Book Review: Through Thorny Ways by Jennifer Q. Hunt

 

This Christian Fiction/Romance set in 1921 has many heart wrenching tender moments and much redemption. It’s a beautiful story not just of the romance that unfolds between Arilee and Adam, but also of their relationships with family and others in their community.

I had the opportunity to listen to the audiobook version and each time I began listening, I didn’t want to turn it off. The way Jennifer folded history, faith, family secrets and even church hurt in with the romance was so natural and they all intertwined into a lovely story. 

It left me feeling encouraged and strengthened in my faith while pushing me to dig deeper into God’s word and look to Him for my hope. The romance was touching and realistic as Arilee and Adam work through their own failings and relationships with God. 

Other key characters who added much to the plot were Arilee’s brother Davis, and her niece and nephew. 

The female narrator did a good job of adding enough variation to each of the voices that it was clear who was speaking and easy to follow. Even her male voices worked well. 

I highly recommend this book to anyone who enjoys Christian fiction and romance. 

Get Through Thorny Ways here.

Through Thorny Ways blurb:

With secrets dating back two generations, will Wisteria House unite or destroy an already-fractured family?

Shrouded in scandal and secrets, Arilee Rutledge’s family is as tangled as the thorns surrounding their unwelcoming antebellum mansion. When her brother Davis returns from the Great War, she hopes they will make a new start after a season of devastation. But Davis is haunted by their younger brother’s death and his wife’s committal to the state asylum; while he loses himself in his work, Arilee continues raising his children. Determined to control at least one area of their lives, the siblings hire a former acquaintance to restore their dilapidated home.

Thrown from a carefree boyhood into the horrors of trench warfare, Adam Harrison is broken yet matured by his experiences. He takes a job updating and repairing Wisteria House, not only to pay his way through medical school, but in hopes of winning the woman he has long admired. A startling discovery plunges them all into a series of events revealing dark mysteries and shaking their already-uncertain future.

Can the thorns of grief, pain, and regret ever be cleared from their troubled hearts?

For those who love the Church, for those who have been hurt by the Church, and for those of us who are both, Jennifer Q. Hunt brings a poignant new family saga in which the challenges of life are not glossed over and hope in Christ is never underestimated. Powerful and compelling, Through Thorny Ways is a story of sacrifice and family, forgiveness and love, new beginnings and utter dependence on the Lord. Find a permanent place on your shelf, because once you travel to 1921 Atlanta with Hunt, you aren't going to want to leave. —Heather Wood, Author of the Finding Home series.

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