Celebrate Lit Blog Tour - Behind Love's Wall by Carrie Fancett Pagels (Review, Guest Post, Giveaway)

Two successful women, a hundred-and-twenty-years apart, build walls to protect their hearts. Modern-day Willa, a successful interior decorator, is chosen to consult for the Grand Hotel’s possible redesign. She discovers a journal detailing the struggles of a young woman, Lily—which reveals dark secrets. The renowned singer wasn’t who she pretended to be. As Willa reaches out to Lily’s descendant, a charismatic and prominent landscape artist, she lets down her guard. Should she share the journal with him, or once again erect a wall as she struggles to redesign both the Grand and her life?
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Genre: FICTION/ Christian/Romance
Release date: November 1, 2021
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Click here to get your copy!

My Review

2 women 100 years apart search for their pasts...

What could be better than a book that is part of a series I'm really enjoying, is written by an author I like, and has some old friends and new as characters?

Even if it hadn't been part of the excellent Doors To The Past series I would have wanted to read Behind Love's Wall because of its author, Carrie Fancett Pagels, and the intriguing back cover copy. Hidden journals, dark secrets, and secret identities are right up my mystery-loving alley.

Most of the stories by Carrie Fancett Pagels that I've read have been set on Mackinac Island and it's easy to see why. In Behind Love's Wall her vivid descriptions of the island, and particularly the Grand Hotel, are full-color and to die for. Someday I have GOT to visit the island!

Once again, I was impressed by Carrie Fancett Pagels's dedication to flawed characters. These people feel so real because they struggle with the same things that we do. Frustration, fear, depression, even migraines and stage fright. As an avid reader it's nice to read a novel now and then that reflects the truth that people of faith really do have problems too, both emotional and physical.

I have liked the Doors To The Past series since the first book. Each one has a dual timeline, which, I'm sure, isn't always the easiest to write. However, Behind Love's Wall perfectly merges the 100+ year gap, weaving the two threads together and skillfully connecting the two mysteries into one.

I'll admit that this is one of the rare times that I did like the historical thread more instead of both of them equally. The somewhat repetitious mention of masks/Covid kept distracting me after the first few times in the contemporary thread.

Behind Love's Wall was the perfect title for this book and it's a great addition to the Doors To The Past series. Carrie Fancett Pagels did a great job merging this story with several of her other books and you won't want to miss any of them...

Tell Tale Book Reviews gives Behind Love's Wall by Carrie Fancett Pagels a 4 Bark rating.

(I received a copy of this book from the publisher. All opinions are entirely my own.)

More from Carrie

Why I Wrote This Novel
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I got a chance to write another novel set on Mackinac Island!!

I’m the author of over twenty published stories. I have many books, both novel and novella length, set at the Straits of Mackinac including Maggie Award winner and Romantic Times Top Pick My Heart Belongs on Mackinac Island. In the summer, I go up to the area and I’m blessed to sign books at the Island Bookstore—sometimes hundreds of books which is such an amazing thing I can’t tell you! Now that MHBoMI is out of print, Barbour has been helping by doing limited print runs for while I am up there.

My Heart Belongs on Mackinac Island was originally part of a full series that I pitched but it didn’t get picked up for all three stories. MHBoMI got picked up as part of the My Heart Belongs series that Barbour put out a few years ago. The second book in my original Brides of Mackinac series was heroine Sadie’s story, which was published as a novella “His Anchor” in First Love Forever collection.  So I had two of my book babies delivered out into the world and Lily’s story sat there for a while.

In the Covid summer of 2020, I arrived in my home state of Michigan and over dinner with a close friend I learned that the folks at the Grand Hotel on Mackinac Island were having legal trouble with their previous long-time designed Carlton Varney suing them. I’d been disappointed that the Mussers, who’d owned the Grand for generations, had sold the hotel but this new development really bugged me.  While I was in the Upper Peninsula, I finished an Indy book, Dogwood Plantation, which only figures since I often write my Michigan stories while I am in Virginia and vice versa! I knew the only other book I wanted to work on was to complete my Brides of Mackinac trilogy (not exactly since they aren’t all in one series!) with Lily’s story. I also had a manuscript about 70% done that was my very first contemporary Women’s Fiction novel. When my agent encouraged me to submit a Mackinac Island story set at the Grand Hotel to Barbour’s Doors to the Past series, I knew immediately that the only story for historical I wanted to write was Lily’s. That meant that I needed, for this dual-timeline series, a contemporary story. That wasn’t just a chance sharing at dinner—I believe the info about the lawsuit was meant to be passed on to me one of those God-incidences. My modern-day heroine then became an established resort designer who had a trunkful of issues just like Lily did.

Was I ever glad that I had finally written my first contemporary Women’s Fiction (Butterfly Cottage) because that skill set came in very handy in writing the modern-day 2020 story of Willa in Behind Love’s Wall! This was the most difficult novel to write that I have done so far as I write in character and going back and forth between the 1895 and 2020 timelines could be draining. I tried to write each character and setting on separate days but that couldn’t always be managed.

​I pray that this story will touch readers’ hearts. I pray that someone, like the young waitress I meant on Mackinac Island who had been spiritually moved by My Heart Belongs on Mackinac Island (she read her grandmother’s copy after her grandma passed away!), will read this book and feel that connection to our Maker. That’s what Christian Fiction is all about!

Carrie Fancett Pagels, Ph.D.

ECPA-bestselling author Carrie Fancett Pagels, Ph.D., is the award-winning author of over a dozen Christian historical romances. Twenty-five years as a psychologist didn’t “cure” her overactive imagination! A self-professed “history geek,” she resides with her family in the Historic Triangle of Virginia but grew up as a “Yooper” in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. Carrie loves to read, bake, bead, and travel – but not all at the same time! You can connect with her at www.CarrieFancettPagels.com

It's Time For A Giveaway!

To celebrate her tour, Carrie is giving away the grand prize package of
​a $25 Amazon gift card and a copy of the book!!

Click below to enter. Be sure to comment on this post before you enter to claim 9 extra entries!

https://promosimple.com/ps/137e9/behind-love-s-wall-celebration-tour-giveaway

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