The Christy Award is a "Christian fiction award to recognize novelists and novels of excellence in several genres of Christian fiction." The nominees for this year were announced recently and the winners will be announced July 12. Every year I make it my goal to read all the books that are nominated for the Christy Award. I also give them away!
I will giveaway the books by category while I am reading the books nominated in that category.
To enter to win any/all of these books, please do the following:
1. Post a comment indicating which book/books you would like to be entered for in the featured category.
2. Enter by the date indicated. For this category, please enter by JUNE 17, winners announced on June 18.
3. Respond within 10 days should you receive an email indicating you have won a particular book.
4. To win even more books, share the links to the giveaway...tweet them, status them, email them, whatever! If I get 250 retweets and/or new Facebook likes over the next 6 weeks, I'll give away an extra copy of my top 5 favorites from the list.
5. Come back soon for the next category giveaway!
Today's category is: "Contemporary Series, Sequels, and Novellas" and the books are:
The Amish Midwife by Mindy Starns Clark
Description:
A carved box with two locks of hair, the title to property in Switzerland, and a burning desire to learn about her biological family lead nurse midwife Lexie Jaeger from Oregon to Pennsylvania. There Lexie pledges to help her biological Aunt Melia, a lay midwife who has been charged with manslaughter after an Amish client and her baby die. Lexie always knew she was adopted, and when she finally meets her birth grandmother, she feels she has come home-until secrets begin to unravel...secrets that could tear her birth family apart.
Lexie learns the true meaning of the Pennsylvania Dutch word demut, which means "to let be" as she changes from a woman who wants to control everything to a woman who depends on God.
My Thoughts:
I enjoyed this story, though found it a bit painful to read about her losing her father with the loss of my own dad being so fresh and raw yet for me. I thought Lexie was a bit more pushy about learning of her adopted family than I would have imagined I could be, but since I've never been in that position, it's hard to know. I really liked reading about her role as a midwife, and the eventual respect that grew between her and Marty.
Dancing on Glass by Pamela Binnings Ewen
Description:
In the steamy city of New Orleans in 1974, Amalise Catoir sees Phillip Sharp as a charming, magnetic artist, unlike any man she has known. A young lawyer herself, raised in a small-town Christian home and on the brink of a career with a large firm, she is strong and successful, yet sometimes too trusting and whimsical. Ama's rash decision to marry Phillip proves to be a mistake as he becomes overly possessive, drawing his wife away from family, friends, and her faith. His insidious, dangerous behavior becomes her dark, inescapable secret.In this lawyer's unraveling world, can grace survive Ama's fatal choice? What would you do when prayers seem to go unanswered, faith has slipped away, evil stalks, and you feel yourself forever dancing on shattered glass?
My Thoughts:
This one was a bit scarey...watching the slow but inevitable deception that Amalise experiences. You can see it coming and want to scream at her to get away and protect herself... I definately couldn't put it down, with the constant pages of foreshadowing and hints at what was to come...I had to see if Amalise would be free. I totally enjoyed Amalise's friends and family and was rooting for them to reach her. This book addresses a delicate subject matter, handled with skill.
The Touch by Randall Wallace
Description:
Andrew Jones was once one of the few surgeons in the world to have that rare, God-given ability called The Touch. But after failing to save his young fiancée, Faith, at the scene of a car accident, Jones abandons his gift and shuns the operating room.
Lara Blair owns a Chicago-based biomedical engineering company developing a surgical tool that will duplicate precisely the movement of a surgeon’s hands, reducing or eliminating failed surgical procedures. Lara has pursued the best surgeons in the world to test this surgical tool, and all of them have failed.
As Lara pursues Jones’s skill for her project, Jones’s stubborn resistance cracks, and he begins to open up to her about the wounds that still haunt him. But when Jones discovers the urgency behind Lara’s work, he must choose to move beyond his past. As each is forced to surrender secret fears, they are bonded together through the lives of the people Jones serves and by the healing secret that Faith left behind.
My Thoughts:
I really liked this one! The story was gripping and beautiful. I fell in love with the characters and the writing! In as much as the characters were inammered with art and the beauty of it, this writing was a work of art in this story.
My favorite:
My pick here would be The Touch!
