Okay, so these two books are about as different as you can get…yet I read and enjoyed them both in the last couple weeks. What can I say? I like to read broadly.

Lynette Eason‘s Nowhere to Turn is a page-turner of a romantic suspense. Danielle Harding just wants to escape her abusive husband. The day she has the courage to flee, he’s killed. She believes her problems are over and she can begin to build a life for herself and her twelve-year-old deaf son. But she’s wrong. In some ways her problems are multiplying. The book became a page-turner of a race to figure out who was after her. Trouble comes from many directions. And she has something that somebody dangerous wants. The problem is she has no idea what that is. The body count builds as the tension ratchets up chapter by chapter. There’s also a realistic romance that builds over the weeks of the chase.

There is also a spiritual thread of letting go of the past. Of being willing to trust God with the future and move into what He has for us without the heavy chains of the past tugging us backward.

Lynette Eason is an author who I think gets better with every book. Each new one I seem to race through faster than the prior books. At this rate, the next one will disappear in the blink of an eye!

Betsy is a sweet friend that I’ve loved getting to know over the last couple years. She’s written several books for Love Inspired, but I have to admit this is the first of hers I’ve read.

Isn’t the cover perfect? How could I not read the book — though if the cupcake had come with it, it would have been even better! This is a story of finding your way and coming into your own. Of growing out of the shadows of those around you and learning what you truly want. It’s of stretching wings and coming home. Of letting go and discovering who you truly are.  All of this in a story filled with cupcakes, reality TV, and a high school football game. Small town America and big city lights. It’s a story that will keep you coming back to participate in two people discovering how their dreams cam merge as they both become willing to give them up for the other.

Occasionally you might want to yell to Kat and Lucas to just sit down and talk. But at the same time, it’s easy to understand why they can’t, don’t and won’t.

I really enjoyed this story and hope the characters reappear in a future book. Highly recommend it for those who love a sweet story with surprising depth.