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And here are five more short reviews of books I read last year! Do any of them sound like books you would like to read?

I read this trilogy last year because they are my husband’s favorite books and he’s wanted me to read them for a long time. They are pretty hefty books, so it was quite a project!

I’ll go ahead and say this was my least favorite of the three books. The mystery and most of the subject matter were interesting, and Alcorn is a decent writer, but I felt that he tried to cover too many topics in one book and that some of it was a bit too preachy. My favorite parts by far were the Heaven scenes — he’s clearly put a lot of thought and study into what Heaven is and it was beautiful to imagine what it might be like to be there one day.

I got this from the library on a whim after seeing an ad for it come up on my Instagram because I was curious (incidentally, I ended up getting it right before Covid lockdowns, so I had it for a long time). It’s a bit of a mixed bag, but long story short I don’t really recommend it.

Some of the stories were inspiring, yes, while some weren’t as much. I ended up wishing I could read a whole book about the people who I admired (and I think some of them have their own books, so I should probably look up some of those). But ultimately, I found Pratt’s writing and journalism wanting, and more importantly the definition of forgiveness she presents is less than satisfactory. She seems to see forgiveness as simply letting go of harboring anger or bitterness towards whoever harmed you (which is healthy and an important part of forgiveness, to be sure) rather than actively loving your enemy. As a Christian, forgiveness for me is completely rooted in the character of Christ and what he has done for us, as well as His command that we actually wish our enemies well, so the fact that this book was unwilling to “go there” was disappointing for me and caused it to fall very flat.

A friend gave me this book when I was pregnant with April, but I took a long time to get around to reading it. I liked it, but really wished I would have read it sooner! As it was, she was pretty much past the stage addressed in the book by the time I got to it.

While I’d heard about these techniques before, the book delved into them more in-depth. April was a really rough sleeper, and I can’t help wondering if some of these things would have helped her. I’m definitely going to skim through to refresh my memory when this new baby is born and see if it helps! Maybe we can have a few less sleepless nights…

I borrowed this because my mom and brothers were reading it for school and they thought I would enjoy it. I didn’t realize at the time that it was written by the author of The Sign of the Beaver, which I read years ago and really liked.

I enjoyed it. It was an easy read, and I think it’s always nice to read something about Jesus from a different perspective than the one we’re used to. While Jesus Himself isn’t present in the story very much, His influence is immense. I found the ending especially powerful!

So I technically read this one for work — I was doing the audiobook of it. But that didn’t stop me from enjoying it! I have done several of Angela’s books for audio (including the books before and after this in the Miss Main Street series, and all of them are really good reads.

This one, like the others in the series, is sweet and clean while still being interesting and not without a hint of danger and drama. The characters are charming and it almost makes me want to start my own small town Main Street business!

I’ll be back next week with five more book reviews! Thank you for taking the time to delve a little bit into my bookish adventures with me!