Time to start your novena!

The novena leading up to St. Catherine of Siena’s feast day starts today! You can find several good options online. If you have one, share it in the comments.

• Discerning Hearts
  This one uses excerpts from her writings and has an audio version, too

• Pray More Novenas

• The Dominican Sisters of Malta

• Intercede App

A great way to prepare for the feast would be to read my new book, Coached by Catherine!

I’m incredibly grateful that so many of you have purchased Coached by Catherine. Amazon didn’t anticipate the rush and sold out the day we launched. I know some of you are hearing that you might not get your copy from Amazon until mid-June, but Amazon tends to exaggerate arrival dates when this happens, so it’ll likely be in your hands much sooner. If you order from Scepter, they’ll ship your copy immediately.

Okay, this is where I need your help:

Leaving reviews on places like Amazon and Good Reads is a huge help for readers looking for their next read.

Would you be willing to leave a short review on either Amazon or Good Reads if you enjoyed Coached by Catherine? After all, without reviews, people judge books by covers, titles, and the little description that Amazon gives. But you can share what you liked about it, maybe what surprised you, who you think would benefit from it and why.

To thank everyone willing to leave me reviews, I’ll do a drawing once a month for the next three months and give a few lucky people a little curated box of fun things from pilgrimage. Each box will have a JPII medal from Rome when he was Pope, a holy card of Benedict blessed by him, a Miraculous Medal from Rue de Bac in Paris (in French, of course! and blessed by Benedict XVI a few days after he became Pope!!), a little wooden cross from the Holy Land, and a St. Benedict crucifix. Then there will be a surprise… you might get a journal, you might get a rosary from Fatima, you might get a Pax et Bonum magnet from Assisi, you might get something else cool I find in my box of treats. And then I’ll throw in a book - maybe one of the ones pictured below, because they fit the theme : )

All you have to do is leave a review, and one of these curated pilgrimage boxes could be yours!

This is not “compensating” you for your review (so you don’t have to check that on the Amazon review or indicate that you were compensated) - it is simply a way for me to thank you for taking that next step of helping someone find my book.

To enter the contest, just leave me a review (it can be for any of my books, on either Amazon or Good Reads - every single review gets an entry! So you could technically get six entries) and then shoot me an email at joan@joanwatson.faith or comment here on this Substack post that you left me a review. (this is important - I need to know for you to be entered into the drawing!)

At the end of April, May, and June I’ll do drawings! So if you don’t have time to read Catherine in the next ten days, that’s okay. There’s plenty of time!

In the middle of the Catherine excitement, my episode on Franciscan University Presents with Father Dave Pivonka, Dr. Scott Hahn, and Dr. Regis Martin became available over on YouTube. Some of you saw it when it was EWTN, but if you missed it then, here it is!

Thanks in advance for your reviews!

Now I’m off to go pray my novena prayer…