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Fear Not
Everyone in Christina's circle of friends and relatives are surprised when she, a native Texan, marries David, a native Michigander. After he dies in a car accident, she and her three children move back to her hometown in Texas. They are faced with many physical, emotional, and spiritual trials as they adjust to their new life without David. During these trials, she and her family learn to rely on their faith, family, and friends and also realize that people and events are not always what they seem to be. Will Christina find peace and happiness again as she reacquaints herself with a high school crush? Will her children adjust to the different climate and strangeness of Texas? Will she truly learn to trust God who instructs her to "fear not"?
470 pages, Hardcover
First published April 18, 2013
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
February 6, 2025
Enjoyed reading this good, clean story. The faith of the characters was woven seamlessly into the story. I have already borrowed books 2 & 3 from the library and am eager to start reading them.
March 27, 2018
Finally got to reading this book, after even exchanging it with mine at the Romeo District Library. I thought it was very good and look forward to getting book two, to see how the story continues.
December 28, 2014
BookLook Bloggers has provided me with a free copy of this ebook in exchange for an honest review.
Fear Not is the first of a trilogy of novels by April Joy Spring. The main character in her story, like herself, is a Texan transplanted to Michigan, but unlike Spring, Christina moves back to Texas after the death of her husband, David, to live with her three children, a cat, and a dog in her family home, and to reconnect with her childhood friends. Unbeknownst to Christina, David had been working for an antiterrorist government organization and a number of people would like nothing better than for her to pack up and head back to Michigan. How far will they go to achieve their end?
Throughout the novel, we see Christina develop into a more confident woman who is building a strong community of friends which she will need as she faces enemies she cannot see. The author uses flashbacks to fill in background we need in order to understand the characters better, and there are several mysteries deftly woven into the story. There is a strong theme of belief in angels and demons and connections between the spiritual beings in heaven and their loved ones on earth which may not mesh with everyone's beliefs but is persuasively presented. It took me a while to find the connection between the lion on the cover and the story but it is there.
I wasn't too happy with ending, although, as the first in a trilogy, I understand why it leaves the reader hanging, and I felt that some of the foreshadowing was a bit heavily dropped in. Toward the end, a character surprisingly appeared out of nowhere; I'm assuming he is someone who will develop in the 2nd book. But all in all, it was an enjoyable, fast read with interesting characters, a touch of romance, and an interesting look at an intentional, supportive community.
Fear Not is the first of a trilogy of novels by April Joy Spring. The main character in her story, like herself, is a Texan transplanted to Michigan, but unlike Spring, Christina moves back to Texas after the death of her husband, David, to live with her three children, a cat, and a dog in her family home, and to reconnect with her childhood friends. Unbeknownst to Christina, David had been working for an antiterrorist government organization and a number of people would like nothing better than for her to pack up and head back to Michigan. How far will they go to achieve their end?
Throughout the novel, we see Christina develop into a more confident woman who is building a strong community of friends which she will need as she faces enemies she cannot see. The author uses flashbacks to fill in background we need in order to understand the characters better, and there are several mysteries deftly woven into the story. There is a strong theme of belief in angels and demons and connections between the spiritual beings in heaven and their loved ones on earth which may not mesh with everyone's beliefs but is persuasively presented. It took me a while to find the connection between the lion on the cover and the story but it is there.
I wasn't too happy with ending, although, as the first in a trilogy, I understand why it leaves the reader hanging, and I felt that some of the foreshadowing was a bit heavily dropped in. Toward the end, a character surprisingly appeared out of nowhere; I'm assuming he is someone who will develop in the 2nd book. But all in all, it was an enjoyable, fast read with interesting characters, a touch of romance, and an interesting look at an intentional, supportive community.
February 7, 2016
This book caught me up in the characters lives - really enjoyed it -sad that it ended
April 21, 2017
[Note: This book was provided free of charge by BookLook/WestBow Press. All thoughts and opinions are my own.]
There are times [1] where I have read a book, or in this case attempted to read a book, with wildly different expectations of the book than managed to be the case. At times, a book can manage to be enjoyable despite having been a very different book than was expected. At times, though, this expectation game proves to be too much for a book to overcome. Such was the case with this book, which was no joy to read whatsoever. Based on the genre that the hapless author had put, I expected this to be a book dealing with matters of Christian Living. What I found instead was that this book was a novel of about 1200 pages that dealt with the goings on of an extremely boring and uninteresting family led by a widowed single mother who was having teenage drama problems with one of her children, an office romance of sorts with a handsome doctor, someone apparently trying to spy on them, and some odd after-death hovering around by the dead man himself at the center of this dull novel.
It was really the sheer tedium of this novel that proved to be too much to overcome. When your novel is as long as War & Peace, it had better be a compelling read. War & Peace itself ends with a terrible essay on free will versus determinism, but at least before that horrible ending it is a compelling and complicated novel. This book is not. War & Peace had hundreds of characters, most of them among Russia's elites, and featured compelling drama in battle and on the home front, and dealt with love and family and political issues and featured a surprisingly adroit revisionist view of Napoleon's military genius. On the other hand, this novel features extremely boring and tedious interactions that I simply could not bring myself to compare about. I was irritated by the framing of the story and found the family at the center of this book's domestic drama immensely unappealing. The author dealt with questions of divine providence in a clumsy and heavy handed way and the plot dragged on for way too long. I would rather give myself dental surgery without anesthesia than return to this novel to read, and no novel is worth that sort of sacrifice of my own time and energy and limited reserves of goodwill.
[1] See, for example:
https://edgeinducedcohesion.blog/2017...
https://edgeinducedcohesion.blog/2017...
https://edgeinducedcohesion.blog/2017...
https://edgeinducedcohesion.blog/2017...
https://edgeinducedcohesion.blog/2017...
https://edgeinducedcohesion.blog/2017...
There are times [1] where I have read a book, or in this case attempted to read a book, with wildly different expectations of the book than managed to be the case. At times, a book can manage to be enjoyable despite having been a very different book than was expected. At times, though, this expectation game proves to be too much for a book to overcome. Such was the case with this book, which was no joy to read whatsoever. Based on the genre that the hapless author had put, I expected this to be a book dealing with matters of Christian Living. What I found instead was that this book was a novel of about 1200 pages that dealt with the goings on of an extremely boring and uninteresting family led by a widowed single mother who was having teenage drama problems with one of her children, an office romance of sorts with a handsome doctor, someone apparently trying to spy on them, and some odd after-death hovering around by the dead man himself at the center of this dull novel.
It was really the sheer tedium of this novel that proved to be too much to overcome. When your novel is as long as War & Peace, it had better be a compelling read. War & Peace itself ends with a terrible essay on free will versus determinism, but at least before that horrible ending it is a compelling and complicated novel. This book is not. War & Peace had hundreds of characters, most of them among Russia's elites, and featured compelling drama in battle and on the home front, and dealt with love and family and political issues and featured a surprisingly adroit revisionist view of Napoleon's military genius. On the other hand, this novel features extremely boring and tedious interactions that I simply could not bring myself to compare about. I was irritated by the framing of the story and found the family at the center of this book's domestic drama immensely unappealing. The author dealt with questions of divine providence in a clumsy and heavy handed way and the plot dragged on for way too long. I would rather give myself dental surgery without anesthesia than return to this novel to read, and no novel is worth that sort of sacrifice of my own time and energy and limited reserves of goodwill.
[1] See, for example:
https://edgeinducedcohesion.blog/2017...
https://edgeinducedcohesion.blog/2017...
https://edgeinducedcohesion.blog/2017...
https://edgeinducedcohesion.blog/2017...
https://edgeinducedcohesion.blog/2017...
https://edgeinducedcohesion.blog/2017...
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews