Top 5 Books of the Year (FFF Day 6)

Aaaahh!!! The very last of the Five Fall Favorites posts for this year…

Today we’re doing my five favorite books I’ve read this year. This was…definitely pretty hard to come up with and narrow it down for, but I decided to (try) not to overthink it and just go with the first ones that came to mind. Here you are, in no particular order.

1. Lighten Our Darkness by Sarah Brazytis

This one…this one. I thought I loved Dunstan by Sarah Brazytis, but this was entirely different. I don’t know if I knew entirely what I was getting into, besides, I knew multiple friends who really loved it and had said I needed to read it and when it went on sale I knew I was ready to snatch it up and read it.

I loved the look at everyday life in Britain during WWII. I thought the perspective on the Polish pilots was super interesting and unique. I liked that the characters were vivid and that the book was well-written and well-done. But mostly I loved it because it was soo sweet and beautiful and priceless and unique.

2. Dewdrops and Butterflies by Libby May

I love this one. I originally read this one when I had a KU trial, but…well, it may sound weird, but I missed it so I went ahead and bought it because I wanted to read it again. Originally, the first time I read this, I had no idea what it was about. I was nearing the end of my KU trial and had just started reading it since and figured if it hooked me in a few minutes I’d keep reading, if not I’d find something else.

But it seriously didn’t just hook me…I love this book so much. It blew me out of the water from the beginning, and now it just has its own special hold on my heart. It’s just so raw and…utterly beautiful.

3. KEY by Madisyn Carlin

I read a lot of Madisyn Carlin’s book this year, so I had a lot of trouble narrowing it down to this one. I think a lot of the themes and the struggles of the characters hit home, and this was just a very well-written beautiful, real-feeling story. It’s saying something that I didn’t even like one of the main characters all that much (and most people would, I just didn’t), and it still makes it onto my top five books of this entire year that I’ve read. I love this book. These characters, this series…it’s where it’s at. You gotta read it.

4. Wherever He Leads by Rebekah Morris

This is another one of my favorites I’ve read so far. It was a relatable, sweet story and while I can’t quite put my finger on why I feel like it needs to be up here in the top 5 favorites, it…does. It was a very Rebekah Morris story. A little slow, filled with truth, wrapped up well. One of my favorite Rebekah Morris stories, too, I think.

5. This Life of Mine by Victoria Lynn

When I read the first book in this series, Once I Knew, I liked it fine but it wasn’t so much my thing, and the parts where the plot was mostly romance I was mostly bored. This one was a little different. It was more raw, more tangible, more subtly beautiful. I liked the real, mostly relatable characters in Once I Knew, but for the characters in this book…I needed to know their story, not just from the beginning but for the whole book. The emotions, the stories each character wove into the book weren’t just relatable, but they felt real and completely authentic and raw, in all their brokenness and hurt and doubts, but also in their joy and healing. My heart hurt and then healed with the characters for this one. It was good. (Even if I thought the wolf was weird at first.)


And there we have it…my last post for Five Fall Favorites this year! Make sure to check out the host blog @onceuponanordinary.wordpress.com/blog/ to read about Kate’s favorite books of this year! 😁

What’ve been your favorite books this year? Did you have a favorite category of fall favorites you enjoyed the most?

Top 5 Library Finds (FFF Day 1)

Hello, and welcome to day 1 of the Five Fall Favorites bookish blog party! Today’s category is library finds, which was surprisingly (or not so surprising) difficult to narrow down, given at least half, if not the majority of the books I read are from the library. I tried to narrow it down a little to books I found at the library, or was at least pleasantly surprised to find my library had.

1. Whose Waves These Are by Amanda Dykes

*sighs* I love this book so much…the cover is beautiful, the writing is beautiful, the story is beautiful. It just feels…so real and beautiful. This is the book I think of whenever I think of prose that weaves a story bit by bit, pulling the threads together. It feels like a rather ordinary story in a way, but it’s just so…beautiful and well-written for lack of better words to describe it.

I had heard about this one for a while and was wandering the library thinking vaguely of what last names authors I might consider reading had, as I ran my pointer finger along the alphabetized library labels. I’m surprised I even remembered Dykes as one at the time, but I was so happy when I saw it was there. A lot of time my library only has the books I want in ebook format, but for this one, it was so nice to see that cover on real paper and to just hold and read it in a solid, real-life state.

2. Ginger Pye by Eleanor Estes

This one was such a fun, random find! I think I was just meandering around the children’s fiction section and saw how fun the cover looked and well…that it was about a dog, and figured I may as give it a try, being a dog person and all. I didn’t have all that high of expectations for it but I ended up loving it so much. So sweet and fun.

3. The Way It Should Be by Christina Suzann Nelson

I think I originally found this one casually scrolling through the Christy Award finalists, which is normally not how I find books. The synopsis drew me in immediately, so on a whim, I looked it up on my library website, discovered the ebook was available. and started reading.

It was so much more than what I had expected from the semi-ordinary still-life-painting style cover. It was deep. It was hard. It was gracious. It did an excellent job taking a lot of very real, honest stories and pulling them into a compelling story. The characters very well could have been real. There are, at least, real people who exist who would be in many, many ways like the characters in this contemporary story. Some rough subjects and some beautiful subjects sort of wove their way through this book…drug abuse, foster care, goats, domestic violence/abuse, gardening, struggling to want the calling God gives, grief, struggling to let go of the dreams you thought you could pursue, puppies, feeling stuck between choosing your family or what it seems God has called you to, hard choices, harder choices, coming face to face with our own powerlessness in the face of temptation, and so on.

It was good, it was a touch convicting, it was honest, it was beautiful, and I was sooo glad I had picked it up and read it despite the pretty, but semi-boring cover.

4. Story Peddler by Lindsay A. Franklin

I had seen this one around for a while before I finally bothered to look it up and discovered it my library had it in ebook format. I think solely the fact that it was from Enclave Publishing and the cover and synopsis were intriguing were what sold me to try it out.

It was great. I loved this whole series. I was a little skeptical about how the fantasy/magic side of things would swing when I saw some of the later covers for the series, but it won me over pretty fast. I loved the emphasis on the importance of stories and weaving light combined with the fantasy/kingdom element.

5. Cloak of Light by Chuck Black

This one I had heard about from several friends and then finally a passing conversation with a new friend at my church convinced me to go ahead and see if my library had it.

I had read some Chuck Black before and I remember liking it, but didn’t think it was particularly high-quality writing or storytelling. This was different. I wasn’t sure what to expect when I really don’t read the genre very often at all, but I really liked this one and am looking forward to finishing the series!


And that’s a wrap!

(Did I re-get some of these from the library just to take pictures of them? Maaaybe…)

Make sure to check out the blog party host blog @ onceuponanordinary.wordpress.com/blog/ to hear about Kate’s favorite library finds and follow along with the rest of the Five Fall Favorites blog party and giveaway.

What’s the most interesting way you’ve found a book at the library? Have you ever been surprised by a book you got from the library or surprised to find a book at the library?

Life Update Summer 2023 + Five Fall Favorites

Hello.

I’ve had some recent posts, but it’s been a long while since I gave a real life update. Namely about The Thing that has occupied a very large portion of my life the last few years.

To start off, it would probably be good to give some kind of reintroduction to the person who’s been behind this blog for a good five and a half years.

Hi. I’m Faith. Y’all know me as a Christian farmgirl who tends to write posts surrounding either life on the farm, photography, or random musings on living life as a Christian. What y’all might not know is…I recently became a nurse.

I still love sunsets and photography. Mabel is still my sweet (but slightly older) bluetick coonhound. I’ve also got three cats now, one of which “runs” her own YouTube channel.

Farm life has for sure taken a backseat to nursing school and the rest of life the last few years, but it’s still a very large part of me.

So, hello. I’m Faith, a Christ-loving farmgirl, nurse, and blogger. I’m currently spending my life mostly regaining some much-needed balance and rest to my life, which feels really, really weird.

It’s…yeah, very strange (but kinda nice?) to actually have plenty of time to eat, sleep, read my Bible, exercise, and even have some kind of fun(?) almost every single day. At least without the threat of the summer, winter, or spring break coming crashing to an end at any moment. 😉

It’s been a hard few years getting here and I’m still trying to take in the fact that I actually have my RN now. It really, really wasn’t easy, but God has seriously carried me through this journey and given me the strength and encouragement I needed at every turn to make it through. I’m so thankful for all the friends (“real-life” and online), all my family, and every other random person who’s been there for me these last years, in all the lows and highs.

You can mostly expect to find my same mix of rambling thoughts and musings on life, farm life updates, and random bookish posts.

While I do tend to frequently find myself being consulted for all kinds of medical-related questions by writers for their characters and I’ve contemplated expanding into medical-accuracy-based beta reading/editing, I find myself sorely lacking in the experience, as yet, to really properly advise authors in that way. So while I may consider posting an occasional pointer on writing medical scenes accurately on my Instagram and may expand that realm as my experience as a nurse grows, I don’t know that it will affect this blog to any great extent for a bit, at any rate.


In other news, I’m very excited to be participating in Five Fall Favorites this year!

The last few years I’ve watched this super fun book/blog party from a slight distance (being somewhat submersed in nursing school and everything else), but I’ve always wanted to take part someday. I figured this year I would just participate more closely and then actually take part as a blog another year, but a friend encouraged me to dive in and take advantage of my current free time, so I went ahead and decided to join! The categories are super fun this year, so I’m really glad I did.

If you’ve never heard of the Five Fall Favorites Blog Party, it goes like so.

September 25th-30th

Daily book categories. Daily posts where I (and the other bloggers) choose five of our favorite books from the category for the day.

Hosted by the lovely Kate (Willis) Hoppman at onceuponanordinary.wordpress.com

Fall-themed, lots and lots of fun, and will leave you with tons of book recs.

Thou art invited! Follow along here and I’ll link back to the host’s blog every day, or just follow along straight from Once Upon an Ordinary.

I thiiink that’s all. Feel free to share the fun about the Five Fall Favorites on your own blog or social media.

I’ll be back on the 25th-30th for book stuff and more later whenever I’ve got thoughts to share.


“Now to him who is able to keep you from stumbling and to present you blameless before the presence of his glory with great joy, to the only God, our Savior, through Jesus Christ our Lord, be glory, majesty, dominion, and authority, before all time and now and forever. Amen.”

-Jude 24-25 (ESV)