Rutabaga's Reads 2025: Part 9

Having just published my second YA compilation post, if you know my blog and me at all, you already expect that a second Christian/inspirational fiction post is not far behind. Here is the second Christian/inspirational fiction post of 2025.

Meeting Her Match (July 16, 2024) by Jen Turano.

<This is the third and final novel in a series.>

Renowned matchmaker, influential member of the New York Four Hundred and an Incomparable during her Season, Miss Camilla Pierpont has vowed to never marry after a devastating heartbreak years ago. After she’s nearly abducted along the Hudson River as she’s with Lottie McBriar, her recently hired paid companion, she’s rescued by a broad, outspoken man who annoys her when he calls her a “little lady,” and she assumes he’s working with the would-be abductors. When it turns out he isn’t, looking the worse for wear after a tussle with an angry mama raccoon (a very exciting morning), Camilla learns that he knows Mr. Walter Townsend and has a note to prove it. This gentleman is Mr. Owen Chesterfield, and he’s there to convince Camilla to sponsor his sister, Miss Luella, and take her in hand. Owen, a businessman, owns Chesterfield Nail Manufacturing, which supplies almost the entire country with nails, but Camilla doubts she’ll be able to help his sister. When she receives a telegram that someone from her past is heading toward New York, and considering the unknown abductors, Camilla decides to travel in Owen’s Pullman car to Wheeling, West Virginia. She goes with stereotypical expectations, but acclimates well to the informal attitude of Owen’s hometown. She even whitewashes a fence and almost gets trampled by Esmerelda, Meemaw’s pig. As it were, danger follows her to West Virginia, and it could disrupt the most spectacular match of all: her own.

            Every time I read a Jen Turano story, I am filled with bubbly delight. The women in her stories are independent, the lead males sometimes bumbling but well-meaning (like Owen), and the antagonists are dastardly but always get their comeuppance. Camilla’s avoidance of a specific recipe is entertaining, as is Meemaw, and the humor throughout accentuates the propulsive narrative, its twists, the budding romance and the local vernacular of this area of the Ohio Valley. Like its predecessors in the series, this Gilded-Age period, Christian historical romance is wholesome, witty, spunky and fun.

            The Matchmakers Book One: A Match in the Making

            The Matchmakers Book Two: To Spark a Match

A Noble Scheme (Mar. 19, 2024) by Roseanna M. White.

<This is the second novel in a series.>

The Imposters have taken on a pro bono case. A young boy has been kidnapped, mistaken for his aristocratic cousin. Sidney Hart’s parents appealed to Mrs. Hart’s late sister’s husband, Lord Philmore Wilfred, but as it wasn’t his son who was kidnapped, he refused to help. Lord Wilfred is a coldhearted, cutthroat, querulous man who tends to see only dollar signs. As it stands, Horace Wilfred is determined to find a way to save his cousin, with or without his father’s help. This case brings Gemma Parks (known to London’s elite as renowned columnist G.M. Parker) and Graham Wharton in close working quarters. The first awful anniversary of a tragedy is approaching, and Gemma has spent that year avoiding Graham and casting vitriolic blame. He admits to his arrogance and his part in the tragedy. It’s pushed him away from God, from believing, but Graham is determined to win Gemma back. He’s only ever loved her. Together with the rest of the Imposters team, they’ll have to devise a noble scheme to rescue the boy, and hopefully, in the process, find the healing they both need.

            Despite the personal turmoil between Gemma and Graham, they have good hearts, just as all of the Imposters do. Money is tight, yet Yates doesn’t hesitate to take the case for free. Glamour resides alongside those in the aristocracy, but glamour is also used as a clever distraction. The second in The Imposters series is a Christian historical romance where not one, but both main characters need faith healing alongside forgiveness. Their emotions are still raw, making the story all the more realistic despite its Edwardian England setting. White’s stories are always quick to draw me in with their shrewd-but-imperfect characters, independent women and forward-moving plots. Immersive and compelling!

            Favorite lines: “Words were wily things – but they were miraculous too. They created, they shaped, they breathed life. God used them to form the universe, and Christ had come as a living Word to write Himself onto the hearts of humankind.” (p. 78)

            Book 1: A Beautiful Disguise

Target Acquired (Aug. 20, 2024) by Lynette Eason.

<This is the second novel in a series.>

Growing up the youngest with three brothers, Kenzie King had to be tough in a household where their mom died when she was a young teen, and their father made everything a competition. Now in her 30s, she’s worked harder than any of the men to prove she belongs on the SWAT team as a tactical medic and the only woman. SWAT team leader Cole Garrison has known Kenzie since she was a kid, as he’s good friends with her brother, Logan. He knows she’s the better qualified candidate; she even carries M.D. behind her name, but not everyone agrees that she’s the best choice. In fact, someone is trying to kill her, going so far as to demand that she quit the team. And if one of her teammates is injured in the crossfire, so be it. Does someone on the team want her off of it so badly that he’ll keep trying to kill her and ambush the team? As if the stress of that isn’t enough, her dad has laid a bombshell on her, and the truth of that past and a further past may have a surprising connection to the here and now.

            A Christian romantic suspense novel, the next in the Lake City Heroes series teems with grit, secrets, past hurts and present-day turmoil. The necessity for the characters to think on their feet aids in the quick pacing of the story. It’s suspenseful and zippy, sometimes biting and emotional, but it’s steered by steadfast faith, lighthearted moments and the support of strong friendships. Eason effortlessly manages to write a contemporary novel with flashback snippets to 1947, weaving a past that has implications in the present.

            Book One: Double Take