2 New Christian Fiction Books with Great Characters

by Susan Roberts

Revell  Publishing is a Christian publisher that provides all types of books from Fiction to Historical Fiction to non-fiction.  Their fiction books are often referred to as  'clean'.  Clean reads are stories without graphic violence, explicit sexuality, or strong profanity. They may or may not also have religious content.  Today I have reviews for you of two new books from Revell.

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The Color of Home by Kit Tosello

September 2024; Revell; 978-0800772697
audio, ebook, print (352 pages); Christian fiction

The Color of Home is Kit Tosell’s fiction debut set in the fictional town of Charity Falls, Oregon. 

The two main characters are Daisy and her niece Audrey.  Daisy has lived her entire life in the same town and now that she's gotten older and her husband has Alzheimer's, she decides that it's time to move to assisted living.  This is a huge step and she realizes that she needs help cleaning out her home to put it on the market to sell.  

Her niece Audrey has a job with a well-known interior decorating firm in California.  When Daisy contacts Audrey, she immediately makes plans to take a leave of absence to help her aunt.  Daisy's job is very stressful and she didn't realize how difficult it really was until she got back to the place where she spent her summers when she was growing up and where life was much slower and more relaxed. It also had emotional memories because it's where her beloved father died 13 years earlier in a fire.  She adjusts quickly to being back in town and takes a part-time job at the hardware store while also mentoring a young girl who lost her father.  The longer she's away from the design firm, the more she wonders if she should stay in Oregon and stay out of the rat race of corporate life. There's also a man in town who has gotten her attention and she wonders how far their relationship will go if she stays in the small town.  Is God drawing her to the life that she's meant to live?

The chapters are told alternately by Audrey and by her aunt Daisy so we get two very different views of life in a small town.  I enjoyed both of the main characters plus there were a lot of fantastic secondary characters who were important parts of the story.  It was interesting to see Audrey question her life and where she would find true happiness and to see her gradual change to a woman who was aware of her own strength and willing to make changes to her life to put herself exactly where God wanted her to be.

Buy The Color of Home at Amazon  

The Blooming of Delphinium by Holly Varni

September 2024; Revell; 978-0800744984
audio, ebook, print (320 pages); Christian fiction

Delphinium Hayes owns a flower shop in a small town in Minnesota.  She has the ability to know what a person is like by their smell.  Even though her flower arrangements are beautiful, she is facing the possibility of losing her shop. 

As the novel begins, she finds four elderly men playing poker in her flower refrigerator.  They live at the local assisted living home but the air conditioning wasn't working and they needed a cool place to play cards.  Because one of them is George, her beloved grandmother's best friend she agrees to let them stay.  Soon they are staying longer every day and eating lunch and snacks there while they play cards.  

Several other people from assisted living join them in their daily activities.  They start complaining about the way that they are treated at the home and decide to go on a hunger strike.  A local attorney agrees to help them with their complaints and Elliot, the director of The Gardens Assisted Living Facility is not happy that his residents are spending so much time there and have so many complaints about assisted living. Elliot is a rule follower who believes that order in life should be maintained at all costs.  Delphinium is a free spirit who pretty much lives her life without rules.  Sparks fly between the two of them but are they too different to have a relationship.

For me, the stars of the book were the elderly men and women from the assisted living facility.  They were all quirky and had no filters over what came out of their mouths.  They made me laugh out loud throughout the book. They were all very endearing and it was easy to enjoy them and their banter.  Once they found out that the shop may be foreclosed, they worked hard, in their own ways, to keep it open.

This book was a great look at life in a small town and about people willing to help their neighbors through the bad times.

NOTE:  This is the second book in the Moonberry Lake series but can be read as a standalone with no confusion. If you are interested in book 1, check out my review of On Mooberry Lake.

Buy The Blooming of Delphinium at Amazon

Susan Roberts grew up in Michigan but loves the laid-back life at her home in the Piedmont area of North Carolina where she is three hours from the beach to the east and the mountains in the west.  She reads almost anything but her favorite genres are Southern Fiction and Historical Fiction.   

 

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