Playing By Heart by Anne Mateer
Historical Fiction/Christian
September 2014
Review copy provide by Bethany House in exchange for this review
Burton Book Review Rating: 4.5 stars

(Click here for other books by Anne Mateer reviewed on Burton Book Review)

Lula Bowman has finally achieved her dream: a teaching position and a scholarship to continue her college education in mathematics. But when she receives a shocking telephone call from her sister, Jewel, everything she's worked for begins to crumble.
After the sudden death of Jewel's husband, Jewel needs Lula's help. With a heavy heart, Lula returns to her Oklahoma hometown to do right by her sister. But the only teaching job available in Dunn is combination music instructor/basketball coach. Neither subject belongs anywhere near the halls of academia, according to Lula!

Lula commits to covering the job for the rest of the school year, determined to do well and prove herself to the town. Reluctantly, she turns to the boys' coach, Chet, to learn the game of basketball. Chet is handsome and single, but Lula has no plans to fall for a local boy. She's returning to college as soon as she gets Jewel back on her feet.


However, the more time she spends in Dunn, the more Lula realizes God is working on her heart--and her future is beginning to look a lot different than she'd expected.

This was a heart tugging story put forth by Anne Mateer and her passion for telling this particular story shone through every page. It's a blend of faith and romance during the scary times of the Great War where boys striving to be men enlisted to make their families proud. An era where strict rules among the social classes existed, and fraternizing with the opposite sex would cost you your career.

The main characters of Lula and Chet were told in an alternating first person narrative which only took me a few turns to get accustomed to. Perhaps it was this first person narration that helped endear me to them and made me feel much more empathetic towards them both. Lula was both intelligent and independent but willing to give up everything she ever dreamed of in order to be near her sister during difficult times, and Chet was also making his own personal sacrifices for his family even while others misunderstood his intentions.

They work together and become close which causes envy among their peers, yet their entire courtship was a charming story to read as they opened up about their emotions and their individual passions. I especially enjoyed the development of the supporting characters and their families, and I would love to see a sequel to see what happens next for Chet and Lula.

Playing By Heart is a very inspirational story featuring music, basketball, coaching and the war efforts which was put together very well into a solid piece of Christian historical fiction which I recommend to any reader of the genre. Thanks to Anne Mateer and Bethany House for providing us with another great inspirational novel!

A war story with lots of potential and let down

Wake by Anna Hope
Random House; February 2014
$26.00; hb; 304pp; 9780812995138
Review copy provided by the publisher for review in the February 2014 Historical Novel Society magazine
Burton Book Review Rating: 3 stars

A brilliant debut for readers of The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, in which three women must deal with the aftershocks of WWI and its impact on the men in their lives-a son, a brother and a lover. Their tragic connection is slowly revealed as the book unfolds.

Wake: 1) Emerge or cause to emerge from sleep 2) Ritual for the dead 3) Consequence or aftermath.

Hettie, a dance instructress at the Palais, lives at home with her mother and her brother, mute and lost after his return from the war. One night, at work, she meets a wealthy, educated man and has reason to think he is as smitten with her as she is with him. Still there is something distracted about him, something she cannot reach...Evelyn works at the Pensions Exchange through which thousands of men have claimed benefits from wounds or debilitating distress. Embittered by her own loss, more and more estranged from her posh parents, she looks for solace in her adored brother who has not been the same since he returned from the front...Ada is beset by visions of her son on every street, convinced he is still alive. Helpless, her loving husband of 25 years has withdrawn from her. Then one day a young man appears at her door with notions to peddle, like hundreds of out of work veterans. But when he shows signs of being seriously disturbed-she recognizes the symptoms of "shell shock"-and utters the name of her son she is jolted to the core...

The lives of these three women are braided together, their stories gathering tremendous power as the ties that bind them become clear, and the body of the unknown soldier moves closer and closer to its final resting place.

Wake is a potentially poignant and gripping novel that follows three families whose loved ones served in the Great War. Based in London, the 1920's setting was presented in an eloquent and intoxicating way as it embraced the invisible shroud that the war had left behind.

The writing was fast paced as we get into the heads of the main characters wondering if there is life after war, and getting into the minds of veterans was devastating and haunting. A mother sees her dead son in all those who have returned – alive but broken, a sister wonders who the man is behind the face of her brother, as she ponders if there is life after losing a betrothed.

It was hard to tell the difference between the two younger women Hettie and Evelyn as their characters began to morph into each other but the older mother in the story helps break it up a bit. The manner of the death of her son in the war is a tragic mystery that connects some of the characters which provided an intriguing angle to the story.

Instead of focusing on survival and resilience the story circles around the characters with an ominous sense of continual loss. If you allow yourself to be drawn to the emotional hues to the novel this could be a very enjoyable reading experience.

The kicker was that it was going along at a great pace: full of life, death, love and grief, when the story abruptly ended thus making this novel catapult to the top of my worst endings ever list.

Heart stopping drama and romance set against Hemingway's high rolling world

Hemingway's Girl by Erika Robuck
NAL Trade, September 4 2012
Paperback 352 pages
Historical fiction/romance
Review copy from the author, thank you!
Burton Book Review Rating: FIVE STARS

“She remembered when Hemingway had planted a banyan tree at his house and told her its parasitic roots were like human desire. At the time she’d thought it romantic. She hadn’t understood his warning.”

In Depression-era Key West, Mariella Bennet, the daughter of an American fisherman and a Cuban woman, knows hunger. Her struggle to support her family following her father’s death leads her to a bar and bordello, where she bets on a risky boxing match...and attracts the interest of two men: world-famous writer, Ernest Hemingway, and Gavin Murray, one of the WWI veterans who are laboring to build the Overseas Highway. When Mariella is hired as a maid by Hemingway’s second wife, Pauline, she enters a rarified world of lavish, celebrity-filled dinner parties and elaborate off-island excursions. As she becomes caught up in the tensions and excesses of the Hemingway household, the attentions of the larger-than-life writer become a dangerous temptation...even as straightforward Gavin Murray draws her back to what matters most. Will she cross an invisible line with the volatile Hemingway, or find a way to claim her own dreams? As a massive hurricane bears down on Key West, Mariella faces some harsh truths...and the possibility of losing everything she loves.

Erika Robuck's first novel, Receive Me Falling, was indicative of great things to come. I mooned happiness in my review of that one, and I shall do the same here. I love how Erika can transport the reader to another place in time with just a few words, and words that she skillfully weaves together to give us the impression of being there with her characters.

And her characters are always so well put together - flaws and all - including a certain Mr. Hemingway, his family, and the fictional Mariella Bennet. This is an emotive mix of love, loyalty, self-renewal, betrayal, jealousy all set against the Depression era giving us such an intense backdrop for this Key West novel.

Ernest Hemingway is living with wife number two in Key West when Mariella becomes the hired help. Ernest is called 'Papa' and he calls her 'daughter'. The two have an amazingly tantalizing relationship which you never know when they are going to take it to the next level. When she meets the war vet Gavin Murray, things turn into a sort of love triangle times two, and the almost twenty year old Mariella is forced to grow up or jeopardize all hopes of getting her family out of squalor.

The scenery of Florida and the era of the sadness of the surviving war veterans of the Great War were depcited so very well. The storyline was imaginative yet with so many moving parts of Gavin's life, Mariella's familial struggles, Hemingway's struggles with everything.. the disdain of the locals.. the entire thing was so put together in a perfect little package that I can happily say I told you so when I gushed in my review of her last book.

Hemingway's Girl is so rich with its atmospheric tone it will pull you in with the monstrous waves of the Hurricane that swept through Florida, and you will want to make sure you set aside enough time at night to get to the end because you will NOT want to put it down during the last seventy pages or so. And have a box of tissues, because I was sobbing. I adored these characters, all of them, that I cared deeply about them before the book was done. Perfectly fantastic storytelling in this treasure of a novel. Erika Robuck should make Hemingway proud by using him in this way. (wink wink - you'll understand that line when you read it).

An intriguing look at an eccentric character of history

The Shadow Queen: A Novel of Wallis Simpson, Duchess of Windsor by Rebecca Dean
Crown Publishing; August 14, 2012
Fiction/Historical/Biographical/Literary
Review copy from publisher, thank you!
Burton Book Review Rating: 3.5 stars

After seeing the movie Wallis and Edward 2005 movie (Joely Richardson = uber-tastic!), I was intrigued by this woman and the romance that rocked the monarchy. How freaking awesome is it that you can snag a king, and have him love you SO much that he will walk away from the throne for you?? Henry VIII wishy-washiness this is not. This is True Love. Of course, Brits may not think it so romantic, but hey, I'm a Texan.

The novel brings us the dramatized story of Wallis Simpson before she was a Simpson. She was born Bessie Wallis Warfield and the novel opens up to her coming into this world. The author re-imagines Wallis' life and creates fictional characters as well as fictionalizing the historical characters of Wallis' life. We go through her childhood and her schooling days, learning of her family and her eccentric mom Alice. Uncle Sol holds the purse strings, and high society is a stone's throw away with the help of Uncle Sol. A major character and driving force of Wallis herself were the fictionalized characters of John Jasper and Pamela Denby. These were major players in the novel, and since they are fictional this should give you an idea of how much this novel relies on historical accuracy.

There are rumors surrounding Wallis and her sex life, and they are given an adequate representation here. As a fictional story I appreciated the author's representation of Wallis in her novel, but I will be looking for the facts elsewhere such as with The Windsor Story. There were several eye rolling moments with descriptions of Wallis, but not enough to make me not enjoy the story.


While hearing enough of the physical descriptions of Wallis, I loved the characterization of Wallis, as her enthusiasm and joie de vivre was evident and well portrayed. Just looking at an older photo of Wallis, we really can imagine the exuberance and vitality of a young lady, and the author captures the spirit of the photo shown through her telling of Wallis' early years. Soon enough, Wallis is married - but not to the royal guy we are eager for her to meet. She marries an aviator.. and that doesn't work out so well.. she goes to China.. she marries again.. and we reach the end of the story and finally the one dream that Wallis holds on to actually occurs.

Wallis constantly thinks of Prince Edward throughout the novel, and doesn't have many chances to meet him. She doesn't become the Duchess of Windsor in the novel, which is a source of disappointment since we were expecting the juicy tidbits of the love between the two. Instead, we are sort of left wanting more once the book ends. Turns out, there is a sequel in the works. Oh. I wish I knew that beforehand, because there is nothing that I hate more than reading 400+ pages and still not getting to finish the story. When that sequel comes out, I will read it so that I can finish Wallis' story which I thought I was getting in the first place.

For this novel as a whole, there was still a bit of a feeling of being on the outside looking in when important things were going on in the world such as the war, and the Great Depression never really seemed to happen at all in the novel. Apparently it didn't affect Wallis at all. The China event barely happened either, and it would have been nice to feel a little more attached to Wallis although I certainly was able to admire her tenacity and drive. Rebecca Dean has a writing style that captivates, while it embraces the era. The Shadow Queen title should not have been used in this telling as it sets you up for disappointment, but it is still an intriguing fictional perspective at the woman she was before she met a King.

The author has written 37 novels according to her website under pennames Margaret Pemberton and Maggie Hudson, and four under Rebecca Dean. Read my review of  Palace Circle here.

13, rue Thérèse by Elena Mauli Shapiro
Hardcover, 278 pages
Published February 2nd 2011 by Hachette/Reagan Arthur Books
Review copy provided by publisher, thank you!
Burton Book Review Rating:



This book is a visual delight. Photos of correspondence, photos of the people discussed, a treasure hunt of a puzzle. The writing is another intriguing factor.. flits in and out of "present" and the past.. which could either be construed as a confusing mess or instead a fun jaunt into adventure unlike any other book you've read. The entire premise is original and rare, and I embrace it.

This is one of those books that to review it without spoiling the delight for the new reader is very difficult, as each little discovery of the plot and the people were slowly unwrapped via the narration as we peruse the contents of a mysterious box. I shall not spoil it. There are many themes here, from family loyalty and trust, marriage and infidelity, war and its dizzying effects, and finally a bit of time travel or reincarnation or spiritualism that just may be the definition of whether you enjoy or hate this book. And the fact that there is infidelity which brings explicit sexual content could go either way: love it or hate it.

For me, I normally dislike abundance of sex. And I certainly do not promote infidelity, nor do I do so now. It was not full of sex scenes, but full of thoughts of them. In a cemetery, in the hallway, etc. And still, this book as a package, was a winner for me, for the sheer unconventionality of it all. I loved the different visuals of  memorabilia: the jewelry, postcards, letters, and photos as they were examined piece by piece in the story. I loved the very different and very creative way the story played itself out. And in the very end, there is a 'twist' that could make you exclaim "how contrived!".. but it could also shiver you with delight with its ingenuity.

13, rue Thérèse by Elena Mauli Shapiro spoke to the vintage lover in me, the creative side of me, the French language lover in me and to the mystery lover in me. The history of the family behind the artifacts was an intriguing story, as was the story of the narrator himself, Trevor Stratton. Trevor himself was a bit annoying to me. His documentation (with footnotes!) to whom he was writing was not apparent to the very end, and the very end.. was.. you'll have to read it to see... but I dropped a star because of it. And yet, eccentricities are alive, and if your mind is feeling open today, you should open 13, rue Thérèse as well.

There is an intriguing website with some of the images from the book, and I even had fun using the iPhone QR code reader at the back of the book. You'll have to check it out!