and the love story was sweet and complete with a lovely sigh from this reader when the book was closed.

Even the secondary characters were vivid in their portrayal and I hope to someday rejoin a few of them in another book. Please?

A HOPEFUL HEART will definitely be going on my best books list for a long time to come and is highly recommended!!

Thanks the publishers through CFBA for my copy to review. This review is my honest opinion.

7 comments:

  1. This sounds like a great story! And I like the fact that it is different! I've never heard of a school to teach women how to be ranchers wives! lol

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  2. WOW! Teaching women to be rancher's wives. I wonder what that entails. I will have to read the book to find out.
    Thanks Casey for the review. Kim I am looking forward to reading the book.

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  3. @ Sherrinda and Rbooth, this was a GREAT book, different from the norm, but very much in Kim's style which has been compared to Janette Oke (with great reason). I highly recommend this book, it is her best yet!!

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  4. What a great premise for a story!
    Please enter me in the drawing - I would love to read this book!

    edwina[dot]cowgill[at]yahoo[dot]com

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  5. This was a great book, Edwina, and one of my favorites for this year. :)

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  6. Wish I would have chosen this one! Have read some really good reviews on it and am kicking myself for not picking it !

    Thanks for sharing I guess I will wait for it to come out and get it at the Library!

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  7. Oh it was a great book, there were some this month that I was the exact same way.

    It is well worth it Loren to check it out! Awesome book. :)

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