Thursday, April 23, 2015

Review: The World Needs More Love Letters

The World Needs More Love Letters
All-in-one stationary and envelopes
by Hannah Brencher

The World Needs More Love Letters is a stationary pad with forty pages of stationary that fold into envelopes. It also comes with wafer seals to close off the sides of the letter. It's a cute idea and I'm excited to use it to write some letters! It's sad how hardly anyone writes letters anymore, so this is a nice way to get people back into letter writing. It also has suggestions for what you could write if you're having trouble thinking of what to write yourself. I've always loved stationary, so of course I had to get this. My only complaint is that it said it came with forty "gorgeous" pages, so I thought the paper would be a bit prettier, but there are only five different designs and they are not what I would call "gorgeous", in dull shades of lime green, red, white and gray. But aside from that, a cute idea and neat little pad of stationary!





I received this book of stationary for free from the publisher in exchange for my honest review.

Sunday, April 12, 2015

Book Review: Where Treetops Glisten

Where Treetops Glisten
Three Stories of Heartwarming Courage and Christmas Romance During World War II
by Tricia Goyer, Cara Putman & Sarah Sundin

The crunch of newly fallen snow, the weight of wartime. Siblings forging new paths and finding love in three stories, filled with the wonders of Christmas.

Turn back the clock to a different time, listen to Bing Crosby sing of sleigh bells in the snow, as the realities of America's involvement in the Second World War change the lives of the Turner family in Lafayette, Indiana.
In Cara Putman's White Christmas, Abigail Turner is holding down the Home Front as a college student and a part-time employee at a one-of-a-kind candy shop. Loss of a beau to the war has Abigail skittish about romantic entanglements---until a hard-working young man with a serious problem needs her help.
Abigail's brother Pete is a fighter pilot here returned from the European Theatre in Sarah Sundin's I'll Be Home for Christmas, trying to recapture the hope and peace his time at war has eroded. But when he encounters a precocious little girl in need of Pete's friendship, can he convince her widowed mother that he's no longer the bully she once knew?
In Tricia Goyer's Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas, Meredith Turner, "Merry" to those who know her best, is using her skills as a combat nurse on the frontline in the Netherlands. Halfway around the world from home, Merry never expects to face her deepest betrayal head on, but that's precisely what God has in mind to redeem her broken heart. 
The Turner family believes in God's providence during such a tumultuous time. Can they absorb the miracle of Christ's birth and His plan for the future?

I got this book hoping I could read it around Christmastime, but it didn't arrive until just a few days before Christmas, I believe. I started reading it right away but didn't have time to read all of it before Christmas, so I've slowly been making my way through it since. I did put it aside for a while to finish another book, and then picked it up again a month or so ago. It was good for what it is---three novellas centered around Christmas. I don't normally go for Christmas stories as they tend to be a bit cheesy in my opinion, but I thought this one might be good because of the time period it takes place. Each of the stories were short and sweet, but nothing too incredible. I found the first one to be a bit boring because it dealt mostly with this guy's money problems, but the second one I really liked. It was more interesting and I guess I liked that author's writing style the best out of the three. I thought I'd like the third story because it sounded like it'd have more action and be a bit more interesting... but it actually ended up being a bit boring as well, and seemed to repeat a lot of things and focused way too much on people talking and sitting around thinking about things rather than doing things, which is much more interesting in my opinion! So overall a quaint little read if you want something cozy to read around Christmas time, but certainly not something you HAVE to read.


I received this book for free from Waterbrook Press in exchange for my honest review.