“The Writing Desk” by Rachel Hauck

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Tenley Roth’s first book was a runaway bestseller. Now that her second book is due, she’s locked in fear. Can she repeat her earlier success or is she a fraud who has run out of inspiration?

With pressure mounting from her publisher, Tenley is weighted with writer’s block. But when her estranged mother calls asking Tenley to help her through chemotherapy, she packs up for Florida where she meets handsome furniture designer Jonas Sullivan and discovers the story her heart’s been missing.

A century earlier, another woman wrote at the same desk with hopes and fears of her own. Born during the Gilded Age, Birdie Shehorn is the daughter of the old money Knickerbockers. Under the strict control of her mother, her every move is decided ahead of time, even whom she’ll marry. But Birdie has dreams she doesn’t know how to realize. She wants to tell stories, write novels, make an impact on the world. When she discovers her mother has taken extreme measures to manipulate her future, she must choose between submission and security or forging a brand new way all on her own.

Tenley and Birdie are from two very different worlds, but fate has bound them together in a way time cannot erase.

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Rachel Hauck is the master of creative, historic romance, and she’s penned another bestseller:  The Writing Desk.  She artfully compares contemporary romance with the arranged marriages of the wealthy during the 1920s while painting elements of spiritual lessons in every scene.

I love the way that Hauck ties Birdie’s story with Tenley’s.  Hauck connects them in myriads of ways, some superficially, some with a much deeper meaning.  These connections usually relate to spiritual lessons happening within the pages from which the reader can grow, as well. 

In some of Hauck’s books, these lessons are super deep, ones that totally shook me as I was reading.  The lessons in The Writing Desk are a bit different; they’re simple, basic tenants of the Christian faith, but ones that many of us struggle with.  Long-time Christians may not find these lessons earth-shattering, but I think that this is the perfect sort of book to give a person new to faith, or to someone who isn’t yet a believer.  Tenley’s situation and confusion resonates, and Hauck shares answers to that confusion gently and creatively.

These faith lessons are not diluting the romance.  For someone who’s supposed to be writing such a story, Tenley is living a sizzling one of her own.  Hauck spares no sidelong glance or warm, fuzzy feeling when penning The Writing Desk, and with Birdie involved in her own romantic relationship, this book is oozing love.

The Writing Desk is another winner, and I hope Hauck continues to be as prolific as Birdie.

I received a free copy of this book from the author.  All opinions are my own.

What are your thoughts?

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