The Mountain Between Us

 By Charles Martin

You guys. This book. It has all the feels and all the fuzzies flowing off every page.

First of all, we meet two fine people who hire a small plane (and pilot) to get them out of Salt Lake City just ahead of a mammoth snow storm. The plane crashes. One of them breaks a leg. The other one does everything possible to save them both.

While it’s an incredible survival story (albeit fiction), we also learn about the wife and the fiancé who don’t know that these two people even stepped onto the small aircraft which filed no flight plan before taking off. They are utterly lost in the wilderness. And as the situation becomes worse every day, we follow two amazing individuals and what their lives were like pre-plane crash.

The emotional current throughout is infectious, engaging, addictive. I lost sleep over this story and it was my second time reading it! Yes, you’ll have to suspend belief just a bit…but the powerful emotional journey is second to none! 

Obviously, this book was made into a movie (Yep - I used the Movie cover). I have not seen the movie. The reviews from readers who I know loved this book: mixed. But one thing I find wonderful about the whole thing: the movie has introduced a slew of new readers to an amazing author who is unapologetically Christian, though he's published in both the Christian and general markets. His stories reflect his faith, though not always in an overt manner, and his skill as a writer is unparalleled. 

I am addicted to reading this author. Charles Martin. His stories always resonate deeply and are finely crafted from start to finish. I can easily recommend anything I’ve read by him and I think I’ve only missed one.

This book has been out awhile, but if you've not read it, I think you'll love it! And if you have read it, try something else by the same author. His stories get better with every book.

Do you re-read books? I don't very often, but some books are just worth re-visiting. Leave us a comment for this week's giveaway. 

I Love a Good Surprise . . .

They Almost Always Come Home by Cynthia Ruchti surprised me. I thought it would me a nice little romance. I may have downloaded it for free. I read it because I’d seen so much marketing on it over the last year, I figured I may as well see what it was all about.

Wow. I mean, what a lovely story. And not what you think. A husband on a solo wilderness trip fails to return to his wife who is about to leave him. She doesn’t know if he’s dead or if he left her first.

Most of the story deals with internal struggles, but those are amplified by outer, physical struggles that come as part of the physical search for her lost husband. I don’t want to say too much, because there are many surprises along the way. And by surprises, I’m talking about things I (as a well-read, guesser of plots) did not guess. Twists that not only surprised me, but felt perfect for the story.

It took me a little while to jump into the story, since I was not crazy about the main character at first. But trust me, she's worth it. After a few chapters, I found myself longing to get back to the book, counting the hours until I could pick it up again. And lots of sleep was lost to finish it.

The boundary waters on the border of MN and Canada provide a giant setting for this small story. But the smallness of the story has the potential to touch a vast number of lives, because there’s something everyone can relate to in it.

A tale of the broken and beautiful--I hope you’ll give it a try.

What was the last book that surprised you? Have you read They Almost Always Come Home? Were you surprised? (no spoilers, please!)

Leave a comment to win a copy of my first novel: A Familiar Shore.