Behind Love's Wall

Behind Love’s Wall Carrie Pagels continues to outdo herself! Behind Love’s Wall is part of the Barbour’s Doors to the Past series but each book can be read as a stand alone. If you’re a fan of Christian historical fiction and/or dual timeline stories buy this book today. You will devour it. This is a wonderful story that is so interesting and keeps you wanting to turn the pages. Yet it’s one of those books that you want to read it slowly to savor it. I loved the way it went back and forth between the past and present day. I loved that it was a mystery and love story combined. The characters and scenes are so well developed that you feel like you personally know the everyone and are part of their family. Through the author's words you can easily imagine that you live on Mackinac Island. Behind Love’s Wall is filled with faith, family, mystery, and intrigue.

Time for both of us to knock down those walls around our hearts. It gets better - what could possibly be the connection between a soloist from many years earlier and a contemporary interior designer? Add the majestic Grand Hotel on beautiful Mackinac Island and you have a story you will not put down. The author takes us back into the world where Lily, with a voice like an angel, has a very real secret to hide. One that could change everything in her world. Willa, a sought after designer, wants an answer to a question that has hounded her for years. Is it possible that uncovering one secret might answer that query? Dreams, nightmares, murder, secret rooms and memories - can a psychiatrist and an artistic gardener possibly help? This ARC of another Doors to the Past novel was received through Barbour Publishing and NetGalley. My impressions and comments were in no way solicited.

I loved this novel! It is a Christian dual timeline that combines the best of faith, history, mystery, and romance. The author is very talented at developing the characters into three-dimensional people. She gives life to the sights, scents, and sounds of the atmosphere of Mackinac Island. The mysteries were complex, with twists that I truly did not see coming. The potential couple in each era has one or both parties hiding behind walls to protect themselves from further pain. Whether each person can trust the Lord with their future is a choice they have to make. Lily has been singing to the accompaniment of her cousin Clem on the piano since her early teens. Lily’s mother died in a fire she was believed to have set in an asylum in Kentucky where she had been sent. In the late nineteenth century, the stigma about mental illness was much worse than now. When word got out about her mother, Lily and Clem lost contracts and went to Michigan where they heard work was available. The job in Detroit was not what they were told so they planned to go to the Straits of Michigan for the tourist season. During the night, the place in Detroit caught fire and the two of them escaped out the window. At the Straits, Lily changed her name again so she could not be connected to her mother or the fire in Detroit. They met Stephen there and he referred them to the Grand Hotel on Mackinac Island. He was a psychiatrist there with his own family secrets. Willa and Sue needed work in 2020 when the pandemic shut down most hotel redesign work. The new owners of the Grand Hotel were looking to redesign a suite that had not been used for over 100 years due to a death. If this was successful, there was potential for more work. Willa never knew who her father was, and her mother died when she was three. Her grandfather still lives in the Upper Peninsula, so she determined to find out about her father from him. One of the people she had to work with was Michael, who she and Sue had met in the past when doing a job in another state. Willa was attracted to someone for the first time since a betrayal years ago. Michael had also been hurt badly and suffered from health problems and mood changes. Neither wants to take the risk of getting to know the other. While there, Michael and Willa learned they both had ancestors who had been at the Grand Hotel at the same time in 1895. Willa and Sue were intrigued by a journal they found in a walled-over space in the suite they are redesigning, also known as The Songbird’s Rooms. Serious crimes occurred that year requiring the services of several Pinkerton agents, including a possibly unsolved murder. The characters invited me into their story from the beginning and kept my attention throughout. I enjoyed learning some of the history of the island and hotel. The pandemic was written about with matter-of-fact accuracy without undercurrents of fear or politics. The mysteries in the lives of Lily and Willa, both trying to learn about their fathers, and the crimes committed in 1895, also held my attention. This is an incredibly well-written novel with timely spiritual lessons that I greatly appreciated. The resolutions were satisfactory leaving no open questions. I highly recommend it to those who enjoy Christian time-slip novels, mysteries, and light romance. From a thankful heart: I received a copy of this novel from the publisher and Celebrate Lit, and this is my honest review.