A Wedding Invitation by Alice J. Wisler
Since her return from teaching in a refugee camp located in the Philippines, Samantha has been living a quiet, lonely life working at her mother’s boutique near the capital. A string of encounters ends with her face to face with the student she falsely accused and the man who broke her heart. She has a lot of choices to make.
With a past full of disappointment, a present with loneliness, and a future with question marks, Samantha’s character has many challenges to overcome over the course of the novel. Some of the issues seem to be glossed over in order to focus on the romance, a tangled web in itself.
Speaking of the romance, my feelings towards it were mixed. I spent a rather large portion of the book wondering whether I really wanted the characters to get together. Instead, the majority of my time was spent thinking about whether Samantha and Carson would be good for each other. It intrigued me, but I wasn’t rooting for it to happen.
Although I didn’t know it from reading the official summary, this book is set in 1993 with flashbacks to 1985. The details in the flashbacks are historically accurate and help paint an appropriate picture of the Vietnamese refugee camps, not a surprise since Alice J. Wisler actually did work in such camps during the time period. However, in the 1993 portions of the book, there were not enough things to make the era distinct, other than an offhand reference to Princess Diana.
This book lacks a clear focus. Although Samantha is undeniably the main character, a lot of time is spent on secondary characters. Just enough to get to know the reasoning behind their actions, without the opportunity to feel as if I really knew them. In the end, the forays into the secondary characters’ pasts served only to distract from Samantha’s story.
A Wedding invitation tends to stumble over itself and is a bit awkward. While Samantha’s experience in the refugee camp, as well as the overarching romance perked my interest, it wasn’t enough to endear the book to me.
This book was received for review from Bethany House .
Home Another Way by Christa Parrish
From the back of the book:
Sarah Graham is living life hard and fast — and she is flat broke. When her estranged father dies, she travels to the tiny mountain hamlet of Jonah, New York, to claim her inheritance. Once there, however, she learns that her plans for the future — and her memories of the past — are about to change forever.
Sarah is tough and calloused, with more walls than you can imagine. She’s overly sarcastic and can be kind of annoying. Yet, I still ended up respecting her because she had to make her way on her own with no help from anyone.
This book is written in alternating chapters of first-person viewpoint from Sarah, then a chapter written in third person, that follows a secondary character. Although it took me a few chapters to get used to, the way it’s written ended up helping to round out the secondary characters.
All of the characters are more gritty and real than the majority of those you read about in Christian fiction, and that was something I really appreciated. Some Christian fiction books tend to shy away from difficult topics, but Home Another Way faces them head on.
The ending of Home Another Way*
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