Take a Chance on Me - A Review

About the Author
Susan May Warren is the RITA Award winning author of more than thirty novels whose compelling plots and unforgettable characters have won acclaim with readers and reviewers alike. She served with her husband and four children as a missionary in Russia for eight years before she and her family returned home to the States. She now writes full time as her husband runs a lodge on Lake Superior in northern Minnesota, where many of her books are set. She and her family enjoy hiking,canoeing, and being involved in their local church.Susan holds a BA in mass communications from the University of Minnesota. Several of her critically acclaimed novels have been chosen as Top Picks by Romantic Times and won the RWA's Inspirational Reader's Choice contest and the American Christian Fiction Writers Book of the Year award. Four of her books have been Christy Award finalists. In addition to her writing, Susan loves to teach and speak at women's events about God's amazing grace inour lives.

About the Book

Ivy Madison is the new county attorney in the small town of Deep Haven. She didn't know when she took the job that she drafted the plea bargain that has kept Jensen Atwood serving time of community service for killing the wife of Darek Christiansen. Darek is the town's most ineligible eligible bachelor. He's the eldest son and heir whose family runs the Evergreen Resort. He's a devoted father, but he's also hurt and angry over the death of his wife. As Ivy gets to know both Darek and his family, she finds herself wanting to belong to it. Will Darek be able to let go of his anger and hurt for a chance at a future with Ivy?

Here is a part of the Q&A from Tyndale with the Author.

1. This is the first installment in a brand new six-book series. Can you give us a bit of background on this

series?

I love stories about families –watching the members interact and grow together through challenges and victories and I conceived this series as I watched my own children begin to grow up and deal with romance and career and futures. I love Deep Haven, and it’s the perfect setting for a resort, so I crafted a family, much like the families I know, who run a resort. They want to pass on their legacy to their children...but their children don’t know if they want it. It’s sort of a parallel theme to the legacy of faith we instill in our children. As they grow older, they need to decide whether it is their faith too. It’s a saga about family and faith and what happens when those collide with real life.

2. This Christiansen Family series is set in Deep Haven, Minnesota. Tell us about this setting.

Deep Haven, Minnesota is based in a small vacation town in northern Minnesota where I spent

my childhood. It’s located on Lake Superior, surrounded by pine and birch and the sense of small

town and home. Populated by everyone from artists to lumberjacks, it’s Mitford, or perhaps

Northern Exposure gone Minnesotan. Quaint, quirky and beautiful, it’s the perfect place to

escape for a vacation

.

3. What was your inspiration for this particular book and the main character Darek

Christiansen?

As I started to put together this series, I began to think about our culture and our children today.

I started to take a look at the big questions we are faced with as parents and as young people; the issues that affect us as a culture, as well as personally. I wanted these books to go beyond family drama, beyond a great romance to raise bigger questions and stir truths that we might pass along to others. This story is about our propensity in our culture to blame others for what goes wrong in our lives – and how this alienates us from each other, and ultimately, God. Darek is the oldest brother in the family; the leader and a real hero. He’s a wild

land firefighter and a widower who’s had to give up his job to come home and run the resort and care for his young son. Darek doesn’t realize he has a problem - he lives with anger on his shoulder, hating the man who killed his wife (his best friend). His real problem is that he can’t forgive himself. In this first story, readers meet the family, hang out at the resort and discover that God can redeem even a heart of stone, if we take a chance on Him.

Chapter 1 Excerpt 

My Review
It has been a long time since I read one of Susan's books. I really enjoyed this one. The fact this is the first book in a new series is a great bonus. I found the four major characters, Darek, Ivy, Jensen, and Claire to be very real. Each of them needed something, forgiveness really. They each had to learn how to forgive and be forgiven. I am looking forward to reading the next books in this series. It was also fun to reunite with characters from the town of Deep Haven, most of whom I'd forgotten about.

I received this book for free from Tyndale House Publishers for the purpose of reviewing. My thoughts and opinions are my own.

Recommended to fans of Susan May Warren, Dani Pettrey, Candace Calvert, Colleen Coble, Denise Hunter, Rachel Hauck 

Rating - 4 stars