ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Nancy Mehl lives in Wichita, Kansas with her husband Norman and her son, Danny. She’s authored nine books and is currently at work on her newest series for Barbour Publishing.
All of Nancy’s novels have an added touch – something for your spirit as well as your soul. “I welcome the opportunity to share my faith through my writing,” Nancy says. “It’s a part of me and of everything I think or do. God is number one in my life. I wouldn’t be writing at all if I didn’t believe that this is what He’s called me to do. I hope everyone who reads my books will walk away with the most important message I can give them: God is good, and He loves you more than you can imagine. He has a good plan especially for your life, and there is nothing you can’t overcome with His help.”
CREATING FICTION FULL OF FAITH, HOPE AND HEART…
Nancy Mehl is a mystery writer who loves to set her novels in her home state of Kansas. Her three-in-one book, COZY IN KANSAS, contains the first three Ivy Towers’s mysteries: IN THE DEAD OF WINTER, BYE BYE BERTIE, and FOR WHOM THE WEDDING BELL TOLLS which was nominated for the 2009 American Christian Fiction Writers Book of the Year Award in mystery.
She and her husband attend Believer’s Tabernacle in Wichita.
ABOUT THE BOOK
Graphic designer Gracie Temple wants it all: the big city lifestyle and a successful job in advertising. And it looks like her life is on the right track when she takes a job at a struggling, midsize firm in Wichita.
But Gracie Temple’s uncle left her a house in a rural Mennonite community. She soon learns he secluded himself for years to protect a secret about her own father. Now it’s up to Gracie to decide if she’ll keep the secret or if she can afford to expose it.
Sam Goodrich loves his fruit farm in Harmony, Kansas. But when he meets city-girl Gracie, he begins to wonder if he could leave it behind for a woman who makes him feel things he’s never felt before.
When someone tries to keep Gracie from discovering the truth behind the town’s collection of secrets, will Sam and Gracie cling to their faith to help them decide what’s most important…before it’s too late?
If you would like to read the first chapter of Simple Secrets, go HERE.
My Review:
I absolutely adored this awesome start to Nancy Mehl’s Harmony series. It is dubbed Romantic Christian Suspense, and definitely fits the genre! Nancy Mehl really did an awesome job at blending the “outside” world with Old Order Mennonites, making it not quite plain but not completely “worldly” either.
Nancy Mehl introduces us, in book 1, to Grace “Gracie” Temple, neice of an Old Order Mennonite man, but who is an “outsider” because of no contact with her Uncle. She’s strong in her faith, but then somethings start to happen to test that faith and just how strong she is with that faith. And there’s Sam and his aunt, Myrtle, aka Sweetie. Such tender hearted characters! All of the amazingly created characters in this novel found a way into my heart and became my dear friends.
This book has humor, love, God and the perfect amount of mystery to keep the reader turning page after page. Something that I loved about this book was the town of Harmony that Mehl wrote about with both Mennonites and “Englishers”, proving that people can get along despite their different lifestyles, and that forgiveness and God’s love are important above all else. Today’s true soceity doesn’t always follow that and there is bitterness in this world. And it shows, through the mystery, that with people who truly follow God’s word, can help each other through crisis and come out on top. Those things, combined with all the friends, love and mystery, kept me turning the pages of this fascinating new start late into the night. I just HAD to see “who-dun-it-with-what-and-where”! It was definitely an adventure with a bit of romance added, making this the perfect late night read!
All in all, definitely a 5 star read! If all the books in the Harmony series are as great as Simple Secrets, then I’m in for the duration with them, starting with book 2, Simple Deceit, this fall! Well done, Nancy!
