Tag Archives: Southern fiction

First Line Friday — Dysfunction Junction

28 Feb

Robin Pearson is a delight and her books are wonderful! I had the pleasure of meeting her last November at the Reading Rendezvous in Chicago and again at the 2025 Turning A New Page Book Festival in Perry, Georgia. I snagged a copy of Dysfunction Junction at the festival, but neglected to have her sign it. Just another reason to make sure our paths cross again. 😉

Here’s the first line:

“What time is it?” Annabelles’ voice quavered as she studied the shadows huddling under the sliding board in Lincoln Park.

When three women receive an unexpected phone call that leaves them reeling, they have no other choice but to reckon with a lifetime of memories they’ve long tried to bury. Only in facing the past will they find their path forward.

Frances Mae Livingston’s firm grip of her family’s destructive history makes her hold her husband and four children even closer. But she’s losing bits of herself while proving to everybody and her mama that she’s enough. There’s no way she’ll repeat her mama’s mistakes, even if it kills her.

Annabelle McMillan didn’t have trouble kicking the Eastern North Carolina dust off her feet. The tough part was replanting herself in familiar soil. Now she’s blending her old life with her new husband, stepson, and unborn child. And battling old memories of abandonment and new fears of rejection.

Dr. Charlotte Winters has built a career around helping others sort through their emotional baggage. She’s also spent a lifetime refusing to unpack her own. So what if Charlotte doesn’t recall all that her mama did to her and what her daddy didn’t do for her? Her only mission is to help others help themselves…until the women from her past and the man in her future undo her well-sewn life.

At the junction of healed and hurting, broken and whole, and past and present, three women wrestle with their inability to forgive and forget in this riveting Southern family drama about sisterhood from award-winning author Robin W. Pearson.

Robin W. Pearson’s writing sprouts from her Southern upbringing, her belief in Jesus Christ, and her love of her husband, seven children, and their dog, Oscar. Her novels are “rooted in the soul of the story” and include her Christy Award–winning debut, A Long Time Comin’, as well as ’Til I Want No More, Walking in Tall Weeds, and her latest, Dysfunction Junction. Robin has corrected grammar up and down the East Coast in her career as an author and editor and in her calling as a homeschooling mama of many. She loves to share about her faith and her family through her fiction; her blog, Mommy Concentrated; and at conferences such as Breathe, Fiction Readers Summit, and Vision Christian Writers; and with her friends and followers. These people and experiences are the source of all the characters living and breathing in the stories waiting to be told about her belief in Jesus Christ and the experiences at her own kitchen sink.

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Mini-Review — The Gardins of Edin

9 Jan

If you are looking for a book with plenty of Southern-sass, then you are in for a treat with The Gardins of Edin by Rosey Lee. Set in the fictional town of Edin, Georgia, this contemporary novel features four women in the Gardin family — Ruth, Naomi, Martha, and Mary. That’s right! The characters are named for the famous biblical mother-in-law/daughter-in-law and sister duos. While this is not a retelling of Bible stories, the women are definitely inspired by their namesakes and there are plenty of spiritual truths shared. The Gardin family loves fiercely, but they are a messy bunch! Full of real life relationship pitfalls and strengths, Lee delivers a poignant story that also made me laugh out loud.

With its strong characterization, The Gardins of Edin is a wonderful debut from Lee. I look forward to a continuation of the story, A Gardin Wedding, releasing in May 2025.

Recommended.

Audience: Adults.

(I purchased the audiobook from Audible. All opinions expressed are mine alone.)

The four women of the Gardin family live side-by-side in Edin, Georgia, but residing in tight proximity doesn’t mean everything is picture-perfect. Ruth runs the family’s multimillion-dollar peanut business, a legacy of the Gardins’ formerly enslaved ancestors. But tensions have intensified since the death of her husband, Beau, and she feels like an outsider in the very place she wishes to belong. 

Sisters Mary and Martha fuel the family tension. Martha’s unfounded mistrust of Ruth causes her to constantly seek ways to undermine Ruth’s decisions with the business, while Mary, trying to focus on her new restaurant that serves healthy comfort food, is dragged into the family fray by Martha. 

For years, Naomi, the matriarch who raised the sisters after their parents’ death and supported Ruth in her grief, has played peacemaker. But as she decides to take a step back, hidden truths, life-and-death circumstances, and escalating clashes finally force the Gardin women to grapple with what it means to be a family.

A heartwarming Southern story of family and all its many complexities, The Gardins of Edin delivers a thoughtful portrayal of four women trying to hold on to their secrets. Women who just might—if they can only let go—find the peace they seek by holding on to one another.

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Book Club Selection — Indigo Isle

1 Jan

Happy New Year! And happy 2025 book club selections! My book club has some great reading ahead. First up is Indigo Isle by T. I. Lowe. This author of southern fiction will be a participant at the Turning A New Page Book Festival. I am so looking forward to reading the Christy Award-winning novel before I hear her speak. If you are anywhere in the middle Georgia area, make plans to attend on 1/25/25. Or there’s always road trip fun!

Sonny Bates left South Carolina fifteen years ago and never looked back. Now she’s a successful Hollywood location scout who travels the world, finding perfect places for movie shoots. Home is wherever she lands, and between her busy schedule and dealing with her boss’s demands, she has little time to think about the past . . . until her latest gig lands her a stone’s throw from everything she left behind.

Searching off the coast of Charleston for a secluded site to film a key scene, Sonny wanders onto a private barrier island and encounters its reclusive owner, known by locals as the Monster of Indigo Isle. What she finds is a man much more complex than the myth.

Once a successful New York attorney, Hudson Renfrow’s grief has exiled him to his island for several years. He spends his days alone, tending his fields of indigo, then making indigo dye―and he has no interest in serving the intrusive needs of a film company or yielding to Sonny’s determined curiosity. But when a hurricane makes landfall on the Carolina coast, stranding them together, an unlikely friendship forms between the two damaged souls. Soon the gruff exterior Hudson has long hidden behind crumbles―exposing the tender part of him that’s desperate for forgiveness and a second chance.

A story of hanging on and letting go, of redemption and reconciliation, and of a love that heals the deepest wounds, from the author of the breakout Southern fiction bestseller Under the Magnolias.

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Book Review: A Place to Land

9 Nov

My book club chose a favorite author for our October read. Lauren K. Denton’s books have always generated great conversations, but I think the discussion around A Place to Land was our best yet. It received a unanimous thumbs-up from my group.

Violet Figg and her sister Trudy have lived a quiet life in Sugar Bend, Alabama, since a night forty years ago that stole Trudy’s voice and cemented Violet’s role as her sister’s fierce and loyal protector. Now Trudy spends her days making sculptures from found objects and speaking through notes written on scraps of paper, while Violet runs their art shop, monitors bird activity up and down the water, and tries not to think of the one great love she gave up to keep her sister safe.

Eighteen-year-old Maya knows where everyone else belongs, but she’s been searching for her own place since her grandmother died seven years ago. Moving in and out of strangers’ houses has left her exhausted. After seeing a flyer on a gas station window for a place called Sugar Bend, Maya chooses to follow the strange pull she feels and finds herself on the doorstep of an art shop called Two Sisters.

When a boat rises to the surface of Little River in the middle of the night, the present and no-longer-buried past collide, and the future becomes uncertain for Maya, Violet, and Trudy. As history creeps continuously closer to the present and old secrets come to light, the sisters must decide to face the truth of what happened that night forty years ago, or risk losing each other and those they’ve come to love.

Born and raised in Mobile, Alabama, Lauren K. Denton now lives with her husband, two daughters, and one fluffy dog in Homewood, just outside Birmingham. In addition to her fiction, she writes a monthly newspaper column about life, relationships, and how funny (and hard) it is to be a parent. On any given day, she’d rather be at the beach with her family and a stack of books.

My Impressions:

How do family secrets determine relationship dynamics? Can you sacrifice without losing your identity? These questions and more were asked in A Place to Land by Lauren K. Denton. Women’s fiction set in Alabama, this is truly a novel of the South. From the description of the river that runs through the town of Sugar Bend, to the small town feel, to the characters, you know you are in the South from the first page — and that’s a good thing. The story revolves around two 60ish women, Violet and Trudy, who are bound together by more than sisterhood. Their stories and those of supporting characters unfold as Denton spins a tale of lost opportunities, regret, and a glimmer of hope for a different future. I loved all the characters, but especially Violet who gave up so much for her younger sister. Should she have? That’s a question for readers to ponder. My book club talked about that a lot. The underlying mystery that is slowly revealed kept us turning the pages. We were all surprised by the ending, and by the time the book was finished we wanted much more. The author gave us clues to how the characters’ journeys would progress, and we loved putting our own spin on it, finishing with a most happily-ever-after.

I loved A Place to Land and recommend it, especially for book clubs.

Recommended.

Great for Book Clubs.

Audience: Adults.

(I read this book through the Kindle Unlimited program. All opinions expressed are mine alone.)

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If You Liked . . . A Place to Land

31 Oct

Lauren K. Denton never disappoints. Her books always spark great conversation at book club. This month’s selection, A Place to Land, felt different somehow from her other novels. There were magical elements that, in my opinion, raised the literary bar. I highly recommend this book! If you liked it too, here are some more reading recommendations for books that highlight the bonds of sisters.

The Fine Art of Insincerity by Angela Hunt

Three grown Southern sisters have ten marriages between them—and more loom on the horizon—when Ginger, the eldest, wonders if she’s the only one who hasn’t inherited what their family calls “the Grandma Gene”: the tendency to like the casualness of courtship better than the intimacy of marriage. Could it be that her two sisters are fated to serially marry, just like their seven-times wed grandmother, Mrs. Lillian Irene Harper Winslow Goldstein Carey James Bobrinski Gordon George? It takes a “girls only” weekend, closing up Grandma’s treasured beach house for the last time, for the sisters to really unpack their family baggage, examine their relationship DNA, and discover the true legacy their much-marrying grandmother left behind…

Hope Beyond The Waves by Heidi Chiavaroli

Massachusetts, 1993

After making a grievous mistake that will change her life forever, Emily Robertson is sent away to live with her grandmother on Cape Cod. When Emily finds a timeworn photograph buried in a drawer, she realizes her grandmother has concealed a secret even bigger than her own. Will convincing Gram to reveal their family history help Emily make the most important decision of her life or will it prove her parents right—that family scandal is better off buried and forgotten?

Massachusetts, 1916

Atta Schaeffer plans to marry the man of her dreams and whisk her little sister away from their abusive father. But when she is diagnosed with a dreaded malady, Atta is forced into a life of exile, leaving her sister in harm’s way.

On Penikese Island, Atta’s best hope lies with Harry Mayhew, a doctor who seeks a cure for his patients at any cost. But when experiments fail, Atta runs from Harry—and from God. Can she return to her sister before it’s too late? Or will her illness consume both her body and soul?

A testament to faith and love, Hope Beyond the Waves is the raw account of the journey of two generations of women running from desperate situations toward irresistible hope.

Letters from My Sister by Valerie Fraser Luesse

Two Sisters. One Single Event. A Family Changed Forever.

At the turn of the twentieth century, sisters Emmy and Callie Bullock are living a privileged life as the only daughters of a wealthy Alabama cotton farmer when their well-ordered household gets turned upside down by the arrival of Lily McGee. Arrestingly beautiful, Lily quickly–and innocently–draws the wrong kind of attention. Meanwhile, Callie meets a man who offers her the freedom to abandon social constraints and discover her truest self.

After Lily has a baby, Callie witnesses something she was never meant to see–or did she? Her memory is a haze, just an image in her mind of Emmy standing on a darkened riverbank and cradling Lily’s missing baby girl. Only when the sisters are separated does the truth slowly come to light through their letters–including a revelation that will shape the rest of Callie’s life.

Bestselling author Valerie Fraser Luesse weaves a complex and suspenseful tale dripping with intrigue, romance, and Southern charm.

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Top 10 Tuesday — Changing Habits

22 Oct

Happy Tuesday! I considered not participating in today’s TTT — too much thinking required 😉 and I wasn’t sure I had much change in my reading habits over the past years. However, I did think about it and discovered that along with changes in my real life, my reading life followed suit. It’s been 5 years since my husband sold his business to a corporate buyer and he started working for the man. 😉 I was suddenly and gleefully out of a job (change #1). Then two of my children married (change #2) and two grandchildren were born (change #3). My husband went from working 5 days a week to 4 days a week to 3 days a week (big change #4). So here I am with seemingly endless time on my hands, but it has been filled with more travel, more husband together time, and with seeing family a little more often. That means reading slowly shifted in priority. I used to read well over 100 books a year. I am currently 7 books behind in a 75-book Goodreads Challenge. I know, 50 plus books already read this year is way over the national average, but it is certainly a change for me.

All that being said, I really have changed my reading habits. My list details some of those changes and the books that fit them.

For more bloggers’ lists, visit That Artsy Reader Girl.

5 Top Reading Habit Changes in The Last 5 Years

I used to read everywhere and have 3 books going at the same time — one audiobook, one ebook, and one physical book. Now I occasionally read more than one book at a time, but for the most part I read just one.

Current read: A Place to Land by Lauren K. Denton

I used to go on solo road trips to see my daughter play college soccer while her dad stayed home and worked. A lot of my time spent in the car included an audiobook. I also found myself doing chores in longer blocks of time that I passed with an audiobook — not so much any more. I haven’t listened to an audiobook in forever. I have one started that I need to finish.

Audiobook to finish: The Gardins of Eden by Rosey Lee

My choice of books has changed a bit too. My go-to will always remain mystery/suspense, but I find I gravitate to historical fiction more often now.

The last historical fiction book I read: The American Queen by Vanessa Miller

Years ago I chose to read more for pleasure, than have-to (review books).

The last book I read because I wanted to: Something Borrowed by Rachel Scott McDaniel, Allison K. Pittman, and Susie Finkbeiner

I joined another book club in order to read outside my box. This has been so much fun. My small group chooses historical fiction featuring strong (and real) female characters.

The last book we read: Miss Morgan’s Book Brigade by Janet Skeslien Charles

What has changed in your reading life?

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Book Review: The Fabled Earth

7 Oct

Kimberly Brock writes evocative fiction that brings to life not only her characters but the setting as well. In her newest novel, The Fabled Earth, the reader discovers the importance and impact of story. I am so excited that Kimberly will be joining us at the Turning A New Page Book Festival in January 2025 as a featured speaker. Find out about her book below.

Sometimes the truth is found in a folktale.

1932. Cumberland Island off the coast of Southern Georgia is a strange place to encounter the opulence of the Gilded Age, but the last vestiges of the famed philanthropic Carnegie family still take up brief seasonal residence in their grand mansions there. This year’s party at Plum Orchard is a lively group: young men from some of America’s finest families who come to experience the area’s hunting beside a local guide, a beautiful debutante expecting to be engaged by the week’s end, and a promising female artist who believes she has meaningful ties to her wealthy hosts. But when temptations arise and passions flare, an evening of revelry and storytelling goes horribly awry. Lives are both lost and ruined.

1959. Reclusive painter Cleo Woodbine has lived alone for decades on Kingdom Come, a tiny strip of land once occupied by the servants for the great houses on nearby Cumberland. When she is visited by the man who saved her life nearly thirty years earlier, a tempest is unleashed as the stories of the past gather and begin to regain their strength. Frances Flood is a folklorist come to Cumberland Island seeking the source of a legend—and also information about her mother, who was among the guests at a long-ago hunting party. Audrey Howell, briefly a newlywed and now newly widowed, is running a local inn. When she develops an eerie double exposure photograph, some believe she’s raised a ghost—someone who hasn’t been seen since that fateful night in 1932.

Southern mythology and personal reckoning collide in this sweeping story inspired by the little-known history of Cumberland Island when a once-in-a-century storm threatens the natural landscape. Faced with a changing world, two timelines and the perspectives of three women intersect where a folktale meets the truth to reveal what Cumberland Island has hidden all along.

Kimberly Brock is the award-winning author of The Lost Book of Eleanor Dare and The River Witch. She is the founder of Tinderbox Writers Workshop and has served as a guest lecturer for many regional and national writing workshops including at the Pat Conroy Literary Center. She lives near Atlanta with her husband and three children.

Visit her online at kimberlybrockbooks.com.

My Impressions:

Storytelling can be full of the fabulous mixed in with the real. That’s what Kimberly Brock explores in her historical/women’s fiction offering The Fabled Earth. Set among the wild and tamed elements of Cumberland Island, this novel tells the stories of 4 women and the island itself. There are 4 points of view: Cleo, Frances, and Audrey, real life women finding their place among the stories of their lives and Fable the truth behind the happenings of the 1932 events that shaped those women’s landscapes in a variety of ways. The three main characters are navigating cultural changes while finding their footing in a very personal reality. Their modern-day is 1959, a time of change for the country, the South, and Cumberland Island. All the storylines are intricately intertwined, but I have to say, Brock’s timeline of 1932 sets the tone and gives substance to the novel. Does this book sound complex? It is! But Brock handles the many storylines, viewpoints, and themes with ease. It did take me a little bit to get into it, but it wasn’t long before I was invested in each of the women’s lives and the island’s rich history.

If you are looking for an evocative novel rich in history and complex characterization and thematic elements, then The Fabled Earth is for you!

Recommended.

Audience: Adults.

(Thanks to the publisher for an ARC of the novel. All opinions expressed are mine alone.)

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Happy Release Day — Every Moment Since

1 Oct

Happy release day to Marybeth Whalen! Her newest novel, Every Moment Since, is now available. Don’t you just love the cover?! This one immediately hit my TBR list when I found out about it. Check out all the details below.

A small Southern town. An ordinary Saturday night. A little boy disappears without a trace.

Everyone in Wynotte, North Carolina, knows the name Davy Malcor. Knows the video clip of him juggling four balls, “All at the very same time!” Knows the Marty McFly jacket his mother made for his birthday that he wore proudly, and often. But no one knows what happened to him the night he went missing more than twenty years ago.

When the jacket is unexpectedly uncovered, the cold case reopens, and Davy’s family is thrust into yet another media storm. But at the heart of the story are four people forever changed by one single night: Thaddeus Malcor, Davy’s older brother, created the life of his dreams by writing a bestselling memoir about his family’s experience and is enjoying success and notoriety as a result, even if the memoir doesn’t quite reveal the whole story. Tabitha Malcor, his mother, is divorced and living alone, advocating for victims’ rights and faithfully cataloging her regrets each week, never including her biggest regret of all. Anissa Weaver was just a kid herself when Davy went missing, and her connection to him is one she cannot reveal as she serves as the Malcor family’s Public Information Officer. And, long suspected in Davy’s disappearance, Gordon Swift has kept his head down and scraped together a decent life. But the new attention to the case makes it impossible to hide from the public, and the past.

With hauntingly vivid prose, Marybeth Mayhew Whalen peels back the curtain on the inner turmoil of those who were left behind in the small Southern community as they pick up the pieces that remain and press forward into the light to find hope and healing.

Marybeth Mayhew Whalen is the author of Every Moment Since and 9 previous novels. Marybeth received a BA in English with a concentration in Writing and Editing from NC State University a long time ago and has been writing ever since. She is the co-founder of The Book Tide, an online community of readers where “a rising tide raises all books.” Marybeth and her husband Curt are the parents of six kids who are now all in various stages of adulting. A native of Charlotte, NC, Marybeth now calls Sunset Beach, NC home.

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Happy Release Day — The Fabled Earth

1 Oct

It’s release day for The Fabled Earth by Kimberly Brock! Brock’s latest book set on Cumberland Island is southern fiction–goodness. Interesting characters, a special setting, and stories fill the pages of this book. Find out all about it below.

Sometimes the truth is found in a folktale.

1932. Cumberland Island off the coast of Southern Georgia is a strange place to encounter the opulence of the Gilded Age, but the last vestiges of the famed philanthropic Carnegie family still take up brief seasonal residence in their grand mansions there. This year’s party at Plum Orchard is a lively group: young men from some of America’s finest families who come to experience the area’s hunting beside a local guide, a beautiful debutante expecting to be engaged by the week’s end, and a promising female artist who believes she has meaningful ties to her wealthy hosts. But when temptations arise and passions flare, an evening of revelry and storytelling goes horribly awry. Lives are both lost and ruined.

1959. Reclusive painter Cleo Woodbine has lived alone for decades on Kingdom Come, a tiny strip of land once occupied by the servants for the great houses on nearby Cumberland. When she is visited by the man who saved her life nearly thirty years earlier, a tempest is unleashed as the stories of the past gather and begin to regain their strength. Frances Flood is a folklorist come to Cumberland Island seeking the source of a legend—and also information about her mother, who was among the guests at a long-ago hunting party. Audrey Howell, briefly a newlywed and now newly widowed, is running a local inn. When she develops an eerie double exposure photograph, some believe she’s raised a ghost—someone who hasn’t been seen since that fateful night in 1932.

Southern mythology and personal reckoning collide in this sweeping story inspired by the little-known history of Cumberland Island when a once-in-a-century storm threatens the natural landscape. Faced with a changing world, two timelines and the perspectives of three women intersect where a folktale meets the truth to reveal what Cumberland Island has hidden all along.

Kimberly Brock is the award-winning author of The Lost Book of Eleanor Dare and The River Witch. She is the founder of Tinderbox Writers Workshop and has served as a guest lecturer for many regional and national writing workshops including at the Pat Conroy Literary Center. She lives near Atlanta with her husband and three children.

Visit her online at kimberlybrockbooks.com.

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October Book Club Pick — A Place to Land

1 Oct

This month’s book club pick is A Place to Land by Lauren K. Denton. Denton is a favorite for Southern and women’s fiction. We look forward to getting to know the people living in Sugar Bend, Alabama!

Violet Figg and her sister Trudy have lived a quiet life in Sugar Bend, Alabama, since a night forty years ago that stole Trudy’s voice and cemented Violet’s role as her sister’s fierce and loyal protector. Now Trudy spends her days making sculptures from found objects and speaking through notes written on scraps of paper, while Violet runs their art shop, monitors bird activity up and down the water, and tries not to think of the one great love she gave up to keep her sister safe.

Eighteen-year-old Maya knows where everyone else belongs, but she’s been searching for her own place since her grandmother died seven years ago. Moving in and out of strangers’ houses has left her exhausted. After seeing a flyer on a gas station window for a place called Sugar Bend, Maya chooses to follow the strange pull she feels and finds herself on the doorstep of an art shop called Two Sisters.

When a boat rises to the surface of Little River in the middle of the night, the present and no-longer-buried past collide, and the future becomes uncertain for Maya, Violet, and Trudy. As history creeps continuously closer to the present and old secrets come to light, the sisters must decide to face the truth of what happened that night forty years ago, or risk losing each other and those they’ve come to love.

Born and raised in Mobile, Alabama, Lauren K. Denton now lives with her husband, two daughters, and one fluffy dog in Homewood, just outside Birmingham. In addition to her fiction, she writes a monthly newspaper column about life, relationships, and how funny (and hard) it is to be a parent. On any given day, she’d rather be at the beach with her family and a stack of books.

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