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The Hunt for Home
Leaving Dallas behind, Casey Hunt drives to Eden, Texas, praying that her assignment as the temporary manager of the small town's only diner will be successful. But when the diner's employees quit before she sets foot inside, she knows her luck has preceded her. With disaster greeting her at every turn, will Casey ever find a place she can call home? Sheriff Rod Harmon witnessed enough big-city values in college to last a lifetime. His fiancee's infidelity and his peers' attitudes about small-town hicks cut deep, and Rod returned to Eden with a different worldview. But when Casey Hunt arrives, he finds himself struggling with his own judgmental attitudes about the beautiful woman who looks like a hippie. Will Rod overcome his bitterness? Will Casey's hunt for home ever end? Fall in love with this inspiring love story and our entire collection of Christian romance novels from Heartsong Presents!
176 pages, Mass Market Paperback
First published May 1, 2005
31 people want to read
About the author
Ginny Aiken
52 books98 followersGinny Aiken, a former newspaper reporter, lives in Pennsylvania with her husband and their three younger sons--the oldest is married, has flown the coop, and made her a doting grandmother. Born in Havana, Cuba, and raised in Valencia and Caracas Venezuela, Ginny discovered books at an early age. She wrote her first novel at age fifteen while she trained with the Ballets de Caracas, later to be known as the Venezuelan National Ballet. She burned that tome when she turned a "mature" sixteen. An ecletic list of jobs--including stints as reporter, paralegal, choreographer, language teacher, retail salesperson, wife, mother of four boys, and herder of their numerous and assorted friends, including the 135 members of first the Crossmen and then the Bluecoats Drum & Bugle Corps--brought her back to books in search of her sanity. She is now the author of twenty-seven published works, but she hasn't caught up with that elusive sanity yet.
http://ginnyaikenwrites.com/About_Me....
http://ginnyaikenwrites.com/About_Me....
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
August 8, 2014
The hunt for home by ginny aiken
If anything could go wrong for this main character - it does! Oh my! oh my! crazy crazy stuff encompassing cattle, steam blowing, water flooding ... the list could go on & on in this tiny town of Texas ... great book!
Here's some of my favorite parts:
I think you're hiding and that's not what the Father calls us to do. I don't know His plans for you, but you'd better make sure you figure them out soon.
Don't you worry none. I know I sound like a lunatic sometimes, but there's joy to be had here in our journey, even if it's real hard to find sometimes. The Lord made laughter just as well as He made tears. It's our responsibility to find the one and dry up the other. So if I can make someone chuckle, why, then I've done my job, no matter how nutty this fruitcake tastes.
Help is a gift. Let someone help you, girl. Don't be such a porcupine about it. You might just miss a blessing the Lord's sending your way.
Don't figure it matters much what you want or don't want. All that matters is what God wants. Why don't you do what you always do and ask Him to show you what that is?
Honey you need to quit blaming yourself for even rain & snow & a hurricane or two. This is a messy world we live in. Only God's perfect, so all kinds of things go wrong. All that's good comes from our Lord. And the rest? Why, it's up to us to make the best of it with His help!
This is just how God goes around sharing His wealth. He puts folks in the path of others at just the right time and for just the right reason. That's why He brought you to us when He did.
She'd never thought the Almighty would take interest in that kind of details, esp. when there were so many other, more important things for Him to fix. There was world hunger to conquer; He could pick a war, any war to end; a cure hasn't been found for cancer - or the common cold for that matter; there was even global warming to consider, whatever that really meant.
That the heavenly Father might care about her - insignificant unimportant her - boggled the mind.
GREAT LESSONS:
If you don't mean 'anything' by it, then don't say it.
He may not be mad, but you did make a personal comment & I found it inappropriate and embarrassing.
Rule -> The only acceptable personal comment is one that compliments the receiver and it should not be to extravagant or in anyway cause or encourage anger, envy or jealousy in another.
And now you may apologize. ((he broke the rule and his words made you uncomfortable))
-----
Don't you do that. Every time you doubt yourself, you put your chances further and further away.
-----
It's not true. You don't lack talent. And expertise? Maybe you've never given yourself the time to become an expert at anything. You're young, and to become an expert you have to do something over and over and over again until you learn not to make mistakes.
-----
There are no buts in this mess up-recovery business. You face up to your mistakes, apologize, ask forgiveness and do the best you can to make amends.
If anything could go wrong for this main character - it does! Oh my! oh my! crazy crazy stuff encompassing cattle, steam blowing, water flooding ... the list could go on & on in this tiny town of Texas ... great book!
Here's some of my favorite parts:
I think you're hiding and that's not what the Father calls us to do. I don't know His plans for you, but you'd better make sure you figure them out soon.
Don't you worry none. I know I sound like a lunatic sometimes, but there's joy to be had here in our journey, even if it's real hard to find sometimes. The Lord made laughter just as well as He made tears. It's our responsibility to find the one and dry up the other. So if I can make someone chuckle, why, then I've done my job, no matter how nutty this fruitcake tastes.
Help is a gift. Let someone help you, girl. Don't be such a porcupine about it. You might just miss a blessing the Lord's sending your way.
Don't figure it matters much what you want or don't want. All that matters is what God wants. Why don't you do what you always do and ask Him to show you what that is?
Honey you need to quit blaming yourself for even rain & snow & a hurricane or two. This is a messy world we live in. Only God's perfect, so all kinds of things go wrong. All that's good comes from our Lord. And the rest? Why, it's up to us to make the best of it with His help!
This is just how God goes around sharing His wealth. He puts folks in the path of others at just the right time and for just the right reason. That's why He brought you to us when He did.
She'd never thought the Almighty would take interest in that kind of details, esp. when there were so many other, more important things for Him to fix. There was world hunger to conquer; He could pick a war, any war to end; a cure hasn't been found for cancer - or the common cold for that matter; there was even global warming to consider, whatever that really meant.
That the heavenly Father might care about her - insignificant unimportant her - boggled the mind.
GREAT LESSONS:
If you don't mean 'anything' by it, then don't say it.
He may not be mad, but you did make a personal comment & I found it inappropriate and embarrassing.
Rule -> The only acceptable personal comment is one that compliments the receiver and it should not be to extravagant or in anyway cause or encourage anger, envy or jealousy in another.
And now you may apologize. ((he broke the rule and his words made you uncomfortable))
-----
Don't you do that. Every time you doubt yourself, you put your chances further and further away.
-----
It's not true. You don't lack talent. And expertise? Maybe you've never given yourself the time to become an expert at anything. You're young, and to become an expert you have to do something over and over and over again until you learn not to make mistakes.
-----
There are no buts in this mess up-recovery business. You face up to your mistakes, apologize, ask forgiveness and do the best you can to make amends.
May 14, 2022
One of those seriously painful books in which everything is stacked against the accident-prone, trouble laden heroine, starting with her falling asleep on the side of the road in the middle of nowhere with the window down and awakening to a cow's head shoved through the window of her car... and progressing to 'inheriting' a diner that is exploding (coffee machine spitting gunk up into the air, grill on fire, food stuck to the ceiling) as she drives up to it.
The people laugh at her, deride her, crap all over her, and she just blusters and relies on ego and lies to propel her further into chaos and misery in front of them. She's a prideful, awful person.
NOT a fun read.
And as if that isn't enough, the town's failing (mass exodus to better places), a giant stinky mutt has invaded her space (restaurant kitchen AND home), and her parents expect her to make something of this endeavor or it will result in the loss of an elderly couple's retirement and her own already beleaguered reputation.
I'm not sure what the author's point was, in creating this oh-so-unpalatable mess. It doesn't bring happiness to the reader to sit and watch someone else wallow in misery while insisting they've got it all under control, because lack of humility and intelligence. She's a lousy character in a wince-y setting with ridiculous catastrophes that make 'Dumb & Dumber' look cerebral.
Worse, the writing is abysmal. In chapter two, Rod is about to tell Whit about a lost tourist, and then *shiny!* he stops mid-story and goes in the café. Like the author forgot what she was writing about, changed the subject, drew a blank, and had him just... walk away. ???!?!?!?!
Pg 81, she says she's "not good at much, and keeping the peace is beyond" her. Which is apparently so hysterically funny a statement that he laughed. He howled. He hooted. Etc. Seriously? Wh... I can't even.
Pg 74 - for the SECOND TIME - teens shout that the kitchen's "gonna blow"... everyone runs... and then nothing. No explanation, total change of subject, and a page later, they're back to talking about painting or some such. WHAT THE HECK?! I don't think this author can find her own story line with both hands. If something catastrophic happened? WRITE it. Describe it. Utilize it as a part of the story. Don't... do whatever brain-timing-out thing you're doing. It's wrong.
The dialogue is pitiful, the characterizations awkward, and who makes teens recite, "The only acceptable personal comment is one that compliments the receiver, and it should not be too extravagant or in any way cause or encourage angry, envy, or cause jealousy in another." Considering this is a church YOUTH group, wouldn't it behoove them better to learn a verse or two about how a 'kind word turneth away wrath' or 'be ye kind one to another' or something like that? It's just CRINGY and overly verbose for no good reason.
I had to stop.
This is going in the 'toss-it-out' pile.
Not even the cow could save it.
The people laugh at her, deride her, crap all over her, and she just blusters and relies on ego and lies to propel her further into chaos and misery in front of them. She's a prideful, awful person.
NOT a fun read.
And as if that isn't enough, the town's failing (mass exodus to better places), a giant stinky mutt has invaded her space (restaurant kitchen AND home), and her parents expect her to make something of this endeavor or it will result in the loss of an elderly couple's retirement and her own already beleaguered reputation.
I'm not sure what the author's point was, in creating this oh-so-unpalatable mess. It doesn't bring happiness to the reader to sit and watch someone else wallow in misery while insisting they've got it all under control, because lack of humility and intelligence. She's a lousy character in a wince-y setting with ridiculous catastrophes that make 'Dumb & Dumber' look cerebral.
Worse, the writing is abysmal. In chapter two, Rod is about to tell Whit about a lost tourist, and then *shiny!* he stops mid-story and goes in the café. Like the author forgot what she was writing about, changed the subject, drew a blank, and had him just... walk away. ???!?!?!?!
Pg 81, she says she's "not good at much, and keeping the peace is beyond" her. Which is apparently so hysterically funny a statement that he laughed. He howled. He hooted. Etc. Seriously? Wh... I can't even.
Pg 74 - for the SECOND TIME - teens shout that the kitchen's "gonna blow"... everyone runs... and then nothing. No explanation, total change of subject, and a page later, they're back to talking about painting or some such. WHAT THE HECK?! I don't think this author can find her own story line with both hands. If something catastrophic happened? WRITE it. Describe it. Utilize it as a part of the story. Don't... do whatever brain-timing-out thing you're doing. It's wrong.
The dialogue is pitiful, the characterizations awkward, and who makes teens recite, "The only acceptable personal comment is one that compliments the receiver, and it should not be too extravagant or in any way cause or encourage angry, envy, or cause jealousy in another." Considering this is a church YOUTH group, wouldn't it behoove them better to learn a verse or two about how a 'kind word turneth away wrath' or 'be ye kind one to another' or something like that? It's just CRINGY and overly verbose for no good reason.
I had to stop.
This is going in the 'toss-it-out' pile.
Not even the cow could save it.
April 25, 2022
1.5 stars…at best.
September 16, 2015
Ok story a little predictable at times.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews