Friday, June 11, 2010

Hearts Awakening

This weather is pretty miserable for my rheumatoid arthritis. Whenever it's too cold or too wet, my joints ache. I can often feel the rain coming a day or two before it actually hits, sometimes I think I'd make a pretty good meteorologist. My hips and knees have been hurting all week, but this morning I woke up at 3:45 from the excruciating pain, and it's been nagging me since then. I don't often use the word hate, but I really do hate this illness. I'm praying for the rain to let up and the beautiful weather we had at the end of May to return so that I can get back to living my life.

Hearts Awakening by Delia Parr is a very unusual entry in Christian fiction, Ellie Kilmer knows that her dreams of having a husband and raising children of her own will never come true. At thirty-one, with an extremely plain face, she's placed her faith in God that she will find a life that will make her content. Jackson Smith has a proposition that just may fit the bill. He needs a housekeeper and caretaker for his two sons while he cares for the apple orchard on the family island just outside of town, but after just a few days, he realizes that he needs a more permanent position and proposes a marriage of convenience. Jackson is haunted by the scandal of his first wife's death, as well as by the memory of his one true love, and his suspicious nature threatens their business arrangement, but Ellie's strong faith and loving heart just may change both of their hearts. Most romance novels spend plenty of words gushing about the heroine's beauty, and the hero is often head over heels in love from the first glance. Ellie doesn't have that advantage, yet she is a heroine readers will fall in love with from the first page. Fiercely loyal and faithful, she has an beautiful heart. Parr has written a stellar romance that is truly of the heart and raises, through Jackson, the question of what true love really is.

Thank you to Bethany House Publishers for providing me with a copy of this book for review.

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