It’s time to look at the books I read in March!
In the Woods by Tana French
★★★★.75
In the summer of 1984, in a small suburb outside of Dublin, three children were playing outside, and they go into the woods, just like they did every day. One afternoon, three mothers call their children home for dinner, but no one comes out of the woods. Police go in to perform a search, and only one child is found. Adam Ryan was found terrified, clinging to a tree, scratches on his back, and blood-stained shoes, but did not remember anything.
More than twenty years later, twelve-year-old Katy Devlin is murdered in those same woods. Adam has since changed his name to Rob and is a detective on the Murder Squad. He has kept his past a secret, but as he and his partner Cassie are assigned to Katy’s murder, he starts seeing similarities between his friends’ disappearance and the current murder case. Soon, his repressed memories start coming back and become intense at times, but they help “guide” him. Rob and Cassie are soon uncovering both the unsolved disappearance from Rob’s past and the current case of Katy’s murder.
I really enjoyed this book. A murder mystery set in one of my bucket list locations? Count me in! So, who killed Katy? What happened to Adam/Rob’s friends all those years ago?
Becoming Free Indeed by Jinger Duggar Vuolo
★★★★★
Jinger Duggar Vuolo, of “19 Kids & Counting” and “Counting On” fame, recounts how she was raised to follow Bill Gothard’s Basic Life Principles and believed that if she followed those rules outlined, she would be successful and have God’s favor. She believed it so much that she even promoted this lifestyle, and wrote a bestseller about those convictions with three of her sisters.
In her early twenties, she gained a new brother-in-law, which led her to meet Jeremy Vuolo. Both men did not come from the same close-knit circle that the girls were from, but they were good Christian men, who were committed to the Bible. During their courtship, Jeremy studied Gothard’s principles in order to understand what Jinger believed. They would have discussions about the Bible when they would talk to each other, and Jinger started to realize that her life had been based on rules, not God’s Word. She began studying the Bible, working to truly understand it, and discovered that what she had always believed about God, obedience to His word, and holiness was not in line with what the Bible teaches. What Gothard was teaching was his own interpretation, and he used whatever scripture (or portion of scripture) to back up his rule, and it was not in line with what the Bible really said. With a renewed personal conviction, one based on the Bible, and not someone’s own interpretation, Jinger began to disentangle her faith in someone else’s “convictions” and found faith in the Bible, by studying it and understanding it herself.
I used to watch “19 Kinds and Counting” when it first started but, to be honest, it got old to me. But, when I saw this book and read the synopsis, I was intrigued and how to read it. I was interested in, first, how they believed, and why, and, two, how she changed her thinking and beliefs. This was very well-written. If you watched “19 Kids and Counting” and/or “Counting On”, I would recommend reading this. Even if you didn’t watch either, but are interested in how someone can change their way of thinking, I would still recommend this. I loved it!
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