I didn’t read much Nancy Drew when I was a kid so it has been fun to read through the books as an adult. Right now, I am on the original books, which were published in the 1930s, with revisions made later.
I have read some of the books in order but have also been jumping around. I already knew that Nancy’s boyfriend was Ned Nickerson but he wasn’t in the first six books. He was in later books I had read, though. When I recently read The Clue In The Diary I found out that it was the book where he first appeared.
His appearance was one of the reasons the book is now one of my favorites, but also because the mystery held up well even all these years later.
Ned’s introduction in the book is so cute. It is clear from the start that he is taken with Nancy and hopes to become more than friends. She, of course, is also very smitten, but does her best to pretend she isn’t. What interests her right away is how he becomes interested in the same mystery she is interested in.
That mystery involves a fire at a house that she and her friends, Bess Marvin and George Fayne stumbled upon while driving home from a carnival. At that carnival they met a little girl and her mother and felt both of them looked malnourished and poor. They are talking and worrying about the little girl when they see the fire at a large mansion on the hill.
They pull over to see if they can help. Nancy runs toward the house and tells Bess and George to find a nearby house where they can call the local fire department.
Nancy yells to see if anyone is in the house but there is no answer. She hopes that no one is inside and when she runs toward the back of the house, she sees the shadowed figure of a man in the bushes, but he disappears before she can speak to him. She also finds a journal lying in the driveway and she thinks it might be a clue. The journal is written in Swedish though so she can’t read it.
The fire department arrives and begins putting out the fire and Nancy strikes up a conversation with a neighbor who says the house has been shut up all summer and she doesn’t think anyone is inside. She isn’t too thrilled with the neighbors either. Their names are Raybolt and they aren’t very nice, the neighbor says.
When Nancy goes back to her car she finds a young man climbing into it and moving it. She thinks he’s stealing it, but it turns out he’s actually just moving it out of danger.
“The young man pulled as close to the edge of the drive as possible. He was about nineteen, Nancy decided, surveying him critically. His hair was dark and slightly curly, his eyes whimsical and friendly. He wore a college fraternity pin.”
Nancy is suspicious of him but later he begins directing traffic to help people get around the fire and her mind is changed. During the rush to get away from the fire, another car rearended her and she pulls off the road to inspect it. The young man pulls off too.
That’s when he introduces himself as Ned Nickerson. As the book goes on there will be more chance meetings and some that aren’t by chance as Ned makes it a point to visit Nancy and help her with finding out what happened at the fire.
One reason Nancy wants to find out what happened at the fire is because of the suspicious man who was outside and because Mrs. Raybolt later says her husband was inside and is dead. Nancy isn’t so sure if this is true or not.
Nancy also learns that the husband of the woman with the little girl was the man sneaking around behind the burning house. Could he have set the fire and caused the death of Mr. Raybolt? If so, why?
As I said above, I enjoyed this one. I wasn’t as pulled in by the cover for some reason so I, for some silly reason, had it in my head I wouldn’t like it. I did, though. I’d put it right up there with The Clue of the Whistling Bagpipes, which was my favorite book of the original Nancy Drew’s before I read this one.
I loved the romance part of it. It was subtle and sweet.
Here are some of the cute romance parts:
“After Ned had hung up, Nancy fairly danced back into the bedroom. He sent one slipper flying toward the bed, and the other into the far corner of the room. The young sleuth attempted to convince herself that her jubilant spirits were the result of Ned’s discovery. The ring might be a clue to the identity of the person who had set the Raybolt house on fire. Bess and George, she knew, would have interpreted her reaction very differently!”
“The suggestion was not displeasing to Ned, for he had mentioned the show merely as an excuse to spend the evening with Nancy.”
I know I talk a lot on here about Agatha Christie, but I actually have not yet read a ton of her books. Quite a few, but not a ton.
Most of the Agatha Christie books I have read have been either Poirot or Miss Marple mysteries. I decided to read The Pale Horse, which is not about either of those sleuths when the Agatha Christie official website suggested it a few months back as one of the challenges for their 2024 reading challenge. I have not kept up on that challenge this year but might try for the remainder of the year.
This month they are suggesting Come, Tell Me How You Live, which is a memoir of Agatha’s travels with her husband Archie. This is perfect timing because I have been watching Travels with Agatha Christie with Sir David Suchet and though he isn’t talking about this book in the show, it would still tie into her traveling. The book he actually mentions would have focused on her trip with her husband Archie and this book was written after she remarried years later. It’s actually listed under Agatha Christie Mallowan. I will probably have to order it new or through Thriftbooks, but I think it would be a fun read.
Anyhow, on to The Pale Horse.
I didn’t actually read the description of this book before I started it but as I was getting into it I saw a review of it and became a little nervous. The review mentioned that it deals with the occult and seances, etc., and that is just not my thing. I decided to plow forward, though, and in the end the book did mention those topics but — without giving too much away — that is not where the story landed, shall we say.
The story is written in both third and first person, which threw me off a bit.
We start with a man named Mark Easterbrook trying to write a mystery and switch to an actual mystery when a dying woman asks for a priest to come so she can tell him something before she dies. We don’t know what she tells him, but we know that he is murdered shorty before she does tell him.
Eventually we are led back to the man we met in the first chapter and he finds himself trying to figure out why the priest was murdered and what three creepy women living together in an old inn called The Pale Horse, might have to do with his murder and the mysterious deaths of several others in the community.
When the priest died, he had a list of last names in his shoe and the police are eventually joined by Easterbrook to find out who the people on the list are or were. Sadly, some of them are in the past tense and Easterbrook is worried that if he doesn’t hurry up and figure out what is going on, more of them will be in the same tense.
One of Mark’s friends is a mystery writer, Mrs. Oliver, and she is friends, sort of, with the creepy women but she doesn’t enjoy the way they talk about occult and seances, etc. In this scene I am Mrs. Oliver:
Thyrza shot her a quick glance.
“Yes, it is in a way.” She turned to Mrs. Oliver. “You should write one of your books about a murder by black magic. I can give you a lot of dope about it.”
Mrs. Oliver blinked and looked embarrassed.
“I only write very plain murders,” she said apologetically
Her tone was of one who says, “I only do plain cooking.”
“Just about people who want other people out of the way and try to be clever about it,” she added.
I wasn’t sure where the book was going part of the time and that made me a bit nervous and I got even more nervous when Mark and a new friend of his decided they would set up the people they thought might be involved in the murders. I was also caught up in it all before that but was biting my nails (literally) once the plot moved to entrapment.
I’ve mentioned before that one thing I am not a fan of when it comes to Agatha is how she doesn’t add a lot of description of surroundings or characters. I don’t like a ton of description in my books but a little more than what she offers sometimes would be nice. Her lack of description was not an issue for me in this book, which felt like a more well-rounded novel to me than some of the ones from the series.
A description example I don’t remember reading much in other of her novels I have read (which remember is very few):
The vicarage sitting room was big and shabby. It was much shaded by a gargantuan Victorian shrubbery that no one seemed to have had the energy to curb. But the dimness was not gloomy for some peculiar reason. It was, on the contrary, restful. All the large shabby charis bore the impress of resting bodies in them over the years. A fat clock on the chimneypiece ticked with a heavy, comfortable regularity. Here there would always be time to talk, to say what you wanted to say, to relax from the cares brought about by the bright day outside.”
A couple of other quotes I enjoyed from the book:
“My husband’s a very good man,” she said. “Besides being the vicar, I mean. And that makes things difficult sometimes. Good people, you see, don’t really understand evil.” She paused and then said with a kind of brisk efficiency. “I think it had better be me.”
“People are so proud of wickedness. Odd, isn’t it, that people who are good are never proud of it? That’s where Christian humility comes in, I suppose. They don’t even know they are good.”
I considered Hermia disapassionately across the table. So handsome, so mature, so intellectual, so well read! And so — how could one put it? So — yes, so damnably dull!”
“Yes,” I said. “The supernatural seems supernatural. But the science of tomorrow is the supernatural of today.”
Have you read this one? What did you think?
Lisa R. Howeler is a blogger, homeschool mom, and writes cozy mysteries.
You can find her Gladwynn Grant Mystery series HERE.
Mildred Wirt (later adding Benson to her names) was the original Carolyn Keene, who wrote 28 of the first 30 Nancy Drew books. Mildred also wrote other books for other companies under her own name, including the Penny Parker Mysteries.
She once called Penny more Nancy Drew than Nancy Drew and after reading the eighth book in the series, The Wishing Well, I have to agree with that statement, especially the Nancy Drew that Harriet Adams created when she rewrote Mildred’s books years later.
I didn’t actually research what the first book in the series was before reading this one, my first Mildred book other than Nancy Drew. I just snatched it up to try and I ended up really enjoying it.
Teenager Penny Parker is rebellious, snappy, smart, bold, yet also cares about people. She might be even a bit more pushy than Nancy and she’s certainly more mouthy. In this book she pulls her friend Louise into her investigations and shenanigans.
According to Wikipedia, “Penny is a high school student turned sleuth who also sporadically works as a reporter for her father’s newspaper, The Riverview Star. . ..On her cases she is sometimes aided by her close friend, brunette Louise Sidell, and occasionally Jerry Livingston or Salt Sommers who are, respectively, a reporter and photographer for her father’s paper.”
In The Wishing Well, Penny is pulled into the mystery of a boulder with “odd” writing on it that appears in a farmer’s field, as well as the mystery of a wishing well on the property of a wealthy woman, Mrs. Marborough, who recently moved back into her family’s old mansion.
Tied into it all are two foster children who are living at a campground with their foster parents and who become the focus of a blackmail plot.
Here is a quick description from Project Gutenberg, where I found the book available to download for free:
“The Wishing Well” by Mildred A. Wirt is a novel written in the early 20th century. The story follows Penny Parker, an enterprising and spirited high school girl, as she embarks on an adventure surrounding the mysterious old Marborough mansion and its wishing well. With her friends, Penny explores themes of friendship, kindness, and intrigue as they uncover secrets of the past and the potential to grant wishes.
The opening of the story introduces Penny and her friends at Riverview High School, where they eagerly anticipate exploring the Marborough place and its famous wishing well. After making a thoughtful wish for the restoration of the property, Penny invites a lonelier classmate, Rhoda, to join their outing.
The group encounters a light-hearted adventure as they discover a possible chicken thief in pursuit. This sets the tone for the unfolding plot where friendships are tested, and unexpected events arise, including deeper mysteries tied to the characters’ lives, particularly Rhoda’s connection to the Breens and the arrival of two strangers from Texas. As Penny’s curiosity propels her into the adventure, readers are drawn into a world of mystery and the promise of fulfilling wishes.”
I find it interesting that like Nancy, Penny does not have a mother but only a father and a live-in housekeeper, Mrs. Weems. I am beginning to wonder if Mildred had some mother issues herself. She sure liked to kill off moms.
The wit and banter between characters in the Penny Parker series is much stronger than in the Nancy Drew books. There are also so many funny sayings or phrases that were probably used by teens at the time these books were written (1939-1947).
“We’re the same as absent right now,” Penny laughed, retreating to the doorway. “Thanks for your splendid cooperation.” (Oof! The sarcasm!)
________
“You’ll be home early?” her father asked.
“I hope so,” Penny answered earnestly. “If for any reason, I fail to appear, don’t search in any of the obvious places.”
___
“In case you slip and fall, just what am I to do?”
“That’s your problem,” Penny chuckled. “Now hand me the flashlight. I’m on way.”
_____
“What do you see, Penny?” Louise called again. “Are there any bricks loose?”
“Not that I can discover,” Penny answered, and her voice echoed weirdly. Intrigued by the sound she tried an experimental yodel. “Why, it’s just like a cave scene on the radio!”
“In case you’ve forgotten, you’re in a well,” Louise said severely. “Furthermore, if you don’t work fast, Mrs. Marborough will come our here!”
“I have to have a little relaxation,” Penny grumbled.
___
Neither Louise nor Rhoda approved of interfering in the argument between Mrs. Marborough and Mr. Franklin, but as usual they could not stand firm against Penny.
_____
As I mentioned above, I downloaded this one from Project Gutenberg. They have quite a few of the 17 book series.
The books from the series are:
Tale of the Witch Doll (1939, 1958)
The Vanishing Houseboat (1939, 1958)
Danger at the Drawbridge (1940, 1958)
Behind the Green Door (1940, 1958)
Clue of the Silken Ladder (1941)
The Secret Pact (1941)
The Clock Strikes Thirteen (1942)
The Wishing Well (1942)
Saboteurs on the River (1943)
Ghost Beyond the Gate (1943)
Hoofbeats on the Turnpike (1944)
Voice from the Cave (1944)
The Guilt of the Brass Thieves (1945)
Signal in the Dark (1946)
Whispering Walls (1946)
Swamp Island (1947)
The Cry at Midnight (1947)
Have you read any of the Penny Parker Mysteries series?
Lisa R. Howeler is a blogger, homeschool mom, and writes cozy mysteries.
You can find her Gladwynn Grant Mystery series HERE.
The 20 Books of Summer Challenge is back this year with new hosts. This will be my first year participating and I can tell you I will most likely not read 20 books this summer. Much less than that.
So, I have a list of 15 books I plan to choose from, knowing full well I will get distracted a time or two or to read all of them. Count on me not reading all of them or even half. Ha.
For the challenge you can actually choose 10, 15, or 20 books.
The #20BooksofSummer2025 challenge runs from Sunday, June 1st to Sunday, August 31st
The first rule of 20 Books is that there are no real rules, other than signing up for 10, 15 or 20 books and trying to read from your TBR.
Pick your list in advance, or nominate a bookcase to read from, or pick at whim from your TBR.
If you do pick a list, you can change it at any time – swap books in/out.
Don’t get panicked at not reaching your target.
Just enjoy a summer of great reading and make a bit of space on your shelves!
They will alo have monthly summary posts where you can add progress reports and recommendations. The final one at the at the beginning of September will stay open for a while to catch all the last reviews.
If you’re planning to join in please do add your blog / planning post link to the Mr Linky on the hosts blogs, and you can download the logos and bingo card now. You can also use the hashtag #20BooksofSummer2025 on your socials.
And now my list of 15 books I will be choosing from this summer. These books are a mix of mysteries, romances, thoughtful, fluffy, and all in between. And of course I’ll probably read more Nancy Drew than I have listed here. They’re fast reads.
Summer of Yes by Courtney Walsh
Between Sound and Sea by Amanda Cox
The Clue in the Diary by Carolyn Keene
Roll of Thunder Hear My Cry by Mildred D. Taylor
The Inimitable Jeeves by PG Woodhouse
Prince Caspian by C.S. Lewis
Spill the Jackpot by Erle Stanley Gardner
‘Tis Herself by Maureen O’Hara
Death In A Budapest Butterfly by Julia Buckley
The 100-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out a Window and Disappeared by Jonas Jonassen
But First Murder by Bee Littlefield
The Pale Horse by Agatha Christie
Britt-Marie was Here by Fredrik Backman
A Midnight Dance by Joanna Davidson
The Unlikely Yarn of The Dragon Lady by Sharon J. Mondragon
And bonus…my “take my time” read: Mansfield Park by Jane Austen
I am a mood reader so I will not be reading this list in order and if my mood dictates I have to choose off the list, I certainly will. Reading is a leisure activity for me, and applying too much structure takes the joy out of it for me, but making lists is also fun for me so…this is why I make a list.
Do you have a list of books you like to choose from for each season or do you just grab whatever you feel like reading next?
Whose Body? was my first book by Dorothy Sayers, and I enjoyed it more than I thought I might when I first started it. Ironically, the book was also Dorothy’s debut book, written in 1923.
As I got into the book there were some references to ethnicities that I thought were a bit inappropriate but when I found out that Sayers wrote this series, featuring Sir Peter Whimsy, with satire in mind, I hoped that the references were meant to show the incorrect attitudes of the characters and not show what Sayers really thought about Jews.
One article I read said that her goal was to poke some fun at the upper crust and their attitudes about Jewish people but other articles disagreed. Some literary critics said they weren’t really sure what Sayers thought about Jews but that she did perpetuate quite a few stereotypes while also appearing to paint Jews in a positive light.
Before we get into all that, though, let’s talk a bit about the plot of the book.
Lord Wimsey is a nobleman who has developed an interest in solving murders and mysteries as a hobby. At first, he seems rather stuck up and proper, but as the book continues, there is much more to Peter Wimsey than meets the eye.
Thipps is an architect who finds a body in his bathtub wearing nothing but a pair of glasses. He looks to Lord Wimsey to help him solve this murder before he contacts the police.
Wimsey agrees to privately investigate the matter but still suggests the police be called. An Inspector Sugg shows up and believes the body may belong to famous financier Sir Reuben Levy, who disappeared under mysterious circumstances the night before.
His disappearance is being led by Inspector Charles Parker, who Wimsey knows.
The body in the bath does somewhat resemble Reuben, but not exactly and soon it’s clear the body isn’t his and the two cases probably are not connected. Despite the lack of connection, Wimsey joins Parker in his investigation.
Wimsey’s connections to other wealthy people will help Parker in his investigation, he decides. Together with Wimsey’s manservant Mervyn Bunter, who he just calls Bunter, the three work to find the identity of the one man and to find out if Reuben was, in fact, murdered.
Like any mystery with a lighter flair there are red herrings and complex twists and turns aimed at confusing the reader and delaying the revelation of the true killer
Eventually Wimsey and Parker visit a teaching hospital near Thipps’s flat to see if one of the students had been trying to play a practical joke on Thipps.
Evidence later given at an inquest by Sir Julian Freke, who runs the teaching college, reveals that no bodies were missing from his dissecting room, which leads Wimsey to believe he is on the wrong trail.
I enjoyed the twists and turns of this one and I especially enjoyed Wimsey’s tricks, verbal sparrings with suspects, and how he seemed to mock his own class throughout much of the book.
His character was created by Sayers during a time when she was low on money and prospects. She’d also had a few failed love affairs, according to historians.
Of her creation of Wimsey, Sayers said, “Lord Peter’s large income… I deliberately gave him… After all it cost me nothing and at the time I was particularly hard up and it gave me pleasure to spend his fortune for him. When I was dissatisfied with my single unfurnished room I took a luxurious flat for him in Piccadilly. When my cheap rug got a hole in it, I ordered him an Aubusson carpet. When I had no money to pay my bus fare I presented him with a Daimler double-six, upholstered in a style of sober magnificence, and when I felt dull I let him drive it. I can heartily recommend this inexpensive way of furnishing to all who are discontented with their incomes. It relieves the mind and does no harm to anybody.”.
In their 1989 review of crime novels, the US writers Barzun and Taylor called the book “a stunning first novel that disclosed the advent of a new star in the firmament, and one of the first magnitude. The episode of the bum in the bathtub, the character (and the name) of Sir Julian Freke, the detection, and the possibilities in Peter Wimsey are so many signs of genius about to erupt. Peter alone suffers from fatuousness overdone, a period fault that Sayers soon blotted out”
Going back to the antisemitism that seems to be in this book — and from what I read, other Sayers books: this was prevalent in books written by British crime writers, especially those who came from upper class families. There was a deep-seeded distrust and dislike of Jews among the rich of Britain. We can see this most clearly in Agatha Christie’s novels where, to me, it is clear she wasn’t a big fan of Jewish people and often made them the villains of her novels.
Sayres views of Jews are complex, muddled and confusing, wrote Amy Schwartz of Moment Magazine. Sayers was once in an affair with a Jewish man who broke her heart and worked with many. She didn’t shy away from writing characters who married and had children with Jews, even if they weren’t.
She still used many stereotypes, including that they were greedy, or at least good with money, but did she feel that way about Jews herself? There is a ton of evidence that suggests she didn’t and as one commentor on Schwartz’s article writes: “Isn’t it possible that writers reflect in their fiction the world that they observe, rather than create themselves over and over again? The character is not the author.”
In other words, it is very possible that Sayers was writing the characters and how they thought and believed, not saying she believed the same things.
Despite not being sure what Sayers thought of Jews and being a bit uncomfortable with the comments of some characters about them, I did enjoy the book and Sayers writing style. I enjoyed that she writes more descriptively than Christie and therefore helps the reader feel closer to the characters and more involved with the story.
The complexity of this story was just enough to keep me puzzled until very close to the end and even when I knew who the guilty party was, I thoroughly enjoyed Wimsey’s verbal banter with the “villain.”
Have you ever read this book or any of Sayers books?
*Note: If I review Sayers books in the future, I don’t plan to comment on her views of Jews every time. Many writers portrayed people of various minorities in a negative light throughout the years. It doesn’t make it right, but it happened often. Sometimes the writers believed those things about the minorities but sometimes they were showing the true feelings of the characters they were writing for the sake of the story. It’s impossible to determine what a writer’s actual intentions were in most cases. I hate to throw out entire books simply because I don’t know the actual heart and mind of the authors since they are all dead now. Instead, I will try to focus on the stories as a whole.
Title: Grandma Ruth Doesn’t Go To Funerals Author: Sharon Mondragon
Release date: February 11, 2025
Description:
In a small town where gossip flows like sweet tea, bedridden Mary Ruth McCready reigns supreme, doling out wisdom and meddling in everyone’s business with a fervor that would make a matchmaker blush. When her best friend, Charlotte Harrington, has her world rocked by a scandalous revelation from her dying husband P. B., Mary Ruth kicks into high gear, commandeering the help of her favorite granddaughter, Sarah Elizabeth, in tracking down the truth. Finding clues in funeral condolence cards and decades-old gossip dredged up at the Blue Moon Beauty Emporium, the two stir up trouble faster than you can say “pecan pie.”
And just when things are starting to look up, in waltzes Camilla “Millie” Holtgrew, a blast from P. B.’s past, with a grown son and an outrageous claim to Charlotte’s inheritance. But as Grandma Ruth always says when things get tough, “God is too big.” With him, nothing is impossible–even bringing long-held secrets to light. Grandma Ruth and Sarah just might have to ruffle a whole mess of feathers to do it.
MY THOUGHTS: I absolutely loved this book. I wasn’t sure how it was going to be categorized at first but as I continued it, I decided it was a cozy mystery with no murder. No matter what genre it fits in, it is a super cute, super well-written, and hilarious book that I could not put down.
I actually read this on Hoopla so I had to read it on my phone. I hate reading on my phone but didn’t mind for this book because it was so entertaining. I will be buying a paperback to add to my physical book collection because I do plan to read it again in the future.
The characters in this book are super charming, funny, and lovable.
A little background on the book: Sarah McCready is the granddaughter of Mary Ruth McGready, the family matriarch who can’t leave home anymore after falling and injuring her hip. Before her injury she was always busy and attending community functions, including funerals. Now that she can’t attend funerals or other events, she sends Sarah for her and then asks for a report when Sarah gets home.
Sarah, 24, is used to this by now but things are a little different when Preston Bentley “P.B.” Harrington, a founding member of a local, prestigious law firm, dies. His widow, Charlotte Harrington, gets a bit tipsy at the viewing and blurts out to some friends, including Sarah, that right before he died PB told her, “I loved you more than Millie.”
“Then I said, ‘What? What do you mean? Who’s Millie? You tell me this instant, Preston Bentley Harrington!’ But it was too late. He let out a long, slow sigh and was gone. The love of my life was gone, and I was so mad at him, Mary Ruth. I was so mad!”
Grandma Ruth and Sarah are on the case to find out who Millie was or is. Sarah is worried PB cheated on his wife, but Grandma Ruth is determined he didn’t.
Miss Charlotte’s grandson, Preston, chauffeurs his grandmother around and is often there when Sarah is “investigating”. This gives Grandma Ruth and Miss Harrington an idea about Sarah and Preston but Sarah can’t think of a relationship with anyone since she’s still trying to shake Jake Halloran, who dumped her for a prospect who would give him what he wanted, shall we say.
There were so many witty, funny, and sweet lines in this book.
“His figure was as trim as Rhett Butler’s mustache.”
“I hear what you are saying to yourself. “She’s a grown woman, a college graduate. Why doesn’t she just say no?” Well, I dare you to come by the house when Mary Ruth McGready really wants something done and see how you do. Right. I’ll save you a seat at the funeral she wants you to attend.”
“But she’s sadder than most widows,” I said. “She’s afraid she lost him long before he died. She’s afraid she lost the fairy tales she’s believed in all these years that she was his one and only forever love. If I can get her love story back, she won’t have as much to grieve over as she does now.”
“How like Miss Charlotte to think of me when she was so sad herself, even if she was wrong about what I was feeling. As I sat with her at Fontanelli’s on her first Valentine’s Day as a widow, I wanted to wipe away not only her tears but the sadness in her kind and thoughtful heart.”
“My grandmother shook her head. “Sometimes I almost despair of you Sarah. Have you learned nothing about how a Southern lady handles the weaker sex? All that’s wrong with him is a severely bruised ego.”
I would definitely recommend this as a light, cozy, and clean read.
I read on the author’s website that this is the first in a series and I am so excited to read more about Grandma Ruth and Sarah in future books.
Clean level: This is a very, very clean book with a touch of faith and romance. Very small amounts of both.
One content warning: This book does discuss death quite often but handles it in a very humorous, kind, and respectful way.
Christy by Catherine Marshall is a very dense book. It is full of life lessons weaved between poetic prose and hard realities of life in the Smoky Mountains in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Following the story of fictional 19-year-old Christy Huddleston, the book is fiction but based, very loosely, on the real-life experience of Marshall’s mother, Leonora Whitaker Wood.
The CBS series, Christy, starring Kellie Martin, and a couple of made-for-TV movies were based on the book. I watched the show in the 1990s but had never read the book. I didn’t even know the TV-movies existed until I was doing research for this post.
In both the show and the book, Christy travels to a small mission in the mountains of Tennessee from her home in Ashville, North Carolina to teach in a school full of mountain children who have very little material items but a lot of heart and heartache.
The small area where these children and their families are from is called Cutter Gap. The fictional area isn’t really a town since it is only a collection of cabins scattered across the mountains and through the woods, but there is a fiction town called El Pano, located near it. The families in Cutter Gap are poor, uneducated, and fighting for their lives against disease and judgment.
Christy arrives at the mission after listening to the mission founder speak about it and begins her work with Miss Alice Henderson, a Quaker woman, and Pastor David Grantland, a minister who has been assigned to the school.
Once she arrives she meets other colorful members of the community — Dr. Neil McNeil, resident Ruby Mae, and resident Fairlight Spencer (who becomes her best friend), as well as other colorful (shall we say) characters. She also begins to learn more about the history of the area, the hardships they have faced since the 1700s, and the way some of the men feel they have to take a criminal route in life to scrape out a living.
There is a lot of beauty mixed in with some very ugly tales within the 500 pages of Christy. I marked up a lot of the book to remember parts of it later. Even though I found parts of the faith message of the book contradictory and a little confusing at times, there were many parts that were extremely thought-provoking and moving to me.
Most of what I underlined in the book were quotes by Miss Alice, who was my favorite character in the book besides Fairlight Spencer. In the beginning of the book, I found it hard to connect Christy who was very hard-headed and brash at times. She came to the mission with head knowledge of God but not heart knowledge of him.
I couldn’t stand David Grantland through most of the book and wasn’t sure what to make of Neil McNeil.
I wanted to shake Christy a couple of times throughout the book and tell her not to rush into dangerous situations. Toward the end of the book, though, when she truly struggled with the faith that she had only really found since working at the mission, I related to her immensely. So much of what happened to the people she’d come to love in Cutter Gap seemed so cruel to me. Even though the book was fiction, I found myself questioning the goodness of God, thinking about some similar cruel situations of those I’ve known over the years. It’s something I had to sit and wrestle with mental and spiritually in the moments, hours, and days after finishing the book. In many ways I am still struggling with these questions about God and the goodness I sometimes don’t see.
Some of the sections I underlined in the book included:
“Evil is real – and powerful. It has to be fought, not explained away, not fled. And God is against evil all the way. So each of us has to decide where WE stand, how we’re going to live OUR lives. We can try to persuade ourselves that evil doesn’t exist; live for ourselves and wink at evil. We can say that it isn’t so bad after all, maybe even try to call it fun by clothing it in silks and velvets. We can compromise with it, keep quiet about it and say it’s none of our business. Or we can work on God’s side, listen for His orders on strategy against the evil, no matter how horrible it is, and know that He can transform it.”
“What do you do when strength is called for and you have no strength? You evoke a power beyond your own and use stamina you did not know you had. You open your eyes in the morning grateful that you can see the sunlight of yet another day. You draw yourself to the edge of the bed and then put one foot in front of the other and keep going. You weep with those who gently close the eyes of the dead, and somehow, from the salt of your tears, comes endurance for them and for you. You pour out that resurgence to minister to the living.”
“I’d long since learned that no difference in viewpoint should ever be allowed to cause the least break in love. Indeed, it cannot, if it’s real love. …But relationships can be kept intact without compromising one’s own beliefs. And if we do not keep them intact, but give up and allow the chasm, we’re breaking the second greatest commandment.”
“The secret of her calm seemed to be that she was not trying to prove anything. She was—that was all. And her stance toward life seemed to say: God is—and that is enough.”
This was one of the few books I’ve read that I became completely immersed in when I read it. Everything around me disappeared – the language and descriptions were so vivid. I could see the mountains, picture the cabins and the people, and sometimes even smell, sadly, the smells.
It took me a little over a month to read through the book because it was so dense. I felt like I really got to know the characters that way and this was both a good and a bad thing.
It was a bad thing because, toward the end, some of the events hit me so hard and left me on my couch on a cold Sunday afternoon with a warm fire in our woodstove burning and me crying until my sides hurt.
I like to be immersed in books but at that moment I thought that maybe I wouldn’t like to be so immersed if it was going to be this painful to continue to read on.
I won’t give away too much but there was a death in the book that I could not make sense of in the least. Much of the book seemed to want the reader to see that there was hope still available, even in the midst of darkness, anger, and sadness, but when we had almost reached the end it was like that message was yanked out from under us with such a ferociousness that it made my head spin.
When I was reading the book, I was thinking, “Wow. There are so many deep messages about our relationship with God in this book” but then I was like, “But there were some really theological muddy waters in this book and I’m not sure how I feel about that.”
There was a lot of talk about superstitions and instead of dispelling them by saying God is in control, there were times the characters tried to explain it away by science or simply telling the mountain people that their beliefs were faulty. There is little to no mention of Jesus in this book. Yet this book is marketed as a great Christian book. That confuses me a little. Still, the story, overall, was very compelling, interesting, and realistic (maybe a bit too realistic).
I saw a review of this after I read it that tagged the book as being “heartfelt” and “family-friendly.”
The book was NOT family-friendly. There are discussions of rape, abuse, murder, molestation, and many other disturbing and triggering topics. There are not, however, extremely graphic descriptions of these subjects.
There are times this book seems to push that there is truth in superstition, even though, I’m sure that’s not what the author, a well-known Christian author, meant to do.
In the end, Christy was a painfully beautiful book that wrung me out emotionally. It challenged my thinking, built me up, tore me down again, and left me with a glimmer of hope that Christy and the people of Cutter Gap found some joy and happiness beyond the time frame addressed within the book’s pages.
I would be remiss if I did not mention that the ending of this book is very open-ended and, to me, somewhat abrupt. It does not answer all of the reader’s questions. Or it didn’t answer some of my questions at least. It left me with a bit of mystery and with a strong desire for a sequel.
According to more than one article online, notes for a sequel to the book were discovered in Catherine Marshall’s things after her death by her family. Those notes have never been revealed, however. Part of me would love to know what happened to Christy after the events at the end of the book (which were wrapped up a bit too quickly for me), but part of me agrees with the blogger of Taking Up Room who wrote, “Christy ending on a question mark has never failed to get my brain thinking, even after dozens of times of reading the book. In a way, it means the story never really ends. Adding more might just spoil whatever ending fans have come to in their own minds, and that’s no fun. I say keep the mystery.”
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I haven’t had much time to sit and write up full book reviews lately so I thought I’d share five mini-book reviews today.
Death Comes to Marlow by Robert Thorogood
Description:
Judith (our favorite skinny-dipping, whiskey-sipping, crossword puzzle author), along with Becks the vicar’s wife, and Susie the dogwalker find themselves in a head-scratching, utterly clever country house, locked-room murder mystery.
Holiday festivities are now January doldrums when Judith gets a call―Sir Peter Bailey, a prominent Marlovian is inviting notable citizens to his house the day before his wedding to celebrate.
Judith decides to go―after all, it’s a few houses up the Thames and free champagne, for sure. During the party, a loud crash inside stops the festivities. The groom-to-be has been crushed to death in his study. The door was locked from the inside so the police say suicide, obviously.
My Review:
This was the second book in the Marlow Murder Club series. I did not enjoy it as much as the first book. This one was all over the place and very repetitive. I rolled my eyes way too often. I still love the characters but why the suspects were suspects was repeated and twisted around so many times it simply became obnoxious. We really needed another story to sort of break up the monotony of them running around in circles in this one. There was one side story related to the vicar’s wife Becks, but it came in way too late in the book and didn’t break up the way he kept saying, “We don’t know who killed him! Here is all our evidence….again.”
The Hound of the Baskervilles by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
Description:
The Hound of the Baskervilles is the third of the four crime novels by British writer Arthur Conan Doyle featuring the detective Sherlock Holmes. Originally serialised in The Strand Magazine from August 1901 to April 1902, it is set in 1889 largely on Dartmoor in Devon in England’s West Country and tells the story of an attempted murder inspired by the legend of a fearsome, diabolical hound of supernatural origin. Holmes and Watson investigate the case. This was the first appearance of Holmes since his apparent death in “The Final Problem”, and the success of The Hound of the Baskervilles led to the character’s eventual revival.
One of the most famous stories ever written, in 2003, the book was listed as number 128 of 200 on the BBC’s The Big Read poll of the UK’s “best-loved novel”. In 1999, a poll of “Sherlockians” ranked it as the best of the four Holmes novels.
My review:
I really expected to like this a lot more than I did. Conan Doyle is a classic crime writer – the father of the detective/crime novel so it has to be great, right?
Sadly, this book really dragged for me and my son who read it with me for his British Literature class. Maybe it was because Sherlock wasn’t even in half of it. During that half it was Watson writing letters to Sherlock to tell him what had happened. There were way too many conversations about what might have happened and very little action for me. I also couldn’t stand the “lord of the manor”, Henry Baskerville. I would guess Conan Doyle was making him obnoxious because he was an American and the British like to make sure Americans know what they think about us. So maybe I wasn’t supposed to like him, which worked well because I didn’t.
I didn’t hate the book, but it was not one I would necessarily rush to read again anytime soon. I’d really like to read the short stories and the other three novels instead and then go back to this one later on to see if I like it any better.
Johnny Tremain by Esther Forbes
Description:
Fourteen-year-old Johnny Tremain, an apprentice silversmith with a bright future ahead of him, injures his hand in a tragic accident, forcing him to look for other work. In his new job as a horse-boy, riding for the patriotic newspaper, the Boston Observer, and as a messenger for the Sons of Liberty, he encounters John Hancock, Samuel Adams, and Dr. Joseph Warren. Soon Johnny is involved in the pivotal events shaping the American Revolution from the Boston Tea Party to the first shots fired at Lexington. Powerful illustrations by American artist Michael McCurdy, bring to life Esther Forbes’ quintessential novel of the American Revolution.
My review:
I read this one with Little Miss for English/History. The book is broken into sections with six chapters in each section, so we read a couple of the chapters each day for a few months.
I ended up really like this one even though the older writing style and the subject was a little difficult at times. There were some chapters where I skipped some of the more descriptive paragraphs to get to the point and move forward, but overall, this book was very well done, very educational, and had me crying more than once with the real life lessons within its pages.
Tooth and Claw by Craig Johnson
Description:
Tooth and Claw follows Walt and Henry up to Alaska as they look for work after they both returned from serving in Vietnam. While working for an oil company in the bitter cold of winter, they soon encounter a ferocious polar bear who seems hell-bent on their destruction. But it’s not too long until they realize the danger does not lurk outside in the frozen Alaskan tundra, but with their co-workers who are after priceless treasure and will stop at nothing to get it.
Fans of Longmire will thrill to this pulse-pounding and bone-chilling novel of extreme adventure that adds another indelible chapter to the great story of Walt Longmire.
My review:
I really enjoyed this novella. I’m a fan of the Walt Longmire Mystery books, with the exception of Hell is Empty, which I hated. I haven’t read one of the books since that one, which was early in 2024. I love Johnson’s writing, though, so I knew I couldn’t stay away for long. When I needed a short book to finish out the year, I remembered my husband had just won this one in a Goodreads giveaway. It is a story separate from the other books so I knew there wouldn’t be any spoilers.
I read it around Christmas, which is usually reserved for cozy books, not books where a man-eating, monster Polar Bear is terrorizing scientists in the arctic, but I could not put this book down. It was constant action, and I enjoyed it. I might even read another one of the full-length novels soon.
The Christmas Swap by Melody Carlson
Description:
All Emma Daley wants this holiday season is a white Christmas. But the young teacher and struggling musician sure can’t find that in sunny Arizona. Luckily, there’s someone living in a perfect mountain home in the Colorado Rockies looking to make a vacation trade this year.
West Prescott is an in-demand songwriter and talented musician who put his own singing career on hold to write songs for celebrity acts to perform. When his mother convinces him to do a vacation trade for Christmas, he never imagined one of the houseguests would be so sweet–or so strikingly pretty. Naturally, he decides to stick around, and, to get better acquainted, he poses as the house’s caretaker. But when Emma’s friend Gillian discovers his true identity and sets her sights on him, things get . . . messy.
My review:
I really liked Carlson’s book, A Quilt for Christmas, and thought this would be similarly heartwarming and well-written. It was not. This book was a very cheesy romance that would not end. I feel so bad saying this but it was such a short book I had no time to connect to the characters and in the end I really didn’t care if I did or didn’t. These ridiculous romances where people meet and three days later are in love and changing their lives around for each other drive me nuts. I had no idea that was what was going to happen in this book. It’s like the two books were written by two different people. Every author has hit or miss books, though, and every reader is different in their likes and dislikes so while this book was not for me it might be the perfect light read for someone else. I won’t give up on trying Carlson’s books, but I will be a bit more careful and read the descriptions better from now on.
Have you read any of these books? What did you think of them if you did?
(*note: I honestly thought I had already posted this review on my blog months ago, but I couldn’t find it so I am posting it for the first or second time. One or the other.)
The Mystery at Lilac Inn by Carolyn Keene is the fourth book in the Nancy Drew series, which debuted in the 1930s.
For this book, Nancy becomes wrapped up at a mystery at an inn recently purchased by a friend, but she is also caught off guard when her own house is ransacked and her credit plate stolen. She later learns someone is impersonating her and running up her credit or stealing from people.
When diamonds disappear from her friend’s inn she decides she needs to find out who stole the diamonds as well as who is impersonating her. Are the two cases connected? She hopes to find out.
As usual, there is some ridiculous developments and tactics used to solve the mystery (such as her being sent off with her father’s blessing to explore a lake with a man they barely know and then go after known criminals on her own without any back up), but it wouldn’t be a Nancy Drew book if there wasn’t. These books were written in a different time and for young kids so they were full of non-stop action, no matter how giggle inducing that non-stop action was.
This book was later rewritten to remove some of the more derogatory connotations toward certain races. It was released again in 1961 after those changes were made under Keene’s name, which is, of course, a pseudonym. The Nancy Drew books, like The Hardy Boys books were written by several different authors over the years.
Normally I don’t like the idea of old books being changed because someone is offended but in this case it was needed, even if the stereotypes weren’t as bad as some classic books.
I did not like this book as much as the first book in the series, The Secret of the Old Clock. The plot was okay but does not hold us as well as others in the series, in my opinion.
