Skip Rock Shallows - Jan Watson

GENRE: HISTORICAL ROMANCE

PUBLISHER: TYNDALE

PUBLICATION DATE: JUNE 01, 2012

RATING: 7 OUT OF 10 – GOOD

PROS: Heroine is a doctor in a period when this was uncommon; easy and relaxing read; engaging secondary characters and setting

CONS: Took a while to get interested in the story due to slow pace; story often skips large periods of time; romance wasn’t convincing

Despite her fiancé’s disapproval, Doctor Lilly Corbett decides to spend the first six months after graduating from medical school in Boston interning at a rural coal camp in Skip Rock, Kentucky. While her beau, Paul Hamilton, can’t understand why anyone would want to leave the city where he spent most of his life, the part of Kentucky that Lilly grew up in wasn’t all that different from Skip Rock. But no matter how similar an upbringing she had, nothing can prepare her for the reception that awaits her in Skip Rock. The miners believe that a woman in the mines is bad luck, and even the women are reticent to accept her as a trained medical professional. The doctor she was meant to be training with has died just days before she arrived, and to begin with, Lilly can’t wait for her internship to be over. But as she spends more time caring for the people of Skip Rock – setting broken limbs, birthing babies, trekking across rivers for house calls and even stitching up a cow – Lilly becomes accepted as a member of the community, especially when it is revealed that she has relatives there. As she develops a fledging relationship with the mysterious Joe Repp, who bears a striking resemblance to a boy Lilly grew up with, and makes friends with many of the inhabitants of Skip Rock, Lilly can’t help but want to stay in this town and help these people. When she’s offered the chance to remain in Skip Rock after her internship finishes, Lilly has a difficult choice to make – does she do the sensible thing and return to Boston to marry the reliable Paul, or take her chances on Skip Rock and a man with a fake name who is in the town under false pretences?

Considering how many historical romances are released by the CBA every year, you’d think that I’d get bored of this genre, or that authors would run out of original ideas. I’ll admit, every now and then I read a book that seems just a little bit too similar to something I’ve already read, but novels like Skip Rock Shallows prove that authors are not running out of steam when it comes to making their characters unique. Yes, a female doctor has been done before by Mary Connealy, but Doctor in Petticoats and Skip Rock Shallows couldn’t be more different. If Skip Rock Shallows reminded me of anything in particular, it was the writing of Janette Oke. The plot was very slow moving, and not as structured as more recent historical novels, often moving from one episode to another rather than having a particular arc or direction it was heading in. While this isn’t a style of writing that I’m particularly fond of – I prefer more structure to my novels – it did make for an easy, relaxing read. If Oke’s continued popularity has anything to suggest, a lot of readers will be pleased that Skip Rock Shallows contains some of the elements of the older novels in this genre. While I wasn’t aware that Skip Rock Shallows was part of a series until I started reading, I didn’t have any trouble getting to know the characters, and necessary details from other books are summarised without detracting from the current story. I don’t think that you have to read the other Copper Brown novels before starting Skip Rock Shallows, but I’m definitely intrigued to see whether they have the same relaxed pace as this book.

The pacing of the Skip Rock Shallows did make it hard to for me to really become involved in the story to start with. This was an incredibly easy novel to read, but it wasn’t the sort that grabbed my attention within the first few chapters. Initially, it was very easy to put down, and the story didn’t really becoming gripping towards the end of the novel when a mining accident occurred. That said, I did enjoy reading about Lilly’s house calls and the people she met in Skip Rock. All of the secondary characters were engaging and none of them felt like cardboard cut-outs, as can often happen when an author introduces a lot of background characters. I also enjoyed reading about the setting of Skip Rock, and while I found it difficult to imagine the mines, Lilly’s explorations of the wildlife were much more visual. Skip Rock definitely felt real to me by the time I finished this book

Sometimes I found it hard to grasp how Lilly’s character was developing, mainly because the story would skip several weeks or months at a time. While the reader was always told how long had passed since the last chapter, I wasn’t particularly fond of this style of storytelling. It often meant that we were told how friendships had progressed during that time and I sometimes felt that I was missing out on witnessing certain developments. Lucy’s relationship with Joe was similarly treated. They engaged in a couple of conversations – even Lucy and Paul spoke more over the course of the novel, and he spent the majority of it in Boston – and then a few chapters later were declaring their love for each other. (This is a romance novel, so I’m not spoiling the plot. If you don’t know that Lucy and Joe are going to fall for each other from reading the synopsis, you’re probably not too familiar with this genre). I liked Lucy and I liked Joe, but I just wasn’t convinced by the progression of their relationship. There were hints that they’d known each other as children and that meeting again made them fall in love, but I just didn’t buy it. It was far too much “love at first sight” for my liking. I’m afraid the way the romantic aspect of this book was approached was its biggest downfall for me. I wished that Lilly and Joe had spent more time together and really convinced me of their love, but ultimately, I didn’t find their professions of love genuine and this stopped me from really caring about whether they’d get together by the end of the book.  

If you’re looking for a book that will grab you from the first page and keep you gripped with suspense and anticipation, Skip Rock Shallows definitely isn’t the one for you. Rather, I’d say this is a good book to read if you know you can’t commit to reading more than a few chapters at the time. It’s easy to put down and later reimmerse yourself in Lilly’s doctoring and explorations of Skip Rock. Lilly’s profession, as well as some of the more unusual characters in the town, were what made this novel really stand out for me, and why I’d recommend it in spite of my personal opinions on the writing style. While I was disappointed in how rushed Lilly and Joe’s relationship was, Skip Rock Shallows is still worth reading for the mining and doctoring details and the secondary characters. 

Review title provided by Tyndale.

The Shadow of Your Smile - Susan May Warren

GENRE: CONTEMPORARY 
PUBLISHER: TYNDALE HOUSE 
PUBLICATION DATE: JANUARY 01, 2012 
RATING: 8 OUT OF 10 - VERY GOOD

PROS: Part of a series but each novel is a standalone; made me care enough about the characters that I cried during flashback scenes; unputdownable! 

CONS: There was a lot of drama going on for such a small, seemingly peaceful town; it seemed like this family had everything possibly going against them. 

Following a trauma that recently rocked their family, Eli and Noelle’s marriage is on the rocks. Eli has no idea what his wife gets up to when he’s out of the house, and now that he’s a retired cop he spends most of his time ice-fishing in order to avoid his family. Noelle is on the brink of making a decision that could tear her family apart when she’s involved in an accident that causes her to forget the last twenty-five years of her life. She wakes up in a hospital bed thinking she’s still at college, and she has no idea who Eli is and no recollection of their marriage or children. Eli realises that God has given him a second chance, the opportunity to get his marriage back on track. But can he make Noelle fall in love with him again before she figures out why their marriage went south in the first place? 

I make no secret of the fact that my guilty pleasure when it comes to novels is amnesia plots. Amnesia, snowbound and babies have to be my favourite romantic plot devices; but The Shadow of Your Smile isn’t exactly a romance novel. While Eli gets the chance to reromance his wife, this book also contains the stories of how Noelle’s family members and friends react to her amnesia; how it brings some of them together and pushes others apart. This novel reminded me of a modern day family saga, a Christian version of a Barbara Delinsky novel, where the reactions of family, friends and an entire town are detailed in relation to a dramatic event. In The Shadow of Your Smile we not only witness how Eli and Noelle come to reconcile their relationship, but also how their son, Kyle, a new cop, reacts to the incident that caused his mother’s amnesia and his relationship with his sister’s best friend, Emma. Emma’s mother is also heavily involved in the events in this book, as not only Noelle’s best friend but in her dangerously close relationship to Eli. 

I wasn’t sure whether I’d enjoy reading about a couple whose marriage had deteriorated after twenty-five years. I’m getting married in less than six months and I remember my experience of reading the first few chapters of Rob Parson’s The Sixty Minute Marriage, where I bawled to my fiancé about how there were all of these horrible things that could go wrong with our marriage. Sometimes you’re just not in the right frame of mind for reading about a topic close to your heart. But in this case, I was able to enjoy The Shadow of Your Smile without panicking about the “What Ifs?” presented in the novel. While this book deals with a lot of tough topics, it’s also very easy to read. The problems that the characters encounter are very realistic ones and the characters are so down-to-earth and normal that they could be your next-door-neighbours. This was my first experience with the Deep Haven series but the town really came alive to me in this book and I think that the setting of this novel will make readers feel at home, whether this is the first book in the series that they’ve read or the sixth. 

That said, I did feel a bit disorientated when I first began reading The Shadow of Your Smile. It was as if I’d been dropped right into the middle of Deep Haven and Eli and Noelle’s lives. It took a bit of adjusting to get used to all of the relationships and histories between the characters, and there were incidents in Eli and Noelle’s lives that were vaguely mentioned several times and it took me a while to finally figure out what had happened to push them apart. I actually went online and looked up the other Deep Haven novels to see whether there had been a previous novel about this family and whether I was missing some important details about their lives. When I realised that all of the other books focused on completely different characters I started to wonder whether Susan had deliberately made The Shadow of Your Smile disorientating for the reader in order to make them sympathise with Noelle’s amnesia. To be honest, I was as confused as Noelle was in the opening chapters of the novel, and this made reading the book an even more interesting experience. As I figured out the missing pieces of Noelle’s life, so did Noelle. To any readers of the novel who may be confused to begin with, I urge you not to give up – this book is definitely worth all of the figuring out that you have to do! 

However, there were some sections of the book that I didn’t find quite so compelling. While Kyle and Emma’s romance was sweet and endearing, it was also rather predictable. It was a nice side-story but as much as I tried, I never could really relate to Emma. I also had an issue with the fact that Kyle and his and Emma’s fathers were all police officers and quite strong, manly characters; at times it seemed as if the author was trying to make working in the police force seem especially noble. While there are flashbacks and comments from Eli that stress that he doesn’t think that a career in the police is worth the harm is can bring to a family, at other times the book almost glamorized police work and placed it on a pedestal. I know a couple of police officers and do respect their work, but I got a bit tired of the fact that all of the main characters in the book who had jobs were police officers. And considering how small a town Deep Haven seemed to be, there always seemed to be a lot drama and crime taking place. While some of the events in the story were necessary to bring the plot to where it stood at the start of the novel, I couldn’t help but wonder whether the crime rate in Deep Haven was entirely typical. It was one of those experiences where you’re reading a book and find yourself wondering, “Could anything else possibly happen to these poor characters?” 

Despite my misgivings with the level of drama in this book, Susan May Warren also made me truly care about her characters. I finished reading this book on Christmas Day and was dabbing at my tears as Eli remembered his daughter’s accident. While this book had its flaws and didn’t have that special something that pushed its rating up to a 9 or 10, it was still a thoroughly enjoyable read. And while I will admit that this was an easy novel to breeze through in a couple of days, it had so much food for thought. It’s not possible to come away from this novel without musing over some point or another. I will definitely be going back and reading more of the Deep Haven books, and encourage fans of family sagas and contemporary fiction to start with The Shadow of Your Smile and do the same. 

Review title provided by Tyndale House.