I enjoyed a couple
of the stories, Stormy Weather and Falling for Love, but wasn’t
too keen on King of Hearts and Silent Nights.
Stormy
Weather takes place in the
spring and is about a widow, Gina Bowden, and her young son, Danny. Danny’s Cub Scout leader, Gary Cameron, is a
widower. This is a sweet story and the
characters are very likable. Gina tries
to make up for being a single mom, but finds that she needs help when her son
has been assigned a project for Cub Scouts.
Gary is willing to help and they develop a comfortable and caring
relationship. I appreciated the faith
and trust that both Gina and Gary had in the wake of losing their spouses.
I found King
of Hearts to be an odd story.
Elise Jost received bad news that she was just shy of having the credits
she needed to graduate from college. As
a result, she would need to take one class during summer school. The one class that fit her schedule was
Renaissance Appreciation taught by Dr. Ian Hunter. Elise is less than pleased about taking the class,
partly because of a required assignment at the end of the semester. Elise’s attitude was crummy and there was
very little in her behavior that displayed Christian faith. This story may not have aged well. Back in the day, Renaissance fairs were very
common and folks had an interest in them. Today, this story come across as kind of weird
and at times almost creepy. One
character was introduced that seemed to be there for no other reason than to
put a damsel in distress that needed to be rescued. Overall, I found the story very odd.
Falling For Love is the newest
story and was very likeable. Nice characters who were kind and caring. Karen Jacobs, a widow, owns the old family
farm and lives there with her mother Meredith.
Karen is contacted by her cousin Marlene who hopes that her mother,
Lettie, might be able to come and live with Karen. Over the coming days, Karen’s two other aunts,
Helen and Rachel, contact her to see if they too might be able to come live
with them. Thankfully the house set up where
the downstairs area would work well as a home for all four sisters. Work needs to be done to make things ready
for the aging family members. Karen
contacts someone from church, Dan Polk, who can help with the project. This was one of my favorite stories. The sacrificial love and kindness Karen
demonstrates by inviting her family to come live with them is refreshing. The developing relationship between Dan and
Karen was sweet. The characters demonstrated
their Christian faith. I very much liked
this story.
Silent
Nights was the story I
liked least. Lynn Murphy and her attitude
and actions did not display Christian faith, nor did her husband Frank. They have issues in their marriage which need
to be worked out. While acknowledging that
God does not like divorce, Lynn leaves home because her husband heading out of
town again on business trip and their anniversary trip will need to be
rescheduled. Lynn goes to stay with her grandfather
Omar Lewiston, but doesn’t even leave a note for her husband to let him know where
she is at. I liked the grandfather, he
was kind, caring and displayed some wisdom.
The characters’ change and development was not really handled well. I did not like the characters, nor their attitudes
and the Christian faith was not evident in their lives. Then suddenly, things changed and the story
ends, but how and why they changed wasn’t well developed. Perhaps this story would have been somewhat
better as a full-length novel where the characters could have been better developed.
A couple of the
stories, Stormy Weather and Falling for Love, were enjoyable and
had likable characters and the characters displayed more mature Christian
faith. King of Hearts and Silent
Nights fell short.
Would I recommend Love
Through the Seasons by Tracie Peterson? If you like Tracie’s writing you may want to
read these stories. It was nice to read
shorter story format and some of the stories were enjoyable. But the short story format may not work well
for some of the storylines.
I would like to thank Barbour Publishing and NetGalley for the opportunity to read a complimentary copy of Love Through the Seasons by Tracie Peterson. I was under no obligation to give a favorable review.
