Kindle Freebie for your Weekend Reading

Kindle Freebie! Finding Love in Friday Harbor

Happy weekend, friends! If you're looking for something to read this weekend, take a look at this Kindle freebie. Finding Love in Friday Harbor, Washington, book one in the Washington Island Romance series, is free through Sunday in celebration of the release of book two, Finding Love on Bainbridge Island, Washington.

The novel includes themes of healing, grieving, pursuing one's dreams, trusting God, and a touch of humor in a gorgeous island setting.

"I absolutely loved the story and the author's descriptive writing. I felt like I was there, and felt the emotions of each character. She does a great job of drawing her readers in and keeping them there. Finding Love in Friday Harbor is a must read! Can't wait to read the next book in this series!" ~ Amazon reviewer 

Happy reading!

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Also, if you're a Kindle Unlimited member, you can read both books in the series for free.  

Kindle Unlimited: Washington Island Romance series

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About the Author:

Annette M. Irby*

  Annette M. Irby has been writing since her teen years when she sat pounding out stories on a vintage typewriter just for fun. Since then, she’s joined Christian writing groups and launched blogs so she could share the joy of writing. She likes to say she’s addicted to color as flowers and seascapes inspire her. In her off hours, she enjoys gardening, photography, and music. She lives with her husband and family in the Pacific Northwest.

Learn more here on her Seriously Write Page.

Links to connect with Annette:

Website: www.AnnetteIrby.com

Twitter: @AnnetteMIrby

Facebook Reader Friends Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/252272708574760

BookBub: https://www.bookbub.com/authors/annette-m-irby or @AnnetteMIrby

Amazon Author Page: www.amazon.com/author/annette_m_irby.com   

Book Review Blog: www.annetteirbyreviews.blogspot.com

* Author Photo credit: Sarah Irby at Irby Photos

You Pray for Someone and Horrible Things Happen by Zoe M. McCarthy

My friend has been dealing with an ailment that I can only imagine how difficult it is. Her disorder adversely affects her life minute by minute. I told her I would pray for her, and I have. Daily and fervently.

Zoe M. McCarthy

No doctor of any kind could pinpoint her problem. Physicians would have her try various regimens, but nothing worked. Or they misdiagnosed the problem, and her health got worse. I prayed harder. My hope that God would heal her remained high, but I worried her faith would wane.

Then she was diagnosed with a condition that was promising, and she had a good couple of weeks. I was praising God.

In her next email, she said she’d contracted an ailment that exacerbated her illness and took three miserable weeks to heal from. I had to tamp down over and over my “Why God?” thoughts. I asked God whether He was worried, as I was, that she’d give up Him. My husband and I prayed for her healing.

The next day she sent me a quick email that she was in the hospital with an attack from a third illness! I was shocked. And disappointed. I didn’t know what was going on. I told God I knew He loved her, and I knew He was working in her, but was she able to hold on to this? I asked God to bind Satan.

In a Bible study, we sang Horatio Spafford’s “It Is Well With My Soul.” My friend popped into my mind in the way that God often speaks to me. “When sorrows like sea billows roll; Whatever my lot, Thou hast taught me to say, It is well, it is well with my soul.”

I sent my friend Spafford’s hymn and the story of his losing an investment, his son to Scarlet fever, and his four daughters in a sinking ship.

In her next email, she said that in the end the hospital stay was a good thing. She found the right doctor who was ordering tests that should have been done long ago. They’d already ruled out scary diseases. She told me she felt blessed and was ready to handle whatever ailment she had to deal with.

What an example for me!

I was so humbled. God knows what He’s doing with people’s faith through their trials. He knows their strengths. He’s taught me much about trusting others’ faith and God’s work in them. I don’t know if the tests and the right doctor will be able to treat my friend’s ailment successfully, but I’m simply called to pray and care. I know she’s in God’s hands and is willing to trust the Lord.

When have you recognized blessings among your trials?

Sometimes when you pray hard for someone else, God is working a lesson in you. Click to Tweet.

About the Author

Zoe M. McCarthy believes that opposites distract. Thus, she spins Christian contemporary romances entangling extreme opposites. Her tagline is Distraction to Attraction, Magnetic Romances Between Opposites. Her first novel is Calculated Risk. She has two more contemporary romances and a nonfiction book to help writers ready their manuscripts coming out soon. She’s a member of American Christian Fiction Writers. She enjoys leading workshops on the craft of writing; speaking about her faith; planning fun events for her 5 grandchildren; and exploring the Blue Ridge Mountains, where she lives with her husband, John.
Learn more about Zoe M. McCarthy at her website: http://zoemmccarthy.com

Calculated Risk

What happens when an analytical numbers man meets a mercurial marketing Rep? Romance is a calculated risk…

Calculated Risk
by Zoe M. McCarthy

Jilted by the latest of her father’s choices of “real men,” Cisney Baldwin rashly accepts an invitation to spend Thanksgiving weekend with a sympathetic colleague and his family. Nick LeCrone is a man too much her opposite to interest her and too mild-mannered to make her overbearing father’s “list.” Now, Cisney fears Nick wants to take advantage of her vulnerable state over the holiday. Boy, is she wrong.

Nick wants little to do with Cisney. She drives him crazy with all her sticky notes and quirks. He extended an invitation because he felt sorry for her. Now he’s stuck, and to make matters worse, his family thinks she’s his perfect match. He’ll do what he can to keep his distance, but there’s just one problem—he’s starting to believe Cisney’s magnetism is stronger than he can resist.

Purchase links for Calculated Risk: http://zoemmccarthy.com/books

Is Your Life Like a One-Ingredient Cake? by Zoe M. McCarthy

Zoe M. McCarthy

Do you feel like flour or baking powder—sifted?
Do you taste like vanilla or cocoa–bitter?
Do you act like pure sugar—sickly sweet?
Do you come across like oil—too slick?
Do you bear up like salt—preserved?
Do you feel like udder milk—squeezed?
Do you feel like an egg—born yesterday?

When my sister gives her testimony, she brings a story basket with all the above ingredients. She quotes Romans 8:28. And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose. Then based on Randy Alcorn’s article “There Is No Pointless Suffering,” she says:

“Almost everything that goes into a cake tastes terrible. But a delicious metamorphosis takes place when these ingredients are skillfully measured and mixed then baked at the perfect temperature. The final product is good!

“Our trials and apparent tragedies taste bitter to us. However, no translation of Romans 8:28 says ‘each thing by itself is good,’ but ‘all things work together for good,’ and not on their own, but under God’s sovereign hand. Every experience God gives us is the perfect preparation for the future only He can see.”

Then my sister relates how God orchestrated her life from abuse to the other side where God gave her a new name. From victim to survivor.

Ultimately, the big question for my sister was Jesus’ question to the invalid of 38 years that He approached beside the pool at Bethesda, “Do you want to get well?” (NIV) Or, “Wilt thou be made whole?” (KJV)

Was my sister’s journey under God’s orchestration easy? No.

At three and a half, she was abused. She felt abandoned, she screamed inside, and she “exploded.” Then she felt God say, “You’ll always have a Father in heaven.”

Undergoing the abuse by a different perpetrator much of her young life, she stuffed the memories. In her twenties, she slogged through a period of depression.

Later, she began to realize the life she had lived was not the life she had believed it to be. “Denial. Self-brainwashing.”

She was in therapy for ten years. The betrayal of her perpetrator was the hardest to deal with. “One minute I’d want to explode and shatter every piece of glass to communicate what I felt, and the next I’d want to implode until there was not one cell left of me.”

God never let go of her, even when she didn’t like Him, obeyed Him only because He was more powerful than she was, and struggled to study the Bible when she didn’t want to because it brought horrifying flashbacks. God stayed with her. He spoke to her in dreams and once appeared in a powerful show of light when she was awake.

Besides the abuse, my sister had three miscarriages, and her youngest daughter is a special-needs child. In spite of her trials, she has enjoyed much success in her life, before and after therapy. She has also served in a long-term children’s ministry and ministered to other women.

My sister ends her testimony, relating her ability to forgive and making these statements:

“God didn’t just make the best of a bad situation. Rather, he intended all along to use evil for ultimate good.”

“God has a plan, the ability to carry it out, and the loving kindness to do it not only for His glory but our good.”

If you are feeling like a one-ingredient cake, listen to Jesus’ question to you. “Do you want to get well?” If yes, let Him make you whole.

Is Your Life Like a One-Ingredient Cake? Click to Tweet.

About the Author

Zoe M. McCarthy believes the little-known fact that opposites distract. Thus, she spins Christian contemporary romances entangling extreme opposites. Her tagline is: Distraction to Attraction, Magnetic Romances Between Opposites. Her first novel is Calculated Risk. She has two more contemporary romances and a nonfiction book to help writers ready their manuscripts coming out soon. She’s a member of American Christian Fiction Writers. She enjoys leading workshops on the craft of writing; speaking about her faith; planning fun events for her 5 grandchildren; and exploring the Blue Ridge Mountains, where she lives with her husband, John.
Learn more about Zoe M. McCarthy at her website: http://zoemmccarthy.com

Calculated Risk

What happens when an analytical numbers man meets a mercurial marketing Rep? Romance is a calculated risk…

Jilted by the latest of her father’s choices of “real men,” Cisney Baldwin rashly accepts an invitation to spend Thanksgiving weekend with a sympathetic colleague and his family. Nick LeCrone is a man too much her opposite to interest her and too mild-mannered to make her overbearing father’s “list.” Now, Cisney fears Nick wants to take advantage of her vulnerable state over the holiday. Boy, is she wrong.

Nick wants little to do with Cisney. She drives him crazy with all her sticky notes and quirks. He extended an invitation because he felt sorry for her. Now he’s stuck, and to make matters worse, his family thinks she’s his perfect match. He’ll do what he can to keep his distance, but there’s just one problem—he’s starting to believe Cisney’s magnetism is stronger than he can resist.

Purchase links for Calculated Risk: http://zoemmccarthy.com/books