Happy Friday! Do you have anything fun and/or relaxing planned for this weekend?
One of my favorite ways to relax is to settle in with a good book. My reading goal for 2022 is to average one book a week. So far this year I’ve finished 37 books so I’m well ahead of schedule!
Now that we’re officially in summer, I thought I’d take a look back at the best books I read this spring. While I did read several non-fiction books, my top-five list is all fiction.
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1. Against the Tide by Elizabeth Camden. I’ve read several books by this author and have enjoyed them all. This particular story takes place in Boston in the late 1800s.
2. Tidewater Bride by Laura Frantz. Here’s another favorite author – and another historical fiction book! I’d really gotten away from reading many books in that genre but have gotten back into them lately. Early James Towne colony is the setting for this story. Even though it’s fiction, I like how the author includes actual historical places and people.
3. We Were Kings by Court Stevens. This is considered a YA book, another genre that I don’t read often. However, this mystery drew me in and I was a little surprised by the ending.
4. Provenance by Carla Laureano. Here again, I read this book because I enjoyed previous books by this author. It’s a sweet story of finding redemption and family when you least expect it.
5. The Gem Thief by Sian Ann Bessey. This modern-day story had a good pace and kept me guessing who the “bad guy” was up until the end.
Honorable Mention: Trust Me by Kelly Irvin is a romantic suspense novel that was very good, although I did figure out “who-dun-it” pretty early on in the story. The Letter from Briarton Park by Sarah E. Ladd is a Regency romance and was also an enjoyable read.
Share with me in the comments what you’ve been reading lately!
Related posts:
- The 5 Best Books I Read This Winter
- My Top 10 Influential Books
- Book Review: Wisdom and the Millers by Mildred A. Martin
I do not get much time to read during the school year as I am a teacher and a mother. But, I do like to read in the summer. I am half way through A Lineage of Grace by Francine Rivers. She covers 5 “unlikely woman who changed eternity”: Tamar, Rahab Ruth, Bathsheba, and Mary. It is written true to Biblical history, but as fiction, Francine has added depth to these ladies, and has made me love and respect them even more. I highly recommend it.
That sounds like a great book! I’m going to see if I can get it through my library app or on my Kindle. Thanks for the recommendation!!
I’ve read some good books lately, and some of them have been juvenile books. But I’ve found that the good ones are really good. 🙂
Kira-Kira by Cynthia Kadohata is about a young Japanese girl growing up in South Georgia during the 1960s. It’s interesting to see the racism from a different point of view.
The Night Diary by Veera Hiranandani is about the split of India into India (Hindu) and Pakistan (Muslim) in the 1940s or 1950s. This book tells the story of one family’s travel from the new-Pakistan to India.
Everything Sad is Untrue by Daniel Nayeri is a fictionalized autobiography about this immigrant from Iran after his mother became a Christian. I found the cruelty of children hard to read about, and there are a couple of gory parts. But it’s so good!
Forward Me Back to You by Mitali Perkins. This book tells the story of an adopted child from India, and how he goes back to India as a teenager in the hope of finding his birth mother.
The Paris Dressmaker by Kristy Cambron tells about Paris during World War II from a couple of women’s points of view. This one isn’t a children’ book. 🙂
Daughter of Rome by Tessa Afshar tells the fictionalized story of Priscilla and Aquila in the Bible, and I’m currently reading Jewel of the Nile which is kind of a sequel. I think you’ve read things by this author before.
Something completely different: Neither Complementarian no Egalitarian by Michelle Lee-Barnewall. I’ve never been comfortable about either of these terms, and the author suggests a third position, one that emphasizes unity in the church between men and women instead of the current debates about rights and authority.
Wow! I didn’t realize I had been reading so many books about different cultures!
Okay, I have much to say about your list! 🙂
I started Everything Sad is Untrue, but it didn’t hold my interest right away, so I stopped reading it. Now I’m wondering if I should go back and give it another try.
Kristy Cambron is one of my favorite authors, and I don’t know how I missed this book! Going on my must-read-next list for sure.
Daughter of Rome is already on my list to read soon. And yes, I have read other books by Tessa Afshar before.
And I’m very interested in Neither Complementarian nor Egalitarian so I want to read that, too.
Thanks so much for sharing what you’ve been reading!!