My Review of "City Baker's Guide to Country Living"

Louise Miller's The City Baker's Guide to Country Living is a novel that satisfies, like grandma's pumpkin pie on Thanksgiving. It's about creating family where you find it and finding your place in the world. And it does that by striking the right balance, never veering off into oversentimentality. If there's room for just one novel on your holiday reading list, it should be this one.

Olivia Rawlings is a legit baker (ahem, pastry chef), a culinary institute grad with 15 years under her belt. Although baking is about precision and detail, her life is somewhat in chaos. She's behind on her rent and sleeping with an older married guy and doesn't seem to have much guilt about it. And then, one night a flaming baked Alaska sets fire to her career in Boston and she runs off to her bestie in Guthrie, Vermont. All this in the first chapter -- this is a book that doesn't fear throwing its readers right into the action.

Guthrie is a town full of character, and people who know all about one another's business.

But while there's a touch of small town romance, this novel is also a dessert-lover's dream.

Don't miss The City Baker's Guide to Country Living!

I received a free copy of this book as part of the Blogging for Books program in exchange for my honest review here.

Comments

My Review of "Come as You Aren't"

Come as You Aren't: A Role-Playing Game for Adventurous Couples is a simple role-playing kit for couples who want to explore and experiment in ways to seduce one another that they simply wouldn't have imagined otherwise. The set is meant to offer one partner who draws a Who, a What, and a Where card at random and places them in an envelope for the other partner. From there, it's up to them to enact the scenarios as they see fit. The instructions are printed on the back cover of the box and the deck comes with a few blank cards for couples to customize. This is a fun little gift for couples -- and just in time for the holidays. I received a free copy of this game from the Blogging for Books review program in exchange for my honest review here.

My Review of "Inside the Criminal Mind"

Samenow's Inside the Criminal Mind is an odd book to review. Samenow, a research psychologist, says criminal behavior is 100% voluntary. It is a product of disordered thought patterns that are almost entirely congenital. Poverty doesn't cause crime, Samenow claims. Nor do bad parenting, peer pressure, drug use, or any of the other "standard excuses". Some kids are born anti-authoritarian thrill seekers and will remain so pretty much no matter what. The only hope is to get criminals to intensively examine their thought patterns, and change them through sheer force of will. Originally written in 1984, I have to wonder: Is this book merely a product of its time? That is, does it represent the best of the cultural thinking that went into personal responsibility and individualism that was so rampant in America in the mid-1980s? Because, let's be honest: Inside the Criminal Mind has a glaring problem. To quote another 19...

My Review of "The Heist"

Chris Durso's The Heist: How Grace Robs Us of Our Shame is an amazing book! Sin, as Durso is right to insist, can only be understood in the light of grace. We cannot know our sin until we know God's grace. And that grace is known as it overcome and vanquishes our sin. For Durso, our shame and our brokenness rob us of the life God, in Christ, makes for us. And, like the Prodigal Sons, God's grace can only be made known because God has come to us in our own squalor and gifted us with more, so much more, than anything of which sin has robbed us. This is the great "heist" of the Gospel -- that God in Christ takes back what the Enemy has stolen. This is a book that easily change melt even the hardest heart, because it places the emphasis where the Gospel places that emphas is -- on God's love. I received a free copy of this book as part of the Blogging for Books program in exchange for my honest review here.

The Mrs. & the Minister

Search This Blog