Reviewed by Anne-Marie Reynolds for Readers' Favorite

Just Going by Jianna Higgins is Lily's story. Lily is a 15-year-old girl from a privileged background who gets caught shoplifting cheap underwear. The judge sees through her tough demeanour and awards her 50 hours community service in Sorrento Retirement Home. Not looking forward to it, Lily finds that all of a sudden, she has another chance at life. Coming from a family where her mother wishes she was a boy and has no time for her, and a father whom she never sees, Lily is uncertain how to deal with the sudden influx of attention she gets from people who seem to like her. She makes friends with Alice, who is moving into the retirement home the same day Lily starts. She meets Karen, Alice's mother, and finds in her the mother she never had. She meets Cole, a teenage boy sentenced to community service for breaking a window, although he was having an epileptic seizure at the time and couldn't control himself. She is faced with bullying, something she is used to, but it is here at Sorrento that she learns to deal with life, with bullies and with love. It is through Sorrento that she learns to like her father again and get to know him properly. Could life get any better?

Just Going by Jianna Higgins is a wonderfully told story with several life messages. It's about bullying, it's about learning to love, not just those around you but yourself as well. It's about looking at the hand life dealt you and learning to play it the right way. I was hooked from page one and didn't stop reading until I had taken in every word. It's a really well-written book, in easy to understand language and with a great storyline. I am looking forward to reading other books by the same author, including the other stories in the series.

Reviewed by Jack Magnus for Readers' Favorite

Nirmala: The Mud Blossom is realistic fiction written by Fiza Pathan, set in the reclamation area of Mumbai, India. When the reader first meets Nirmala, she's being beaten with a belt by her mother for reading a library copy of a Dickens novel, when she should have been washing dishes. Nirmala is the oldest child in the family, and her parents had placed her in a dustbin when she was a baby. A group of NGO workers discovered the baby and returned her to her family, who thereupon bestowed on her the nickname of Mud Blossom. Nirmala cleans, cooks and tutors her younger brothers, and she dreams of the future when she'll become a doctor. She's a good student, especially in mathematics, even if her fellow students and teachers make it obvious that her dirty clothes and unwashed state are offensive.

Fiza Pathan's realistic novel, Nirmala: The Mud Blossom is a heart-wrenching and powerful indictment of the treatment of women in India. While I've read countless articles and reports about the wife-burning and other abusive practices, this novel brought it home to me as never before, and I was in tears as I finished Nirmala's story. Pathan's writing is starkly beautiful as we watch the young girl search for trinkets and treasures in the waste and share her finds with the poorer children. Any justifications for such a disparity in treatment based on gender sound hollow at best, and the reader cannot help but share Nirmala's dismay at the change in her placid and kind husband when she cannot produce a male heir. Nirmala: The Mud Blossom is painful to read, but it carries a stunning and a essential message. It's most highly recommended.

Reviewed by Natasha Jackson for Readers' Favorite

Three Rules is the story of Hope Wellman who suffered abuse at the hands of her stepfather’s brother Lucas. At the story opens, Hope is attending the funeral of her abuser and she slowly unravels the story of how she came to be a Wellman and the horrors she had to endure. Hope wants to put the past behind her, but she learns it is not as simple as wishing it so, and struggles to move past her current fear and inner pain. Since the body of Lucas was never recovered, moving forward is truly difficult due to the constant fear that he will return. Marie Drake captures the fear, anxiety and desperation fantastically, allowing us to experience Hope’s past pain and her current anxiety and torment along with her.

Three Rules is more than a melancholy story about the recovery of an abuse victim. It is a mystery and a drama and a work of incredible strength. There is something strange going on with her stepfather Luther, which is causing tension between Hope and her best friend Joey, whom she also happens to be in love with, and that is where things really start to unfold. Nothing is as it appears to be and Marie Drake presents these details beautifully. She never makes the connections obvious, but the reader can always see how the mistakes could have been made. Hope, although fragile, is a survivor and that makes all the dysfunction and horror in this story bearable. Where most would have been broken, Hope is fractured but willing to be whole again, giving Three Rules the glimmer of hope running through almost every page. The three rules Hope reveals at the end are phenomenal, with that ingrained element of truth valid for so many different aspects of life.

Reviewed by Natasha Jackson for Readers' Favorite

Wyatt and Cassidy have been best friends since…forever. Their college careers are over and real life is set to begin, whether or not they are prepared. Cassidy plans to spend the summer with her boyfriend and his family, while Wyatt plans to spend the summer drinking beer and enjoying a few bikini clad hotties. But two pieces of devastating news change their plans — and their feelings — in one night. Catching Cassidy is your classic friends to lovers story, but with depth and grit. Melissa Foster does a great job of showing how hard Wyatt and Cassidy fight their growing feelings to protect their most important relationship, their friendship. But when tragedy strikes, it is difficult to justify not going after what you want. The constant struggle as these friends adjust to their new found romantic feelings is what drives this story and makes it so real.

I really enjoyed reading as Cassidy struggled to reconcile her feelings with the playboy she knows Wyatt to be. After finding out her boyfriend was unfaithful, it is easy to see why she’d have a hard time believing that Wyatt’s feelings are nothing more than convenience and grief. Catching Cassidy is a story that catches you off guard. At the beginning, you think it will be a typical new adult read with partying college kids looking for a good time, but I loved the way Melissa Foster threw things at both Wyatt and Cassidy that forced them to grow up quickly. Between running the bar, new romantic feelings, and crippling grief, it’s a wonder Wyatt and Cassidy were ever able to find their way to the light. Melissa Foster has proven again that she is a fantastic storyteller, excelling at making seemingly simple stories complex and heartfelt.

Reviewed by Kayti Nika Raet for Readers' Favorite

The Man I Love by Suanne Laqueur is a beautiful romance that explores love, sexuality, and the blossoming of a new relationship, as well as the trauma and anguish in the wake of a school shooting. College freshman Erik Fiskare is drawn into the world of theater where he helps craft the backdrop for the dancers taking center stage. He's drawn into a romance with Daisy Bianco, a beautiful, accomplished dancer, and their love blossoms. It's something that seems as if it will last a lifetime, but when a fellow dancer and student brings a gun into a theater, their lives are forever changed. With some friends dead and others gravely injured, Daisy and Erik try their best not to let the trauma affect their relationship, but in the end a shocking act of betrayal threatens to tear it apart. As the years pass, Erik must battle the demons that have haunted him since the shooting, and learn that he must tackle them head on instead of avoiding them if he ever hopes for any sort of reconciliation.

The Man I Love by Suanne Laqueur joins the handful of truly spectacular books I've read this year. The writing is gorgeous, each passage has a sort of rhythm that flows beautifully, drawing you deeper and deeper into Daisy and Erik's story. I loved how, though it was a romance, the readers weren't trapped in the vacuum of their relationship. We got to see and learn about their friends and families, and how their presence influenced them. It made for a richer, meatier story, and I'm thoroughly satisfied. When I first picked up The Man I Love, I hadn't read the blurb or any of the reviews, even though I'd heard a lot of good things about it. It made each scene and moment new, fresh, and shocking, and made for the perfect reading experience. I can't recommend this book highly enough!

Reviewed by Jack Magnus for Readers' Favorite

Freshman Mom is a contemporary novel written by Karen Gorback. Meredith Lieberman's cozy and sheltered life has ground to a halt. She's finally divorced her husband Joel, who had been spending all his spare time at his desert apartment, and her children are growing up. She decides it's time for her to fulfill her long-deferred dream of going to college to become a scientist. When she brings up her plans with her family, she hears a chorus of objections. Her mother thinks she's had that chance and should find a job instead. Her kids wonder aloud if she should be taking hormones for her condition. Meredith shrugs off the negativity and enrolls in Point Vista Community College. She had expected raised eyebrows and polite laughter when she presented her middle-aged self at the admission counselor's office and was thrilled when her plans were met with acceptance and admiration. It wouldn't be easy, but Meredith's plans were coming together.

Karen Gorback's contemporary fiction novel, Freshman Mom, is a feel-good story that works. Meredith has given herself a second chance to live her dreams, and it's just grand watching as her world expands. Sure, there are many pitfalls and life will get in the way, but somehow she keeps up with her roles as a daughter, a single mother, and a budding scientist. There's also some fabulous food floating around the pages of Freshman Mom so readers may find themselves a bit hungry at the lavish descriptions of fancy buffets: hot pastrami, knishes and kugels; warm cinnamon buns dripping with icing and washed down with vanilla lattes. Add in a traditional Jewish wedding, a women's lingerie party, and an intriguing male friend and you get magic, or, at least Gorback did when she penned Freshman Mom, a heart-warming and enjoyable tale of dreams that can come true.

Reviewed by Bil Howard for Readers' Favorite

When things come crashing down on Myra Benning’s idyllic life in Home Fires, she has to reach deep inside to find the strength to continue. Judith Kirscht tells the story of how the awkward girl who grew up on the Minnesota Prairie faces a life and family that has fallen apart. Having discovered her husband’s infidelity, she decides that she will stick it out until her oldest son has gone on to college and her daughter is adjusting better to school. Things take a turn when her husband carries things into deeper issues and she has some difficult decisions to make. While facing down the Benning family’s string of issues that have been passed down from father to sons, she refuses to turn a blind eye and faces the situation head on. Though she takes the hard road, it is the beginning of healing, but will it be enough to get her life back on track again?

Judith Kirscht has brilliantly chronicled the deep emotions and struggles that go along with infidelity and the way it ruins families in Home Fires. As she develops the emotions of the characters and unravels the plot, the added touch of her “venting” comic strip provides a unique twist to the telling of the story. I found myself deeply wrapped up in the emotions and struggles and had a tendency to wander off and explore issues from my own experience. Honest, real and profound, Home Fires will challenge you on a very deep level and open your heart on another.

Reviewed by Rich Follett for Readers' Favorite

The Way Back: A Soldier’s Journey by S.K. Carnes tells the story of John Chapman, a World War I veteran with PTSD and a poet’s soul. He finds work as a farmhand with a dairy farming family who, in their own stalwart, beholden-to-no-one way, help him find the ‘way back’ to wellness and a happy life. The narrative is a kind of historical/poetic frame story, weaving together the lives of three generations of characters through the central prism of Chapman’s journal, found in a barn being torn down in present day Wisconsin and lovingly shared by the author as a tribute to Chapman.

The Way Back: A Soldier's Journey alternately features lush and lyrical narration, Chapman’s poems (copied from his journal), carefully researched historical and cultural references from World War I through the Great Depression and the dawning of World War II, and colloquial Wisconsin dialogue that is as heartwarming and educational as it is funny in that particularly wry Midwestern way that can only be depicted accurately by a native. S.K. Carnes is a gifted writer at the top of her game, capturing the images and episodes of an era and a heartland lifestyle that is rapidly vanishing from the American consciousness with a clarity and poetic vision that render the narrative unique and compelling. In an early glimpse of Chapman, Carnes describes her quiet hero as having “Muckelty-dun eyes rimmed in blue ... eyes of that color could steal your heart away.” Prose like that does not come along every day!

The Way Back: A Soldier’s Journey has something to please any reader - romance, history, adventure, drama, poetry, a quietly epic feel, a magnificently rendered landscape, and eclectic characters unlike any of the ‘ho-hum’ heroes of lesser fiction. Having once entered John Chapman’s world, readers will want to linger, holding close one of the most pure-of-heart and earnestly crafted narratives in recent memory.

Reviewed by Natasha Jackson for Readers' Favorite

Where Petals Fall is a beautifully written mystery that follows Junie Olson on an emotional journey back to her home town of Gettysburg. When we first meet Junie, it seems as though her life is quintessentially perfect. She has a great husband, an adorable daughter and the achievement of a lifelong career goal, her beloved bakery. But when her little girl, Sarah, stops talking and seems to regress, it starts to affect her seemingly perfect marriage. To make matters worse, Junie goes home after the death of her father, which brings forth memories of the disappearance of her friend Ellen, which she has never gotten over. Melissa Foster has expertly penned this emotional story of the layers that make up human relationships. Rarely are relationships or people what they seem and this intricately woven tale highlights that truth.

It takes a moment to really begin to understand Junie’s motivations because her life unravels so spectacularly all at once. By the time she’d found her bearings, I was totally hooked on the story. In Where Petals Fall, the death of Junie’s father forces her to acknowledge that maybe he wasn’t the man she assumed he was, and that perhaps there are other reasons for her husband’s emotional distance. The way in which Melissa Foster weaves in the story of Ellen’s disappearance is done perfectly, particularly in showing just how much one little girl’s absence impacts so many people’s lives today. Between the secrets, hidden emotions, lies and the mystery, Foster doesn’t judge or preach but rather presents problems and forces us all to reach our own answers to these moral dilemmas.

Reviewed by Brenda Casto for Readers' Favorite

"A Christmas of Grace" is the story of eleven year old Grace Gillian and her almost six year old brother Henry James. For the Gillian children life had never really been stable. Because of their alcoholic mother, Grace had always been the one to make sure that her little brother always had something to eat. When Grace overhears their landlord telling their mother that they have to vacate the trailer they have been living in within two days, Grace is unsure what they will do, but when she wakes up and learns that her mother has abandoned her she realizes it is up to her to take care of her brother. Since it is Christmas break the only plan she can come up with is for them to stay at the public library. Her greatest fear is that they might be found out and put into the foster care system, but what actually happens when their secret is discovered will change their lives forever.

Dr. Karen Hutchins Pirnot tells a story about two children that seems so realistic that it brought tears to my eyes on several occasions. I could easily imagine that this story could honestly happen in the way that it did! Though Grace is only twelve she seems so much more mature, which is often the case whenever a child finds itself placed in the role of the caregiver to a sibling. Henry James was such a sweet boy, but often exhibited anxiety, because he was never sure what might happen. He really seemed to blossom though once they were in the library, his hunger for learning to read was so touching! Both children were very savvy at coming up with ways to survive for another day. The relationship between the siblings was touching, and really shows what it means to be family. In addition to the author's very realistic portrayal of how alcoholism can affect families, she also touches on several other relevant topics such as race relations, and how children can often tease others that are less fortunate than they are. A touching story that deals with a tough subject that leaves the reader feeling hopeful, and thinking about the characters long after the final page is read! Although this story takes place during Christmas, it would be a great read anytime of the year, as it is filled with several valuable life lessons that would be beneficial for children and adults alike.