Mama Bear Reviews

I love cookbooks! There is something that is just so wonderful about reading pages and pages of yummy inspiration. I received a copy of The New American Heart Association Cookbook . This is the 9th edition and it was just released last month. The cookbook has a helpful section in the beginning dedicated to healthy eating. There are a lot of great tips as to the foods that we should be incorporating more of in our diets and those that we should be avoiding. After this section the book is separated into the normal cookbook sections by dish. With my personal diet it can be difficult to find a cookbook that has recipes that I would actually be able to eat. My favorite part about this book is that not only are all of the recipes healthy, but there is a huge section devoted to vegetarian dishes. This can be rare to find with most cookbooks but this is full of wonderful options. The only downside of this book that I found is that there are no pictures of recipes other than those on the cove...

I received a copy of A Name Unknown by Roseanna M. White from Bethany House Publishers. This was my first time reading within the genre of historical Christian fiction and I really enjoyed this book! Rosemary is hired on by the secret Mr. V to find out whether or not Peter Holstein may be a traitor to London. Rosemary with the help of Mr. V, poses as a librarian to gain entrance into Mr. Holstein's home. She finds herself searching through mountains of books and correspondence as she forms a friendship with Mr. Holstein. Many parts of Peter Holstein remain a mystery, such as what it is he does at the typewriter all day, but Rosemary must find out the truth about him to support her family. I really enjoyed the friendship that formed between Peter and Rosemary. I also loved that Rosemary, a girl that has struggled just to survive her whole life, was able to find out who she really was and question if she was on the right path. The historical component of this story was ...

I have been on a bit of a historical romance kick. Ok, more like a Lisa Kleypas kick. In the past week I have read 8 of her books. This all started because I saw Devil in Spring  on the shelf of new reads at the library. This book was actually released in February, so I am a bit behind. Reading this book, I remembered how much I love the stories and characters that Kleypas creates. I first fell in love with her writing with the Friday Harbor series which actually aren't historical. Most of her other books however are historical romance so she helped me dive right in to this genre. Devil in Spring is the third book in the Ravenels series. I started with this one and went back and read one and two. I think they can easily be read out of order but I did have a strong temptation to re-read the third book after I had a better understanding of all of the characters. One thing that I really loved with this series were the forward thinking characters for the time period. The third s...

I have only been reading historical romance novels for the past couple of years. I am not sure why it took so long for me to get into this genre but it is one that I go to often. Julia Quinn is one of my favorites for this genre. Her latest book, The Girl With the Make-Believe Husband was another hit. The story was reminiscent of the Sandra Bullock movie, While You Were Sleeping. Except in this story, the main characters have built up a bit of a relationship over time through letters. Edward wakes up after being out for some time due to a war injury to be told that he is married to his best friends sister Cecilia. Cecilia has however only claimed to be his wife so that she could help nurse him back to health when she was told that only family was allowed to visit. I loved the continuation of the Rokesbys series and I can't wait until the next one comes out to read all about Andrew!