Val Locklier rents an apartment from her friend Molly when she moves to a new state. Molly's brother Miles actually has the whole house, but he lives downstairs, and right now he’s in Mexico. ALL THAT IT TAKES starts with these two twentysomething people getting surprised when they each arrive home to meet the other. Because Miles is back.
Pastor Miles McKenzie was quite content with the outreach mission in Mexico. Times change, and the mission is being run differently. Tighter finances mean he’s recalled and asked to work from Spokane, among his family’s local community.
The move from Alaska to Spokane, Washington, with her ten-year-old son Tucker, is a huge step for a single mom, but Val not only needs independence (she can’t be apart from her parents without them FaceTiming), she needs a steady job. Molly has a startup business, which sounds great, that has an unexpected calamity, and Val is looking at the boxes in her apartment, wondering if she and Tommy have to pack up again or if she can find a few months of work. Luckily, she’s a hobby filmmaker and has put in many hours of work in marketing, fashion clips for an influencer. A film studio contest is open, and she applies.
This is a nice story about Val and Miles, getting to know each other and respecting space, minding the kid, finding interests in common. There is not much at all about the process of filmmaking, other than conversation. It just is not credible that a studio would select a nominee who had no degree in media. A busy single mother who needs to learn about film production would be reading Save The Cat, and film theory, not works of weighty theology. And I can’t believe that she never did any outdoor filming in scenic Alaska.
If you would enjoy a Christian-themed story about worthy missions and outreach to the community, with homey food and sodas, texts and cameras, this could be for you. Nicole Deese has provided the second in this series called McKenzie Family Romance. The first book focused on Molly, but they can be read out of order. ALL THAT IT TAKES is a gentle romance about people trying to do their best, in spite of business people following other agendas.
When the ever-cautious Val Locklier finally agrees to a cross-country move with her nine-year-old son to take a job with her best friend, Molly, everything she had planned for the future unravels within the first week. After pushing aside her anxieties about renting an apartment from Molly's twin brother, whom she barely knows, she accepts an invitation for an elite filmmaker's mentorship. Caught between her insecurities and new possibilities, she feels completely unprepared for the challenges ahead.
Pastor Miles McKenzie returns home from abroad to discover that not only does he have an intriguing new tenant living upstairs, he's been banished to a ministry on life support. Disillusioned and restless, he pursues a relationship with Val without stopping to consider the timing or asking God to direct his steps.
As Val struggles to stop hiding behind the camera and Miles wrestles with shattered expectations, they'll find that authentic love and sacrifice must go hand in hand.
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