Okay, I’m going to go off the beaten path today and blog about a secular novel. I don’t read many secular books nowadays since there are so many Christian novels out there and I love reading them so much!

Well, it turns out that actor Blair Underwood has collaberated with some other novelists and has a book out that was released last June. I was shocked. I know that there are a few other Hollywood personalities out there who have penned novels and children’s books, however, I didn’t know Blair had one out. I have to wonder if the book is well written? I’m not sure I can find time in my hectic schedule to read it.

Cecelia Dowdy
www.ceceliadowdy.com

Paperback
ISBN: 0743287371
Pub. Date: May 2006

From the back cover:
Jasmine is back! The scandalous diva from the bestselling novel Temptation returns to stir up trouble in New York City.

She quickly meets her dream mate — a preacher — who falls head over heels in love with her. Surely, God is good! But things start slipping when another man from Jasmine’s past refuses to stay there, and an unexpected pregnancy threatens to sabotage all of her dreams. Will Jasmine’s lying and scheming continue? Or will she finally learn that honesty is the only path to redemption?

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I loved this book! However, a word of warning, there are a few sex scenes in this book, although the story does have an inspirational message.

I wanted to bop Jasmine upside the head throughout the book. Although she did grow and become a stronger Christian **spoiler ahead!!** I still did not understand why she never told her husband about all of the lies she’d told him! There was still a lot of things she’d done that she didn’t reveal to her husband, or to her husband’s father. Although she professed to being a Christian, I still found her behavior needed much improvement. The way she threw herself at Hosea’s father really got on my nerves!

Although, she finally does admit to loving Hosea, and I do believe she really loves him, I still think their marriage would be in deep trouble because, sooner or later, the truth about all of her lies will be revealed! Her husband doesn’t know her true age, he doesn’t know how she’s made several advances to his father, and the list goes on!

I’m wondering if the author is planning on doing a sequel to this novel? If so, that would explain why Jasmine never tells Hosea the truth about all of the lies she told. That might be explored in the sequel which may show Hosea and Jasmine having marital problems?

One scene that really caught my attention was when Frances Mae, Jasmine’s neighbor(an atheist) brings over dinner for Jasmine. It reminded me of one of the scenes I read in the anthology, Have A Little Faith. The story in this anthology involved an angel(or ghost) named Maybelline Brown who brought pies to her sad and depressed neighbor named Olivia. Although Frances Mae is no angel, she brings a lot of spice and mystique to the story.

Other books that I’ve read and enjoyed by Victoria Christopher Murray are:

I recommend all of the books! They tackle some tough issues, and they are enjoyable reads.

Cecelia Dowdy
www.ceceliadowdy.com

I posted this entry a little over a year ago on my old blog website, Diaryland

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2006-03-12 – 3:52 p.m.

Paperback – Reprint
ISBN: 0373785194
Pub. Date: September 2004

I thought I’d write about a few books I’ve read recently.

The first is called The Marriage Wish by Dee Henderson. I liked this book because it has a particularly strong conflict—The heroine, Jennifer, has lost a husband and child and she’s afraid to love again. Since I now have a son, I look at conflicts involving children differently now. I’ve never lost a child, but I do know that it would be hard for me to get over losing my son because he means the world to me! Even with God’s grace, getting over the death of a child is would be an extremely hard thing to do. As in most romance novels, the couple, Scott and Jennifer, are happily married in the end, and Jennifer does find the courage to have children.

Hardcover
ISBN: 0446531537
Pub. Date: September 2005

The second book I read recently was The Amen Sisters by Angela Benson. This book was a good read with strong conflicts. Francine is haunted by the death of her best friend Toni. After a few months in a mental institution, Francine returns home to live with her fraternal twin sister Dawn. Dawn is having marriage problems with her husband Sly. To add to the conflict, Sly used to be Francine’s beau.

Francine is bitter because of the illicit goings-on that happened in a religious group that she had been involved with. This book deals with the issue of clergymen who take advantage of female parishioners. Francine wished that she had believed her friend Toni, when she confessed that she was pregnant with their preacher’s child. Unfortunately, there are a few people in Francine’s hometown who blame her for Toni’s death, and the guilt she carries affects her family and romantic relationships.

Eventually, Francine, Sly, and Dawn all work through their issues and the story does have a strong and uplifting ending.

I highly recommend reading this book, especially if one has had negative experiences with upper-level clergymen.

Signing off for now,
Cecelia Dowdy
www.ceceliadowdy.com
www.blackchristianfiction.com

Paperback: 320 pages
Publisher: Harvest House Publishers (March 1, 2006)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0736914803
ISBN-13: 978-0736914802

Book Description:
“Didn’t you listen to the news this morning? According to the latest statistics, the only places that have eligible men left are China, Alaska, and Utah!”
Wondering what to do now, Tracy examines her priorities and choices. You’d think an intelligent woman with an impressive career, a coveted urban dwelling, and a closet full of the latest fashions could certainly find the man her heart desires.

But for Tracy and her four friends, there’s more to happiness than simply finding Mr. Right. Adrian has always been the perfect Christian wife, yet even she finds marriage comes with no guarantees. Muriel would just as soon lock her heart away where no man dares to tread. Felicia could use a lesson in romantic restraint, and Carla wonders if God is punishing her for past mistakes.

As the future unfolds, these longtime friends discover that love comes in unique and amazing ways.

Michelle McKinney Hammond, a writer, singer, and speaker who focuses on improving love-driven relationships, is the founder and president of HeartWing Ministries as well as the cohost of the Emmy-nominated show Aspiring Women. Michelle is the author of Sassy, Single, & Satisfied, The DIVA Principle™, and 101 Ways to Get and Keep His Attention. This is her first novel.

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As many of you know, I’m not a non-fiction lover. Therefore, I’ve never read MMH’s non-fiction books about relationships, so it’s hard for me to compare the novel to her other published works.

This book reminded me of a Waiting To Exhale with a Christian twist. You have four good friends who lunch together frequently and commiserate about their relationships. None of the friends is in a successful, fulfilling romantic relationship and they talk about this to a great extent when they get together for lunch.

Adrian is the most ‘holy’ of the group. Married before she was saved, her husband saw something in Adrian that he really liked. However, during her marriage, she found Jesus, and focused all of her energies on Him, neglecting being a passionate wife to her husband. She went through the motions of being a wife to her husband, not enjoying her role as his wife, but finding fulfillment only in her church activities. It’s a crashing wake up call when her husband leaves her a note and abandons her.

Muriel has been through some tough times, so she refuses to date any man. However, she does find herself suddenly spending time with a good-looking white man whom catches her attention. He helps her to unlock the pain that’s holding her captive, releasing her to love him.

Tracy just keeps getting into bad relationships and she has a strange love/hate relationship with Felicia, her sister-cousin. She has a hard time dealing with interracial relationships since she catches her current beau making out with a white woman in a restaurant.

Felicia finds herself pregnant by a good-looking and successful plastic surgeon(Kenny). She’s paranoid about their relationship, under the impression that Kenny is cheating on her, so she decides to cut him out of her life completely, not wanting him to have a part of their child’s life.

Then there’s Carla, who’s been through pain in the past and she finally finds the courage to tell her husband about what she’s been through before they were married, wondering if her past actions were affecting their not being able to conceive.

I found that Ms. Hammond’s point to this novel was that the reason a majority of these women’s relationships did not work was because they did not focus on Him enough, or not at all, except for Adrian. Adrian focused only on God, and let her marriage fall by the wayside.

Cecelia Dowdy
www.ceceliadowdy.com

Murder, Mayhem, And A Fine Man
Author: Claudia Mair Burney
Paperback: 301 pages
Publisher: Navpress Publishing Group (July 5, 2006)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1576839788
ISBN-13: 978-1576839782

From the back cover:
Life as a forensic psychologist isn’t quite as cool as prime-time televeision would have us believe, and most of us just don’t have closets full of red-carpet gowns and bling. Instead of painting the town in a drop-dead gorgeous dress, Amanda Bell Brown finds herself at the scene of a crime–and she just may know who the killer is. She needs to spill her guts, but not on the handsome detective’s alligator
shoes–especially if she wants him to ask her out. A complicated murder investigation unearths not just a killer but a closet full of skeletons Amanda thought long gone. Murder, mayhem, and a fine man are wreaking havoc on her fortieth birthday, but will she survive to see forty-one?

Does she survive? You’ll have to read the story to find out!

This book grabbed me from the first page and just wouldn’t let me go. The characters are real, down-to-earth, and they’re not perfect: they struggle with issues like most of us do. Amanda Brown (Bell) is still struggling with the aftermath from a terribly abusive relationship from ten years ago. The abuse she suffered caused a senseless death, a death she in which she has yet to bring closure. In comes Jazz Brown, handsome detective (no relation). Although Jazz and Bell try to crack the case and find the killer of two men, they manage to find romance along the way. I found the attraction between the two to be quite strong. Jazz has his own problems that he needs to face. He’s currently unavailable for romance and Amanda is frustrated, not understanding why she and Jazz can’t just be together and in love!

Since the story starts off with a murder on Amanda’s fortieth birthday, it’s sort of dark, but it’s dark with spots of humor along the way. The humor reminds me of a term I learned in Shakespeare class in high school and college. I believe it was comedic relief? Burney provides spots of comedic relief along the way of a dark road with light provided at the end of the tunnel!

If you like mysteries, murders, and a good suspenseful story, then you should purchase this book! I guarantee you will love it….and you’ll fall in love with the characters, too!

Cecelia Dowdy
www.ceceliadowdy.com

Have a Little Faith
by Jacquelin Thomas, Sandra Kitt, J. D. Mason, Reshonda Tate Billingsley, ReShonda Tate Billingsley
Paperback
ISBN: 141651676X
Pub. Date: June 2006

This book is different than most of the other titles that I usually review. Even though this is somewhat of a faith-based book, I felt that the message in these stories didn’t usually come into play until around three-quarters of the way through the story. A few of them read just like a secular novel for the first half, which is why some readers, who only read Christian fiction, may be offended by the actions of some of the characters in some of the stories.

The book was well-written and I was eager to finish the entire novel. The only author in this collection that I was familiar with was Jacquelin Thomas. I’ve heard of and read some of Reshonda Tate Billingsley’s novels, however, I consider her stories to be about the church itself, more so than being an inspirational/Christian novel.

In Jacquelin Thomas’s Signs Of Light, judgmental Lorna Hamilton runs her own bakery. She has negative opinions about welfare mothers, and when Brittany Spencer, a welfare mother with an ill son, comes to her for a favor, Lorna wrongly lashes out at Brittany because of her tainted perception. Throughout the course of the story, Lorna learns that not all mothers on welfare are looking for a free handout. She also manages to patch things up with her boyfriend throughout the course of the story.

In ReShonda Tate Billingsley’s Faith Will Overcome, Faith Logan is known as being the town tramp. She’s looking for love, and she finally decides to make a man wait to have sex with her in order to have a romantic relationship. Her plan backfires when Xavier, the man that she thought cared for her, tried to get her to do something against her will. Meanwhile, Darius Williams, a church-going man, teaches Faith that she must learn to love herself first, before she attempts to find love in the arms of a man. During the story, Faith discovers haunting things about her family’s past, things that make her understand the actions of her estranged mother and her grandmother.

In J.D. Mason’s Maybelline, Olivia Phillips is slowly trying to put the pieces back together in her life after having a mastectomy. A failed suicide attempt also weighs heavily on her mind. When she tries to patch things up with Q, the boyfriend she abandoned when she was diagnosed, things don’t work out between them as she’d hoped. In the meantime, Maybelline, her large eccentric neighbor, comes by frequently, bringing freshly-baked pies and words of wisdom. When Maybelline forces Olivia to accept her blessings, and thank God for her life, she learns that faith will help her to overcome all of life’s obstacles. In an interesting twist, Olivia accidentally discovers the unique identity of Maybelline, and she surprisingly finds love again.

In Sandra Kitt’s Survival Instincts, Lynn Hayes is mugged by a group of teenagers. She recognizes one of her attackers, and instead of pressing charges, she convinces the police to allow her to help the youngster during his probation. Davis Manning, her rescuer during the mugging, is shocked when Lynn refuses to press charges against her attacker. Davis’s wife was killed years ago in a similiar incident, making him want to bring charges against the teen. When Lynn tells Davis about her faith, he wonders about his own spiritual beliefs as he romantically pursues Lynn.

I loved these stories. Although some are secular in nature, to a certain point, I still thought they were well-written and inspiring. I recommend this book for those who would like to read a faith-inspiring story.

Cecelia Dowdy
www.ceceliadowdy.com