Summer’s here, and it’s time for a road trip! If the price of gas is keeping you close to home, take a virtual trip with a fictional road trip. Here are several I recommend:

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This Life by Jennifer Rodewald
If you’ve read books 1-3 in the Murphy Brothers series, you probably didn’t care much for cold, snooty Kate and Jacob. Especially once you learned that they’d betrayed Jackson Murphy. There’s a world of pain and insecurity hiding beneath that hoity-toity veneer, and Jennifer Rodewald exposes every last drop of it by letting her characters hit rock bottom and then sending them on the road, where simplicity and intimacy is forced upon them.

As the story says, the worst times can end up becoming the best times, once we’ve stripped away all the excess that has been distracting us from what’s most important: God and relationships being at the top of that list.

This Life also delves into a theme I’ve not often seen in romance – the dignity of work. God made work for man, not the other way around, and that’s ably demonstrated here.

This isn’t your typical romance – the characters are already married – but it’s an important story about redemption and second chances. And even if you’ve never declared bankruptcy and boondocked across the American West in a schoolie, you may recognize yourself in Jacob and Kate – your shame, pride, cowardice, and your resistance to complete honesty and vulnerability, even with those closest to you. Even your spouse. I know I saw a little of myself there, and I’m better for having read This Life.
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