Acquired Book By: In (2020) Ms Thorne contacted me about her first Love Inspired novel (“His Daughter’s Prayer”) of which I reviewed and hosted her during @SatBookChat. Fast forward to 2022 and I caught a notice about her review team which led me to asking her about joining the team. I was delighted to receive her second release with Love Inspired as I had fondly remembered the joy I had in reading her debut with the publisher. I was grateful I could join her review team knowing how much I love her writing instincts for telling Contemporary INSPY Romantic stories as much as the fact I love reading stories by this publisher for Romantic Suspense.

I received a complimentary copy of “A Home for the Twins” direct from the author Danielle Thorne in exchange for an honest review. I did not receive compensation for my opinions or thoughts shared herein. Per the badge at the end of this review, I am also a member of the author’s Review Team. All promo materials for this novel were provided by the author herself and are used with permission.

On returning to reading Love Inspired Contemporary & Suspense:

I had indeed planned to return to reading Ms Thorne’s novels and more Love Inspired stories quite regularly last year – around the time this novel arrived actually as I was trying to resettle into a regular rhythm of reading both Love Inspired Contemporary and Love Inspired Suspense. I share an affinity for the Suspense line of stories with my Mum and we oft will tag-team reading them together. We love having conversations about the different authors’ styles and the lives of the characters we meet against the pages. Those are wicked lovely adventures we take-on together but in respect to reading Ms Thorne’s novels, I simply lost my focus with reading last year and reluctantly had to admit I needed more time to re-pursue reading her lovely stories. The best difference this year has been the addition of Progressive lens in my life which is allowing me to have a bit more freedom when it comes to reading. My migraines have also reduced as part of their frequency last year were due to having issues with my vision. That isn’t the main cause of my chronic migraines but it was causing additional ones to occur and blessedly that has been nipped in the bud so to speak.

I’ve longed to resettle into both Love Inspired and Ms Thorne’s novels for two key reasons: a wicked uplift of inspirational joy to read and I’ve missed the spiritual threads of story interwoven with realistic characters living lives you want to become a part of as a reader. I’ve missed reading overall and now I have a new beginning with reading being able to see the words again with my new glasses. It feels like a restorative blessing this year for me to recapture a bit of the time I’ve lost and begin anew. I look forward to reading three of her stories back-to-back as well – as I have this lovely from last Spring, a Christmas one from last November and of course, her latest release The Beekeeper Next Door which I’ll be featuring next Sunday! Be sure to revisit with me in July as I will be featuring The Doctor’s Christmas Dilemma as a bit of Christmas in July. I have a few other stories planned within this same theme of context, too.

Overall, it is shaping up to being a lovely Summer – full of Romance, a few Christmas reads, Young Adult and Middle stories, a good dose of Fantasy, a wicked Suspense or Thriller thrown in for good measure and dash of Inspirational stories. I can’t wait to see how Summer continues to enliven my readerly life with the stories I’m choosing to read right now.

On why I enjoy reading stories by Danielle Thorne:

Thorne is one of the authors I appreciate reading because she carries a thread of relatability through her stories and her vision of her characters’ lives. I appreciate the topics she broaches through her stories but also, rooting us in the real world through her perception of what her characters can live through as she tells their story. Yet is how she visually places you into the setting which grabs your eye the most – being well-travelled through the Southeast, I knew of the route Thorne took to place us into this small towne of Southern Georgia. She even graced the setting with small touches of personalised observations seen through Claire’s description of arriving into Kudzu Creek (not my favourite name of a towne!).

There is a lot to unpack in this Contemporary Romance – especially the timeline of when Dori had Emily and when Claire took over her guardianship which is an interesting twist in the novel when you consider who the father is to Emily. I felt Thorne was doing a great job leading us into the quagmire of unearthing the past which connected both the timeline of her story but also with the events connecting all the central characters together. It is an interesting history of course and as those connections come to surface for the reader, it was lovely to see the revelations which meant the most to the characters took a bit more time to become disclosed.

Thorne approached referencing the faith centering her characters lives in a very subtle way. Bradley mentioned it whilst talking to his cousin Donovan in regards to how he changed his life for the better and how his faith is important to him even more now than it was in the past. This subtle way of inclusion worked best for the plot as both Bradley and Claire were at the start of new beginnings for the trajectory of their lives. She needed to prove to herself she could be self-sufficient and raise a daughter whilst Bradley was trying to make a name for himself as a historic restorator of homes.

For a slow-brewing romance what was more disheartening were the dramas unfolding behind the romance itself – especially when it concerned Bradley’s parents. Thorne did a wonderful job at showing how strict and reserved parents can become when they are blinded by their own influence on their children’s lives. I felt she handled that part of the story with as much grace as she could as a writer owning to the realism of what people have to contend with given similar circumstances. in the background of course is this lovely community – where neighbours and community members are the found family you never knew you were seeking but were thankful to have within your inner circle. It was also the kind of place you could start over and determine for yourself the kind of life you wanted to live and that was the best message of all.

-quoted from my review of A Promise for His Daughter

A Home for the Twins
Subtitle: A little double trouble turns a house into a home
by Danielle Thorne
Source: Author Review Team

Becoming the chef at her aunt’s small-town inn is exactly the new beginning single mom Lindsey Judd needs. But balancing her job with her twin boys proves harder than she thought, especially when she discovers that lawyer Donovan Ainsworth wants to buy the inn for his own reasons. As Donovan starts to fall for
Lindsey and her boys, will her little troublemakers become matchmakers as well?

Genres: Contemporary (Modern) Fiction (post 1945), Inspirational Fiction & Non-Fiction, Sweet Romance, Contemporary Romance

Places to find the book:

Add to LibraryThing

ISBN: 9781335585646

Also by this author: Josette, His Daughter's Prayer

Published by Love INSPIRED

on 28th March, 2023

Format: Mass Market Paperback

Pages: 224

Published by: Love Inspired (@LoveInspiredBks)
an imprint of Harlequin Books (@HarlequinBooks)
which is now an imprint of HarperCollins Publishing (@HarperCollins)

Note on Formats: Happily, Love Inspired novels have the same kind of flexibility as Harlequin Heartwarming wherein you can receive these print copies in Regular Print, Larger Print or True Large Print for those who are vision impaired and/or have low vision. I personally love the Larger Print editions for Harlequin Heartwarming, Love Inspired Contemporary Romance & Love Inspired Suspense as it is much kinder on eyes of a migraineur! Generally, I receive Larger Print copies of Love Inspired and/or Harlequin Heartwarming novels – however, I do on occasion receive Regular Print which I can’t read whilst in the throes of a migraine or shortly after one but when I’m migraine-free I can soak back inside them; hence why having different sized fonts available is a lovely gesture by the publisher for readers like me.

Converse via: #SweetRomance, #SweetRomanceReads or #SweetRomanceBooks

and #LoveInspiredBooks as well as #ChristFic, #ChristianFiction, #ContemporaryRomance,
#INSPYRomance or #ChristianFictionBooks on #bookstagram

More Inspy Romantic stories by Danielle Throne:

His Daughter’s Prayer (2020) | see also Review

Falling for the Coach (2022)

A Promise for His Daughter (2022) | see also Review

A Home for the Twins (2023)

The Doctor’s Christmas Dilemma (2023)

The Beekeeper Next Door (NEW release: 25th June 2024)

A Guardian Until Christmas (*forthcoming, October, 2024)

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