What have you read that's good and clean lately?

[Suzanne]

I'm a P.G. Wodehouse fan; everything he wrote is clean, and hysterically funny. I just read Money in the Bank and it was really cute, and even had a love story, of sorts.

[Valerie]

Suzanne wrote: "I'm a P.G. Wodehouse fan; everything he wrote is clean, and hysterically funny. I just read Money in the Bank and it was really cute, and even had a love story, of sorts."

I may have to give Wodehouse a try, I'm a stranger to his books. Clean and funny? Sounds like a bonus nowadays.

[Abigail]

There is also a really good series, "Jeeves and Wooster," based on Wodehouse's Wooster and Jeeves stories, starring Hugh Laurie and Stephen Fry. Hilarious, and sticks pretty closely to the originals. Each episode is about 40 minutes.

[Suzanne]

Valerie wrote: "Clean and funny? Sounds like a bonus nowadays."

Maybe it's because all of Wodehouse's books were written decades ago, between 1920-1970. But even for that time they were remarkably innocent. I think he wrote more than 90 books, so you'd probably be able to find some in your local library if you want to give him a try.

And if you do like clean and funny, you might want to check out my books as well. I've written three historical romantic comedies and they are all clean. I'd also recommend Joan Smith. She also writes clean, funny, historical romances.

And Abigail, thanks for the mention of the Jeeves series. I saw a few of them quite a while ago. I'll have to check them out again.

[Valerie]

Suzanne wrote: "Valerie wrote: "Clean and funny? Sounds like a bonus nowadays."

Maybe it's because all of Wodehouse's books were written decades ago, between 1920-1970. But even for that time they were remarkably..."

I have to make a trip to the library soon too (to return some books) but I did find one of Wodehouse's for free to download to my kindle. Thanks for the recommendations! I will definitely take a look at your books and check out Joan Smith. Hopefully I'll have some more 'what I've read that's good and clean lately' to add to this thread soon!

[Suzanne]

Wow! There's actually quite a few of P.G. Wodehouse's books for free available in Kindle format. I didn't realize that. I'll be downloading some myself. Thanks for the heads up, Valerie!

[[deleted user]]

I just finished reading From dust and Ashes By Tricia Goyer!

It is absolutely AWESOME!!!!
I can't say enough for this book it is extremely clean nothing even suggestive! :)

Also
By Tricia Goyer is exceptional!!!

[Tressa]

I just finished For Darkness Shows the Stars and added it to this group. It is a futuristic retelling of Jane Austen's Persuasion and done really well.For Darkness Shows the Stars

Also read Erasing Time by CJ Hill, which is a re-published book for her. Erasing Time

Legend was very good. Legend

Midnight in Austenland by Shannon Hale was also really good. Midnight in Austenland

[Holly]

The River by Michael Neale. A beautiful, simple book full of allegory and description.
http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/...

[Michelle]

I love the author Hester Browne. Her books are pretty clean and I love her writing style. Most recently I read The Finishing Touches and it was wonderful!

The Little Lady agency books are really fun, too. There is a bit of rough language in a few places throughout the trilogy, but compared to so many other novels it's pretty benign. She never uses the F word but in a few places she uses the term "effing". Make sure you read the books chronologically or you'll spoil the fun. The Little Lady Agency Little Lady, Big Apple The Little Lady Agency and the Prince

[Michelle]

We also recently finished reading the Austenland books by Shannon Hale in our little book club. They were clean and very fun. Austenland is good and Midnight in Austenlandis great!

[Cathy]

Agreed!

Terri wrote: "I'd love to hear some recommendations you have for good clean books you've read lately. Here's a few of mine:

In YA fiction -
The Mostly True Adventures of Homer P. Figg is historical fiction set..."

[Cathy]

Melissa wrote: "Alaura wrote: "Edenbrooke. It's a period piece that feels like a Jane Austen novel but written in more modern language. Loved it!"
Ditto - I read "Edenbrooke" by Julianne Donaldson and it was sup..."

Yes, that was a wonderful one. And bonus: it's newly published, and there will be more to come in a series of "proper romances."

[Cathy]

I have to disagree with your take on City of Bones. I absolutely LOVED that whole series, but they're not clean. There's a lot of gory violence, and while the first book doesn't have much sexual content, as the series progresses, the sexual content gets ramped up. In the last one, there's some heavy action by the main characters that goes almost "all the way."
Here's what I said about it on my reviewing site:
http://ratedreads.com/city-lost-souls...

Thalia wrote: "Matched by Ally Condie was great! Completely clean and I couldn't stop reading.

City of Bones and the rest of the Mortal Instruments series is completely clean as well.

Among the Hidden and the S..."

[Cathy]

Yep, you're right about juvenile (middle-grade); it's written for younger readers so is pretty clean. But YA can be clean or absolutely NOT clean at all. It's sad that it's so hard to know what is clean if we want something written for our age group, though. That's what makes this group useful and a few websites out there that focus on this, like Rated Reads (http://ratedreads.com/about-rated-rea...).

Mark wrote: "I like E. Nesbit's stuff (most of which is juvenile fiction—some is fantasy).

I find I have an extremely high success rate of finding clean books among the following:
• Books in the juvenile ficti..."

[Suzanne]

I just finished Danse De La Folie by Sherwood Smith. It was excellent and very clean.

[CompassBookRatings]

(Warning: Shameless self-promotion, but I am finding that I can't keep up with the individual posting of books to Good Reads.)

Squeaky Clean Reads, a content review website, changed its name back in March to Compass Book Ratings and re-built its website so that users can search by content criteria. So, in addition to Rated Reads and some of the other content review sites, here is another resource:

www.CompassBookRatings.com

Since everyone seems to have varying opinions on what makes a "clean" read, the rating system was designed so you could customize for your personal comfort level and there is a content analysis so you can see what is behind the rating.

Happy Reading!

[Michelle]

The Color of Water: A Black Man's Tribute to His White Mother was amazing. It is a truly beautiful story of human triumph with strong elements of faith, family, and the value of education.

There is about a paragraph that describes some disturbing abuse the main character endured. It isn't, however, embellished or sensationalized. It's described for insight into the character's story. Still, I wouldn't have my own teenagers read it because of its disturbing nature. And there are a small handful of standard cuss words. (No F-word.) So, I guess it's not completely squeaky clean but it is pretty close and definitely deserves to be read.

[Jenifer]

If you're looking for clean, fun reads for tween and younger teen girls, By the Seat of Her Pants (Betsy Butters Books series, #2 and a stand alone novel)and The School with Chocolate Air (#1)are European boarding school stories with intrigues (vol. 2 has sweet romantic element).

[Amy]

I loved Petronella Saves Nearly Everyone: The Entomological Tales of Augustus T. Percival by Dene Low. Clean Entertaining, and made me laugh out loud ( a huge plus in my world!)

[Diane]

Valerie wrote: "Suzanne wrote: "Valerie wrote: "Clean and funny? Sounds like a bonus nowadays."

Maybe it's because all of Wodehouse's books were written decades ago, between 1920-1970. But even for that time they..."

Suzanne wrote: "Wow! There's actually quite a few of P.G. Wodehouse's books for free available in Kindle format. I didn't realize that. I'll be downloading some myself. Thanks for the heads up, Valerie!"

Check out the Gutenberg Project at gutenberg.org. There are quite of few Wodehouse books available free because the copyright has expired.

[Regina]

I love that "Clean Reads" is available. I want to share my most recent clean read. I delved into my past a little bit when I went on vacation a couple of weeks ago. My daughter had brought "Anne of Green Gables by Lucy Montgomery," with her and I started reading it because of the fond memories I had of the series. You know what? As a 56 year old adult author, I still loved it.

[Cindy]

Sacrifice This is a wonderful series. This is the third and final book in the series. Legacyfirst book and Allegianceis second. If you love princes/fantasy I highly recommend this series.:D

[Merrianne]

I just finished reading Sophia's War by AVA ..It is really good! There are only 2 bad words in the whole book.. the D word was used twice. I actually got this book in the children's section of my public library but it is great!!!

[Merrianne]

oops.. i mean AVI

[Michelle]

It's a Christmas novel, but I really enjoyed reading Jacob T. Marley. It kept me thinking long after I finished it.

[Tressa]

I just finished A Cast of Stones by Patrick W. Carr and I loved it!!! It doesn't have a lot of romance yet, but I think there will be more in the next book. Here's my review: http://tressaswishfulendings.blogspot...

[LAWonder10]

Adverising for Love By Darcee Tana
This was a story depicting the lack of understanding and miscommunication that often happens between people, especially men & women. It is also a story of woman who, after many years, is still traumatized from an act of violence against her. The story emphasizes how judgmental people often are on appearances. Someone may not dress well, wear thick glasses, may have a speech impediment or a muscular disease, but that doesn't mean
they are unintelligent nor incapable. There are a lot of good discussion points for Book Clubs and clean enough for YA to read.   Yes, it was a little cheesy and ideological yet it can happen in life but seldom.                                                  
There were a lot of grammatical & typographical errors which was distracting but this was a proof draft so, hopefully, the many errors will be corrected.

[Joan]

This week I read the book (novel) titled "Wildflowers of Terezin" by Robert Elmer. It was a story written about WW11 and is about the Danish people trying to escape from Hitler's regime. The protagonist is a Lutherine minister and the story includes his involvement in the resistance and his interest in a Jewish nurse. It was a light romance, clean and not too horrific like some Holocaust stories. It was a story of the resistance trying to get the Danish Jews to Sweden. It was a new take that I hadn't even thought of before. It was very well written.

[Michelle Kershaw]

Melissa wrote: "Alaura wrote: "Edenbrooke. It's a period piece that feels like a Jane Austen novel but written in more modern language. Loved it!"
Ditto - I read "Edenbrooke" by Julianne Donaldson and it was sup..."

I loved Edenbrooke too!!!

[Victoria]

I also love Edenbrooke and Georgette Heyer. I have also just discovered Clare Darcy and Sarah M. Eden. Both are new favorites of mine.

[Samm]

Tris & Izzie by Mette Ive Harrison For a teen romance, this one was good.

Also The Fairest Beauty by Melanie Dickerson.

And my personal favorites: Christy & Julie both by Catherine Marshall.

[Folami]

I love demons at deadnight.

[Isabella]

A great and refreshing find is Alice in glass slippers modern cinderella tale that was hard to put down. There is a mystery entwined with the romance that kept it entertaining.

CInder is great too!

[CarolynB]

I just finished Life on the Edge by Jennifer Comeaux. I thought it was very good. It's about ice skaters and their strivings for perfection. It's really worth reading, especially if you enjoy watching figure skating competitions on TV.

[Mirta]

Hi all...not sure if it's ok to "self promote" (Let me know, and I'll delete!)

I have written a memoir; a story that encompasses a unique journey. I'm Jewish, my grandparents were Russian Jews who immigrated to Argentina during the Russian revolution. My parents immigrated to the United States in 1962 fleeing a Peronista government and raging Anti-Semitism. This is an easy read, for all that doom and gloom! Easy and clean. I wrote it for my kids and hopefully, their kids! No sex and no violence, although I got myself into a few scary situations. I met my husband on one of my many trips back to Argentina. We met at a youth social through my cousin's synagogue. My book tells the tale of our courtship, but again, it is soooooo squeaky clean, you could eat off it :-) This is a story about a girl on a journey, how she finds a place for herself and comes to terms with her heritage and culture. I hope you take a look at it.

With Love, The Argentina Family: Memories of Tango and Kugel; Mate with Knishes

www.facebook.com/withlovetheargentina...

[Erin]

This looks like a really interesting story, Mirta! I'm excited to read it.

[LAWonder10]

CROSSING VALUES by Carrie Daws is a great novella! It is an uplifting, well-written story of despair, tragedy, Christlike individuals and selfless love and service. There is also romance and forgiveness included.
Short, steady flowing and a truly, inconceivably great story!

[Mirta]

Erin wrote: "This looks like a really interesting story, Mirta! I'm excited to read it."

Thank you Erin. I'm excited that you're excited :-)
!!

[[deleted user]]

i read this book

it's the sequel to the selection, is totally clean. mention of hook-up but it's implied and confirmed
but there are really no details. there are also no f bombs in this. and there may be a little violence.

[Regina]

I'm not going to offer any specific book of mine because all of my novels, though they deal with mature subject matter (real life stuff) tell their stories without getting descriptive sexually (though they do have romance.) There's no cursing in my books either, though I believe in realism. I'm adamant about that. A story can be interesting and realistic without offending people who don't want those things in their mind. I'm glad others look for those kind of books. I do too and I enjoy this discussion.

[Lynn]

Regina, I totally agree with you. I will not read a book with foul language in it or descriptive sexuality. I just finished reading The YADA YADA Prayer Group, the 1st book. I really enjoyed it. I also read recently House by Frank Peretti/Ted Dekker. Most of their books deal with good vs evil, but in a suspenseful way.

[Regina]

Lynn wrote: "Regina, I totally agree with you. I will not read a book with foul language in it or descriptive sexuality. I just finished reading The YADA YADA Prayer Group, the 1st book. I really enjoyed it...." I'm an old Peretti fan. Have you ever heard him speak? He's fantastic.

[LAWonder10]

I just finiished a great book 'My Burden is Light' by Robert Fantina which I feel all should read.
Here is my review.
My husband won this in a giveaway or we probably never would have purchased it -
a BIG MISTAKE!
This is a story for all of us in today's society to read. It puts a different light on
same sex attraction and will help each individual become more aware and less
condemning.
Just as all of us struggle with trials, the important thing is how we react to those
trials.
This is a clean, emotional, inspiring, and bittersweet story of a young man's struggles
and solutions.
A must read for all and especially, for Christian people.

[Lora]

Flavia de Luce series by Alan Bradley is pretty clean and very enjoyable. The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie

[Gabriella]

Lora I just finished reading the Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie

[Amanda]

Lora: Flavia is great!! Are the other books in the series as good as the first one?

[Harvey]

With two young teenage daughters who devour books, I've come to appreciate good clean books that we can read together.

When they were 'tweeners,' we read the entire Laura Ingalls Wilder series of books. Somewhat to my surprise, they were fascinating in their details of pioneer life. We all learned a lot from reading them, and the books aligned well with our notions of family, kindness, and community.

[Elizabeth]

I've loved the entire Flavia de Luce series!

[[deleted user]]

I've never tried it