Book Recommendations!

Recently, I received an email from someone running a new book-themed website called Shepherd, and it’s supposed to act as a place where readers can get book recommendations from authors. After doing my usual vetting of unfamiliar folks claiming to want to advertise my books to make sure it’s not some scam, I decided I wanted in! Here’s a link to my recommendations, but I’ll also have the link again at the end of this post.

It was a simple concept, and fun to do. I provide 5 books that I would recommend to readers, give a few sentences why I recommend them, and I keep them all under one theme. For me, the theme was “books with strong, admirable women”. I chose this theme because 1) it’s supposed to be related to the book I chose to have them promote, which in this case is Her Name Was Abby, and 2) because it’s something I want to see more of in books, movies, and TV shows.

I have a daughter, and I want her to have exciting stories with strong, honorable women to geek out about, and too often I think that second word is lacking. There’s plenty of ‘strong women’ characters out there, but unfortunately too many content creators have decided that a ‘strong woman’ is nothing more than a mean, selfish, jerk who demeans everyone around her, and I don’t think that’s what makes a woman (or anyone for that matter) strong.

When I wrote Her Name Was Abby, I wanted Abby to be that strong young woman, but I tried to flip the convention on its head. During the time when she played the part of the typical, modern strong woman, that is actually when she was at her weakest, when she was not so honorable and definitely not someone to admire. It wasn’t until she hit rock bottom, made some changes, became a kinder, more disciplined woman, that she truly became a strong and good person.

So anyway, here’s a link to my list of book recommendations! You might spot a couple recognizable titles from very talented authors I interact with too!