100 books like Neverending Mercy

Before I Called You Mine truly brought me through the gamut of emotions with a plot that pitted the main character’s two deepest desires against each other: becoming an adoptive mother and true love.

As a mom who has adopted twice, my heart thrummed in time with Lauren’s as she pursued her passion of adopting, only to come up against an obstacle she never expected. This journey of the heart was so relatable and heartfelt, I couldn’t help but walk it with the characters. And wow! What characters.

A novel about tough choices and how following God’s path brings the sweetest rewards in the end. This is a lesson I’ve learned repeatedly in my own life. How encouraging for this book to remind me. 

Only the Beautiful is one of the most important books I’ve ever read.

I’ve read many excellent books, but this one highlights the value of human life in such a profound way. It’s weighty, and definitely not an easy “beach” read. Yet, for all the emotions that rise to the surface throughout, I was left with a cord of hope. I’m a mother of a couple of children with special needs.

Historically, society has not placed a high value on the lives of children like mine. However, each day I see the light and beauty they bring to the world. I hope every believer will read this book and take the message to heart. 

It’s been years since I first read Crossing Oceans and it has stuck with me, its message so moving, so challenging, so compelling, that I can’t forget it.

I read this book through tears, hating the choice that the character made because I doubted it was the one I would have made in her place. Yet, it was the Christ-like choice. This novel challenged me to be more like Jesus and to receive a love from Him that I didn’t have in and of myself. 

This was a hard pick because I could easily have chosen any of Joanne Bischof’s other books.

She writes with such excellence and depth of feeling that you bond with the characters and go through their trials alongside them. I chose The Gold in These Hills over her other equally loved books because I read it with tears streaming down my face. The theme of restoration after loss and betrayal resonated with me. Deep despair gives way to soul-stretching hope.

Beautiful, quotable prose stuck with me long after I finished. If you want a novel about second chances that speaks deeply to the heart, give this one a try.  

In this wondrous book on Caravaggio, the world of Naples unfolds from the inside through an electrifying reading experience. Written with grace, almost every sentence imparts an epiphany. The author challenges us to undertake soul-work, even if one is a secular reader. Reading becomes an act of empathy and passion. In the words of Wallace Stevens, potential readers will become ‘necessary angels’.

I enjoy a good redemption arc, particularly ones that show more messy mistakes. In this book, Samantha Mills crafts a tight narrative detailing Zenya's fall and redemption as she navigates the complicated choices of her life. The story is told in parallels, each alternate chapter unfolding details of her present or past in complementary ways, revealing Zenya’s character in a way that emphasizes how both have led to her current situation. 

It also pulls no punches. Zenya’s relationships are colored by various forms of emotional abuse, ranging from the neglect of her father to the manipulative grooming of her mother figure, in ways that struck home personally. It’s a difficult path, portrayed here with compassion and brutal honesty.

It’s sometimes quite tricky to find a collection of short works that seamlessly cover the same topic and advance it in different ways, showing various perspectives.

In this book, there are twenty different contributors – all with direct experience of being in prison or on probation – and each piece explores what ‘hope’ really means. Such a powerful and important word, yet different for everyone; nonetheless pushing us all onwards when times are darkest.

Without hope, there is really no redemption, for it requires the ability to look ahead and see something or someone better. Seeing creative work from many different people in prison writing about such an important subject felt very rewarding, and the fact that all contributors also won a prize as part of a national writing competition bolstered the book’s impact.

While learning who she is, Leslie, the lead character, makes choices based on her insecurities and those choices affect not only her, but the people around her. As she attempts to fix the mistakes she’s made, she is faced with some tough decisions. Her road to redemption will make you want to shake her back into reality. It’s a novel that will have you yelling at the book, as if Leslie is a friend and you want to help her. The characters are very relatable, they felt as if they could be people in your circle, or people you know in real life.

Susan Landeis dealt with rejection and jealousy from her own mom as she was a little girl and through her teenage years. What does one do when an estranged parent is diagnosed with dementia and needs care? It is a rare individual who reacts with the kindness and forgiveness of Landeis. Because of that generosity and love, or perhaps because her mother forgot the meanness and rejection she inflicted on her daughter in years past, Susan and her mom grew a beautiful relationship during those caregiving years, giving them both comfort in the end.

Scottish astronomer and novelist Pippa Goldschmidt mixes astronomy and fiction in her novel. The book provides insight into the way that astronomy is carried out now in modern, remote, mountain-top observatories and in space (I can vouch for its verisimilitude). Jeanette is a young, lonely, junior researcher working in a university department dominated by male egos and incompetents. She puts academic politics and unsatisfactory affairs aside and travels to a mountain-top observatory in Chile for her research, making an unexpected discovery that throws her into conflict with her colleagues. Like her love life, her scientific life spirals out of her control: the Universe is ordered by science but her life and the lives of scientists are not.