TLC Book Tours Book Review: Between You and Me.

About Between You and Me

• Hardcover: 368 pages
• Publisher: William Morrow (June 26, 2018)

#1 New York Times bestselling author Susan Wiggs delivers a riveting story that challenges our deepest-held beliefs...

Caught between two worlds, Caleb Stoltz is bound by a deathbed promise to raise his orphaned niece and nephew in Middle Grove, where life revolves around family, farm, faith—and long-held suspicions about outsiders. When disaster strikes, Caleb is thrust into an urban environment of high-tech medicine and the relentless rush of modern life.

Dr. Reese Powell is poised to join the medical dynasty of her wealthy, successful parents. Bold, assertive, and quick-thinking, she lives for the addictive rush of saving lives. When a shocking accident brings Caleb Stoltz into her life, Reese is forced to deal with a situation that challenges everything she thinks she knows—and ultimately emboldens her to question her most powerful beliefs.

Then one impulsive act brings about a clash of cultures in a tug-of-war that plays out in a courtroom, challenging the very nature of justice and reverberating through generations, straining the fragile threads of faith and family.

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Purchase Links

HarperCollins | Amazon | Barnes & Noble

Review: Sometimes there are books that make me go "READ THIS!" This is one of those books for me. These are the reasons why.

1. Susan Wiggs is one of my go to authors when it comes to books I absolutely love.

2. Amish people figure into this story. OMG! I love when non-Christian writers, write about the Amish. This book felt so real and the characters were exactly what I wanted. Also the story is so emotional.  The first three chapters are all about the tears.

3. Relationships between the Amish and English. Even better so that they are romantic relationships. Its wonderful that the relationship between Caleb and Reese is really a slow burn as they are both from two very different worlds.

4. The back story is perfection. As you get to know more about Caleb and how he came to be taking care of his niece and nephew and Reese and her parents. This is another OMG moment. So much drama, of different sorts

5. The surprise twists and turns at the end that leave your mouth gaping and yup, more tears.

6. The Epilogue that was just too beautiful for words.

This book was just the perfect read, full of strong characters and loads of emotion.

Rating: 5 flowers

About Susan Wiggs

Susan Wiggs is the author of many beloved bestsellers, including the popular Lakeshore Chronicles series. She has won many awards for her work, including a RITA from Romance Writers of America. Visit her website at www.SusanWiggs.com.

Connect with Susan on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

TLC Book Tours Book Review: Family Tree

About Family Tree

• Paperback: 400 pages
• Publisher: William Morrow Paperbacks; Reprint edition (January 9, 2018)

From the #1 New York Times bestselling author comes a powerful, emotionally complex story of love, loss, the pain of the past—and the promise of the future.

Sometimes the greatest dream starts with the smallest element. A single cell, joining with another. And then dividing. And just like that, the world changes. Annie Harlow knows how lucky she is. The producer of a popular television cooking show, she loves her handsome husband and the beautiful Los Angeles home they share. And now, she’s pregnant with their first child. But in an instant, her life is shattered. And when Annie awakes from a yearlong coma, she discovers that time isn’t the only thing she’s lost.

Grieving and wounded, Annie retreats to her old family home in Switchback, Vermont, a maple farm generations old. There, surrounded by her free-spirited brother, their divorced mother, and four young nieces and nephews, Annie slowly emerges into a world she left behind years ago: the town where she grew up, the people she knew before, the high-school boyfriend turned judge. And with the discovery of a cookbook her grandmother wrote in the distant past, Annie unearths an age-old mystery that might prove the salvation of the family farm.

Family Tree is the story of one woman’s triumph over betrayal, and how she eventually comes to terms with her past. It is the story of joys unrealized and opportunities regained. Complex, clear-eyed and big-hearted, funny, sad, and wise, it is a novel to cherish and to remember.

Purchase Links

HarperCollins | Amazon | Barnes & Noble

Review: This book has quite the "Wow" factor. In the first few chapters you feel like you might be reading a book about a Food Network type super couple.

An accident changes everything in Annie's life. She spends a year in a coma. As she comes out we see the changes that have come to her life and we get to learn more of her past, along with her relationship with her high school sweetheart, Fletcher.

I've never been a fan of stories that go back and forth from the past to the present, but the way Susan wrote this story, it worked, though I did need more time spent in the future. I felt that the book was more a retelling of Annie and Fletcher's relationship rather than the romance that bloomed again.

The flashback portions of the story give you the important parts of Annie and Fletcher's relationship as well as a bit of how Martin came into Annie's life. I wish there had been a little more about Martin. It was easy to see

Annie is really a multifaceted heroine. She has a love of food and film. I kept wondering about her choices though. She loved cooking for people and she loved her hometown. I often wondered why she didn't start her own restaurant. The other thing that didn't quite make sense to me was that offer she got at the end of the book required her to be in LA. I watch a lot of Food Network, so I found it hard to rationalize them wanting to do the show in California.

This story has more depth and a lot of emotion. Annie really grows as we see her recover and reclaim her life. While she's recovering there are other things changing in her life. Her mother and father, are giving their relationship another try.

This was a beautiful story of second (or maybe third) chances and of starting over.



Rating: 4 flowers

About Susan Wiggs

Susan Wiggs is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of more than fifty novels, including the beloved Lakeshore Chronicles series and her most recent novel, the instant New York Times bestseller Family Tree. Her award-winning books have been translated into two dozen languages. A native of a small town in upstate New York, she now lives with her husband at the water’s edge on an island in Puget Sound, and in good weather can commute to her writers’ group in a twenty-one-foot motorboat. A former teacher and graduate of the University of Texas and Harvard, Susan is also an avid hiker, an amateur photographer, a good skier, and a cautious mountain biker—yet her favorite form of exercise is curling up with a good book.

Find out more about Susan at her website, and connect with her on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

TLC Book Tours Book Review: Starlight On Willow Lake

About Starlight on Willow Lake

Hardcover: 384 pages

Publisher: Mira (August 25, 2015)

Join #1 New York Times bestselling author Susan Wiggs on a journey to a charming Catskills town that feels like home and where a cast of brilliantly drawn characters awaits in a poignant story of reconciliation and the healing power of love.

 Mason Bellamy’s world is fast, loud and decorated with the most extreme risks. Nothing can tempt him to give up his high-rolling Manhattan life and high-maintenance girlfriend—not even family. When he’s called home to upstate Avalon to help his quadriplegic mother in her deepest time of need, he sets his mind on temporary, determined to craft a way to care for her from a distance.

Alice Hayes is supposed to be his best solution. Hiring the gentle-hearted yet struggling caregiver as a live-in nurse gives Alice and her two daughters shelter, his mother companionship and Mason the freedom to escape to his adrenaline-pumped, no-attachments routine. But Alice’s beautiful presence promises to repair Mason’s frayed family ties. And his unstoppable attraction to Alice could lead to the most exhilarating thrill of his life.

“Wiggs’s storytelling is heartwarming… [for] romance and women’s fiction readers of any age.”—Publishers Weekly

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Purchase Links

Amazon | Books-A-Million | Barnes & Noble

About Susan Wiggs

Susan Wiggs is the author of many beloved bestsellers, including the popular Lakeshore Chronicles series. She has won many awards for her work, including a RITA® Award from the Romance Writers of America.

Connect with Susan

Website | Facebook | Twitter

Review: This is book 11 in the Lakeside Chronicles Series. Like Cedar Cove by Debbie Macomber and the Chesapeake Series by Sherryl Woods,  these books are all stand alone novels with characters that interconnect because of the small town setting.

The subject matter of this book is a serious downer. The hero, Mason Bellamy, has lost his father in a skiing accident a year prior and his mother was left a quadriplegic. She's also not the most pleasant person. As you learn more about Alice Bellamy, you understand more of her feelings of anger.

Faith is broken too and she's broke. This wouldn't be so bad if she didn't have two daughters, and one with type 1 diabetes.

Alice requires a new caregiver as a result of an accident that happens while Mason and his siblings are away scattering their father's ashes. Instantly you know there's more to this story, and it becomes even more and more apparent when Faith starts her work.

This is more than just a small town romance, actually there's very little romance to this story at all. It is more a book about healing and finding the courage to move on.  I think if Faith and Mason falling for each other would have been more of a focal point in this book, it would have been perfect, but as it was, their relationship was just a small part of the whole story.

Alice was really the character that you have to love. She's a curmudgeon, and rightly so, because so much has been taken from her. She had so much and lost much more. By the end of the book, she's more accepting and definitely an inspirational character.

The subject matter is far from light and if that's what you are looking for, this book probably won't suit you. For awhile there, I wasn't sure that it would suit me, but I kept on reading and by the time.

 If you are enjoy a book with deep and well developed characters, than give this story a go. It really is worth your time.

Rating: 4 flowers