Before Summer's End: Stories to Touch the Soul

by Johnnie Alexander

[phyllish]

A delightful collection of stories

I have enjoyed the various Mosaic Collections. Before Summer's End is no exception! The variety in the stories is vast. While the faith element in some of them was more subtle than in others, and though I liked certain ones more than I liked others, I recommend this collection. If you find a story you don't care for, skip to the next. There are stories here to please a variety of tastes.

Johnnie Alexander's A Stranger Comes to Springlight had the feel of an old-fashioned small town that could have placed it at almost any time in the past century. I loved the voice of the story and the style of the writing, which is vastly different from the other stories of this author's that I've read.

Brenda S. Anderson's Hot Cocoa Summers was a wonderful story of redemption. I appreciated the way I first loved and then was disgusted at Chad, the charming barista. Though a short story, it covers the passage of several years and did that extremely well, not covering important details and still conveying the sense time had passed.

Eleanor Bertin's Grounded is the first story I've read that deals with the mandatory self-isolation due to the Coronavirus. It was humorous to me that Lissa was even more out of touch with things going on in the world than I often am and how she wasn't even aware things were shutting down. While I didn't care much for the choices that left her alone in her isolation and those she made while in isolation, I loved the ending and felt it was well done.

Oh, my heart!! Sara Davison's Ten Bottles of Sand was such a treat! As with Hot Cocoa Summers, it covers several years. It was such a beautiful journey with Nancy learning to trust and to see things differently than her mother had always taught her. She learned that living in a way that is always "safe" doesn't necessarily mean truly living.

In Deb Elkink's Blue Genes, twin sisters who had grown apart are thrown together and are forced to deal with the events that had divided them. This was not as much to my taste as the other stories and the "resolution" felt like it left much to be resolved.

Stacy Monson's A Summer of Reckoning is the prequel to When Mountains Sing and tells Dawson's story. His transformation was slowly revealed. I appreciated that the author didn't make things easy for him and that his wasn't an "insta-conversion". It was very believable and very touching.

I loved the start to Marion Ueckermann's In an English Vintage Garden when Ellen saw the email about the inheritance she had received! Her reaction was just what mine would have been. And hopefully yours - if not, please be more careful with email you receive from unsolicited sources. :-) While I know that it is highly unlikely that attorneys will contact anyone regarding a legal issue via email, it did add a touch of fun. The secret Ellen's mother, Lillian kept from her was hinted at enough that I wasn't surprised but that didn't diminish my appreciation for the story.

Read my full review at Among the Reads


I was given a copy of this book. I was not required to give a favorable review nor was any money received for this review. All comments and opinions are my own.