Review and Giveaway: The Moon Looked Down

I like romance novels. I like happy endings, easy plotlines, and good feelings. Sometimes I've wished there was a happy medium between bodice-busters with their bedhopping and multiple vivid sex scenes and Christian romance novels that can be just too sweet to be true. Dorothy Garlock delivered such a book with The Moon Looked Down. Set in the 1940's in a small Illinois town, it is the story of Cole, born and raised in the town, and Sophie, a recent immigrant from Germany. The story opens with the local thugs burning Sophie's family's barn, hoping to run the "Nazis" out of town (despite the fact that her family fled Germany because of the Nazis). Cole was just returning to town to teach high school math. He had been in Chicago for college and had worked there for years. He returns, hoping for, among other things, a reconciliation with his father, from whom he had been estranged since his mother's death. Cole has a deformed leg, which causes some people to pity him, and is keeping him out of the army. While most romance novels feature some sort of conflict between the hero and heroine that keeps them apart until the end, the conflict in this book is from the guys who burned the barn, and it ends up drawing Cole and Sophie together.

The book has one sex scene and it happens before marriage. It was reasonably descriptive but more tender than passionate.

If this sounds like your kind of book, this is your lucky day. Anna at Hatchette is allowing me to give away five copies. For one entry, leave a comment with your name and address. For a second comment, blog about this giveaway, and leave a second comment with a link to your post. For third, fourth and fifth entry, leave comments on other book review posts of mine, saying why you think you would or wouldn't like that book, and then leave comments here telling me the name of the book on which you commented.

Rules: US and Canada only, no P.O. Boxes. Winners will be drawn August 30. Good Luck!