by Crystal Caudill | Oct 31, 2025 | Book Reviews, Reading Challenge
It’s another month of our challenge: Tackle Your TBR Pile. So go dig through that stack taller than you of books you’ve been meaning to read and start reading away. Since this year is based on your TBR pile, I will not have a recommendations page, but I’m leaving the link here so it’s easier for me to set up NEXT year’s blog posts.
Find recommendations at Reading Challenge Recommendations, Crystal Caudill’s Reading Friends Facebook group, Avid Readers of Christian Fiction, or Inspirational Historical Fiction Index.
Don’t forget to comment at the bottom of the post for your chance to win a book off my prize shelf. *The list of prizes from my shelf can be found here.*
Reading Challenge 2025: Tackle the TBR Pile
If you’re anything like me, you have a TBR pile that is bigger than you can hope to read in a lifetime. This is the year we’re going to try an tackle at least twelve of those books. Head to your shelves and find books that fit each month’s challenge.
This Month: October – Title from a favorite author
Next Month: November – Award-winning book
Gallimore
by Michelle Griep
Review by: Crystal Caudill
I’m almost caught up with my Michelle Griep backlist. I can tell that this was one of her earlier books, as it lacked some of the typical elements I’ve grown accustomed to. However, it was a fun time-travel novel that allowed me a break from the normal. I love how Gallimore dealt with grief and allowing others into your life, all with the backdrop of a realistic Medieval setting–complete with smells and perhaps less than chivalric behavior. It was fascinating how she tied the past to the present and how echoes of the past affected the future relationship of the characters. It’s a quick read, and while I would love to have a longer version with more details to fill in some of the cliffhangers that jumped to the future and build in the romance of the present-day hero and heroine, it was still an enjoyable read.
Genre: Time Travel to Medieval England
Plot:
Jessica Neale’s faith is lost the day of her husband’s death, and with it, her belief in love. In a journey to find peace, she encounters a gentle, green-eyed stranger who leads her to the ruins of the medieval castle, Gallimore.
On his way to battle, Colwyn Haukswyrth, knight of Gallimore, comes face to face with a storm the likes of which he’s never seen, and a woman in the midst of it who claims to live centuries in the future. The Lady Jessica of Neale is an irksome, provoking bit of woman to be sure. And she’s about to turn his beliefs on end.
The product of a family rooted in pain and evil, Colwyn has focused on naught but himself—until Jessica. To a mysterious prophecy stitched on a tapestry, through the invasion of Gallimore itself, Colwyn and Jessica are bound together by a lesson in forgiveness and love—a bond that might be strong enough to survive the grave.
Author Website: https://michellegriep.com/
Purchase Link: Amazon | Barnes & Noble
Giveaway
For your chance to win a print copy, comment with what book YOU read for this month. You MUST comment on this blog post or your entry with be disqualified. Use the KingSumo App for your entry. Entries end on the 7th of each month at midnight EST, and the winner will be drawn sometime that week and notified by email. *Giveaway Policies can be found here.
*Note: I am using a new platform. KingSumo will also send you an email (check SPAM/Promotions) from Crystal Caudill that will ask you to confirm your email. I think you HAVE to hit confirm in that email for the entry to count. I will NOT be signing you up for any newsletters, etc. This is PURELY for the entry method and required by KingSumo and not me. I’m doing the best I can with what I’ve got. We’ll see how this goes . . . Thanks for your patience as I try to figure out how to move forward with options that don’t cost me an arm and a leg now that Rafflecopter shut down and Gleam ended up too expensive.
What did you read for the challenge? What were your thoughts on it? Would you recommend it?
by Crystal Caudill | Jun 25, 2024 | Book Reviews
Man of Shadow & Mist
by Michelle Griep
Review:
From the very first time I read The Noble Guardian from Michelle Griep, I thought there was no book–no hero–I could love better. And once again, Michelle Griep has proved me wrong. This may be my absolute new favorite from her, and that is saying something. Mobs, a man who cannot expose himself to the light, a romance that overcomes it all, AND Dracula? What more could I ask for? Fans of gothic romance are going to swoon over this story. Seriously, just writing this review makes me want to go back and read it again just for pleasure. This a book NOT to be missed, especially if you are a fan of Dracula on any level. Once again, Griep’s attention to historical detail is amazing, and I learned so much while being completely consumed by this enthralling tale. If you’ve not read it, be prepare: I WILL force you to read this book. 🙂 So save yourself the trouble. Hanging garlic won’t stop me. Go read this book.
Genre: Historical Romance, 1880s England
Plot:
“The world seems full of good men—even if there are monsters in it.” –Bram Stoker, Dracula
England, 1890
Vampires are alive and well in North Yorkshire, leastwise in the minds of the uneducated. Librarian Rosa Edwards intends to drive a stake through the heart of such superstitions. But gossip flies when the mysterious Sir James Morgan returns to his shadowy manor. The townsfolk say he is cursed.
James hates everything about England. The weather. The rumours. The scorn. Yet he must stay. His mother is dying of a disease for which he’s desperately trying to find a cure—an illness that will eventually take his own life.
When Rosa sets out to prove the dark gossip about James is wrong, she discovers more questions than answers. How can she accept what she can’t explain—especially the strong allure of the enigmatic man? James must battle a town steeped in fear as well as the unsettling attraction he feels for the no-nonsense librarian.
Can love prevail in a town filled with fear and doubt?
Author Website: https://michellegriep.com/
Purchase Link: Amazon | Baker Book House | Barnes & Noble | Christianbook
What is the most recent book you’ve read? What did you like about it? Who would you recommend it to?
by Crystal Caudill | Mar 31, 2024 | Reading Challenge
It’s another month our challenge: Unlocking Ecclesiastes 3. I’m so excited to join you again this year with guest reviews from our reading challenge participants. If you want to submit a review for upcoming months, feel free to email me using my contact form. If you are looking for reading suggestions, I’ve cultivated a page just for that. (Note that it is still being updated throughout the year, so feel free to message me with suggestions.) I recommend you also checking Inspirational Historical Fiction Index or the Facebook Group Avid Readers of Christian Fiction or my Facebook group Crystal Caudill’s Reading Friends. I’ll also include a short list at the bottom of this post.
Don’t forget to comment at the bottom of the post for your chance to win a book off my prize shelf. *The list of prizes available from my prize shelf can be found here.*
Unlocking the Past: Ecclesiastes 3
Just as Ecclesiastes has two opposites in each verse, most months will leave you with two options to choose from.
“For everything there is a season,
a time for every activity under heaven.”
March Verse: A time to kill and a time to heal.
Challenge Theme: A book with a serial killer or a character in the medical profession.
April Verse: A time to tear down and a time to build up.
Challenge Theme: A book with characters or plots related to construction, remodeling, demolition, or architecture.
Lost in Darkness
by Michelle Griep
Review by: Crystal Caudill, repost from 11/2021
If I were to describe this book in one word, it would be intense. Marvelously so. Michelle Griep has taken her writing to new levels in this gothic romance that leaves characters battling the monsters within . . . and without. Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein had nothing on this story where the famed author makes several appearances. The story of Amelia Balfour, Graham Lambart, Colin Balfour, and Dr. Peckwood is sure to have your angst ratcheting tight all the way to the spell-binding ending, that while holding to magnificent gothic tradition, leaves the reader with hope for the future.
This was the most intense book from Michelle Griep that I have ever read, and to be honest, I was glad that I was listening to it as an audiobook and was forced to do thirty or fewer minute increments. The tension was so deep, so constant that my heart couldn’t take it all at once. I’m looking forward to reading it again soon, this time in one fell swoop. This is an unforgettable tale that will sweep readers away to a different time to face monsters that they might even see reflected in themselves.
I recommend this book for fans of Gothic romances, Frankenstein, obscure history, and deep truths discovered during trying circumstances.
Genre: Historical Romance, Victorian England
Plot Overview:
Travel writer Amelia Balfour’s dream of touring Egypt is halted when she receives news of a revolutionary new surgery for her grotesquely disfigured brother. This could change everything, and it does. . .in the worst possible way.
Surgeon Graham Lambert has suspicions about the doctor he’s gone into practice with, but he can’t stop him from operating on Amelia’s brother. Will he be too late to prevent the man’s death? Or to reveal his true feelings for Amelia before she sails to Cairo?
Purchase Links:
Amazon | Baker Book House | Barnes & Noble | Christianbook.com
Giveaway
For your chance to win a print copy, comment with what book YOU read for this month. Use the Rafflecopter below for extra entries and to mark that you left a comment. Entries end on the 7th of each month at midnight EST, and the winner will be drawn sometime that week and notified by email. The winner will be announced on the Rafflecopter widget.
*Open to all residents of the contiguous USA, legally able to enter, and an e-book format or Amazon Gift Card will be awarded to those outside that range who are legally able to enter.
a Rafflecopter giveaway
Recommendations for April:
- A Model of Devotion by Mary Connealy
- On This Foundation by Lynn Austin
- A Battle Worth Fighting by Sarah Hanks
- Daughtry House series by Beth White
- Lost Castle series by Kristy Cambron
- Engaging Deception by Regina Jennings
What did you read for the challenge? What were your thoughts on it? Would you recommend it?
by Crystal Caudill | Feb 29, 2024 | Reading Challenge
It’s another month our challenge: Unlocking Ecclesiastes 3. I’m so excited to join you again this year with guest reviews from our reading challenge participants. If you want to submit a review for upcoming months, feel free to email me using my contact form. If you are looking for suggestions as to what to read each month, may I recommend joining my Crystal Caudill’s Reading Friends Facebook group, or visiting Avid Readers of Christian Fiction or Inspirational Historical Fiction Index. I’ll also include a short list at the bottom of this post. Don’t forget to comment at the bottom of the post for your chance to win a book off my prize shelf. *The list of prizes available from my prize shelf can be found here.*
Unlocking the Past: Ecclesiastes 3
Just as Ecclesiastes has two opposites in each verse, most months will leave you with two options to choose from.
“For everything there is a season,
a time for every activity under heaven.”
February Verse: A time to plant and a time to harvest.
Challenge Theme: A book with a Rural Setting OR a Major Move/Life Change
March Verse: A time to kill and a time to heal.
Challenge Theme: A book with a serial killer or a character in the medical profession.
The Captive Heart
by Michelle Griep
Review by: Crystal Caudill, reposted from 2019 What I loved: Historical details are always a favorite of mine, and I really loved how the complexities of frontier life were displayed, especially for the heroine. To change from the pampered life of England to the comparably savage struggle of the frontier was fun to live through. I learned so much, and of course, I loved the romance. The struggle between the two to learn to love and trust each other was a slow simmer. Like a stew cooked to perfection takes hours and hours, Love is not rushed, and I really enjoyed that.
Favorite Character and Why: Samuel definitely won me over. He was a complex character, a puzzle to be figured out. He was both a man you loved and accepted as imperfect. He was real.
Who would like this? Anyone who loves frontier stories, romance, action, and danger. Also, if you love marriages of convenience, this is a fun story that breaks some of the molds.
Genre: Historical Romance, American Frontier, 1770 Plot Overview: The wild American wilderness is no place for an elegant English governess
On the run from a brute of an aristocratic employer, Eleanor Morgan escapes from England to America, the land of the free, for the opportunity to serve an upstanding Charles Town family. But freedom is hard to come by as an indentured servant, and downright impossible when she’s forced to agree to an even harsher contract—marriage to a man she’s never met.
Backwoodsman Samuel Heath doesn’t care what others think of him—but his young daughter’s upbringing matters very much. The life of a trapper in the Carolina backcountry is no life for a small girl, but neither is abandoning his child to another family. He decides it’s time to marry again, but that proves to be an impossible task. Who wants to wed a murderer? Both Samuel and Eleanor are survivors, facing down the threat of war, betrayal, and divided loyalties that could cost them everything, but this time they must face their biggest challenge ever . . .Love.
Purchase Links: Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Christianbook.com
Giveaway
For your chance to win a print copy, comment with what book YOU read for this month. Use the Rafflecopter below for extra entries and to mark that you left a comment. Entries end on the 7th of each month at midnight EST, and the winner will be drawn sometime that week and notified by email. The winner will be announced on the Rafflecopter widget. *Open to all residents of the contiguous USA, legally able to enter, and an e-book format or Amazon Gift Card will be awarded to those outside that range who are legally able to enter. a Rafflecopter giveaway
Recommendations for March:
- Kaely Quinn Profiler series by Nancy Mehl
- When Crickets Cry by Charles Martin
- Patrick Bowers Files by Steven James (Warning: Graphic)
- With Every Breath by Elizabeth Camden (doctor, TB, mystery)
- While Love Stirs by Lorna Seilstad (light/sweet romance, doctor)
- White City by Grace Hitchcock
- Wedded to War by Jocelyn Green
- A Memory Between Us by Sarah Sundin
- Wings of the Nightingale series by Sarah Sundin
- The Doctor’s Lady by Jody Hedlund
- Lost in Darkness by Michelle Griep
- Within My Heart by Tamera Alexander
- A Lady in Attendance by Rachel Fordham
- At Loves Command by Karen Witemeyer
What did you read for the challenge? What were your thoughts on it? Would you recommend it?
by Crystal Caudill | Nov 23, 2021 | Book Reviews
Lost in Darkness
by Michelle Griep
If I were to describe this book in one word, it would be intense. Marvelously so. Michelle Griep has taken her writing to new levels in this gothic romance that leaves characters battling the monsters within . . . and without. Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein had nothing on this story where the famed author makes several appearances. The story of Amelia Balfour, Graham Lambart, Colin Balfour, and Dr. Peckwood is sure to have your angst ratcheting tight all the way to the spell-binding ending, that while holding to magnificent gothic tradition, leaves the reader with hope for the future.
This was the most intense book from Michelle Griep that I have ever read, and to be honest, I was glad that I was listening to it as an audiobook and was forced to do thirty or fewer minute increments. The tension was so deep, so constant that my heart couldn’t take it all at once. I’m looking forward to reading it again soon, this time in one fell swoop. This is an unforgettable tale that will sweep readers away to a different time to face monsters that they might even see reflected in themselves.
I recommend this book for fans of Gothic romances, Frankenstein, obscure history, and deep truths discovered during trying circumstances.
*While I’ve purchased an additional copy myself, a copy of this book was provided to me by the publisher and the review above is my honest opinion of the book and was not influenced in any way.*
Genre: Historical Romance, Regency Era, England
Plot Overview:
Even if there be monsters, there is none so fierce as that which resides in man’s own heart.
Amelia Balfour has one dream . . . to tour Egypt as a travel writer. But when her wish is finally within reach, her father dies, and her malformed brother, Colin, depends on her to arrange for a revolutionary surgery. Amelia returns home, hoping he’ll recover before the ship sails for Cairo.
Former Navy surgeon Graham Lambert is sick–of traveling, loneliness, and especially the injustice of the world. Leaving behind the military, he partners with a renowned surgeon, the man who promises new life to Amelia’s brother.
But just as the operation begins, Graham suspects the surgeon is a fraud. After a botched procedure, Colin goes mad and escapes, terrorizing their neighbor, author Mary Godwin–planting the seed for her greatest creation, Frankenstein.
Can Amelia and Graham stop Colin before he destroys everyone in his path and find the tender soul still trapped inside . . . or will they be too late?
What I loved: The storyline that so well reflected Frankenstein while bringing spiritual depth that it will long live in my mind.
Favorite Character and Why: There was such a fantastic cast of characters that it is so hard to tell. Aside from Amelia and Graham, I loved Nemo and Mrs. Bap. Nemo was an adorable child, and Mrs. Bap’s wisdom and positive outlook were the perfect addition to the story.
Who would like this? I recommend this book for fans of Gothic romances, Frankenstein, obscure history, and deep truths discovered during trying circumstances.
Rating and Why: Five stars. This story was amazingly written, intense, and impactful. It will live in my mind for a long time to come, and I will be rereading it when I have some free time in my reading schedule.
PURCHASE LINKS
Amazon Barnes and Noble BooksAMillion Book Depository Bookshop.org Christianbook.com
