Book BagLady

AN AWARD!

2012-01-29T16:35:00.000-08:00

I am honoured to have been chosen for an award. It means a lot to me when a peer, someone I respect, chooses to honour me. It still amazes me that people actually want to read what I write! I appreciate it! THANK YOU to "McGuffy Ann" for bestowing this lovely award to me. Please visit her at:

http://mcguffysreader.blogspot.com/

Here are the rules that go along with this award:

1. In a post on your blog, nominate 5-15 fellow bloggers for the Versatile Blogger Award.

2. In the same post, add the Versatile Blogger Award.
3. In the same post, thank the blogger who nominated you in a post with a link back to their blog.
4. In the same post, share 7 completely random facts about yourself.
5. In the same post, include this set of rules.
6. Inform each nominated blogger of their nomination by posting a comment on each of their blogs.

Here are 7 Random Facts About Me:
1. I read approximately 200 books per year.
2. I won't read fantasy or western novels.
3. I suffer from chronic insomnia.
4. I love Susan Boyle's voice.
5. I have been married for "33" wonderful and happy years.
6. I'm a consumate dog lover. Yes, I'm one of those "crazy" dog ladies. I had 4 dogs but sadly, two passed away in 2011. I still have a Black Lab (Buddy) and an all black Chihuahua (Maggie).
7. I never "dream", or at least I don't remember them if I do.

I would now like to pass this award onto:

1. Radiant Light at:
http://www.frommipov.blogspot.com/

2. Mike Draper at:
http://mikedraperinguilford.blogspot.com/

3. Crazy for Books at:
http://crazy-for-books.com/

4. Gently Mad at:
http://sharonhenning.blogspot.com/

5. Belle's Bookshelf at: http://bellesbookshelf.com/

A WALK ACROSS THE SUN (CORBAN ADDISON)

2012-01-29T01:28:00.000-08:00

Story Description:

Corban Addison leads readers on a chilling, eye-opening journey into Mumbai's seedy underworld--and the nightmare of two orphaned girls swept into the international sex trade.

When a tsunami rages through their coastal town in India, 17-year-old Ahalya Ghai and her 15-year-old sister Sita are left orphaned and homeless. With almost everyone they know suddenly erased from the face of the earth, the girls set out for the convent where they attend school. They are abducted almost immediately and sold to a Mumbai brothel owner, beginning a hellish descent into the bowels of the sex trade.

Halfway across the world, Washington, D.C., attorney Thomas Clarke faces his own personal and professional crisis-and makes the fateful decision to pursue a pro bono sabbatical working in India for an NGO that prosecutes the subcontinent's human traffickers. There, his conscience awakens as he sees firsthand the horrors of the trade in human flesh, and the corrupt judicial system that fosters it. Learning of the fate of Ahalya and Sita, Clarke makes it his personal mission to rescue them, setting the stage for a riveting showdown with an international network of ruthless criminals.

My Review:

This was a difficult book to read for me because it dealt with the horrible but very real world of exploitation in its worst form; the rape of young girls and women. This despicable act isn’t just relegated to the farest reaches of our planet but happens every single day in our own backyards.

A Walk Across the Sun is the story of two sisters who lose their family to a tsunami and then are kidnapped in broad daylight and sold into the sex slave industry. The eldest of the two sisters, Ahalya who is seventeen, suffers unspeakable acts to her physical, emotional, and spiritual self. Her younger sister, Sita, age fifteen doesn’t fare much better when she is sold many times in the course of two and a half months to perform physical labour that is gruelling to say the least.

Thomas Clarke, one of the main characters, is powerless in his search for Sita. Having been a lawyer with a large firm in the United States, he goes to Bombay, India for a year at CASE which is dedicated to the prosecution of these scumbags that buy these girls.

Corban Addison has written a novel that has something for everyone. It is part thriller, part suspense, part mystery and filled with a poetic beauty fit for the most discerning. It is a novel of sex, rape, love, hate, hope, wisdom, forgiveness, and redemption.

Between India, Paris, and the United States you are about to be taken on a journey with two of the most lovable girls you’ll ever have the pleasure to meet in fiction and ones you’ll never forget even after the last page has been turned. I can promise you that once you’ve begun this novel, you won’t be able to put it down!

I was enraged at the blaring disregard for women and I had many tear-stained pages throughout my reading of this novel. I was thankful for Mr. Addison’s notes at the end of the novel on how to help stop human trafficking and is a must read! This novel has moved me into action and I highly recommend everyone read it. This would be a great book selection for book clubs. It needs to be discussed and kept on the front burner and in the forefront of everyone’s mind. We all need to pitch in and help.

ASENATH (ANNA PATRICIO)

2012-01-27T10:26:00.000-08:00

Story Description

In a humble fishing village on the shores of the Nile lives Asenath, a fisherman's daughter who has everything she could want. Until her perfect world is shattered.

When a warring jungle tribe ransacks the village and kidnaps her, separating her from her parents, she is forced to live as a slave. And she begins a journey that will culminate in the meeting of a handsome and kind steward named Joseph.

Like her, Joseph was taken away from his home, and it is in him that Asenath comes to find solace…and love. But just as they are beginning to form a bond, Joseph is betrayed by his master’s wife and thrown into prison.

Is Asenath doomed to a lifetime of losing everything and everyone she loves?

My Review

This was the most satisfying and beautiful story, I didn’t want it to end! I know it’s early in the year but this could very well be my favourite novel of 2012!

Anna Patricio has penned the most incredible story of the wife of Joseph from the Bible. Asenath is portrayed so well that it’s glaringly obvious that the author has spent a great deal of time researching the book of Genesis and her studies in Egyptology have paid off. We all are familiar with Joseph and his coat of many colours, but few, including myself, know little about his beloved wife, Asenath.

Asenath was born Kiya and grew up until she was nine-years-old playing on the banks of the Nile River in Egypt with her best friend, Menah. A monstrous group of barbarians kidnapped the two kids to exact revenge for a killing that took place years earlier. The son was exacting revenge for the killing of his father. The invaders killed Kiya’s mother and father and she was used as a slave until rescued by Egyptian soldiers and taken to the City of Heliopolis.

Kiya is told her parents were murdered and is eventually adopted by the High Priest and Priestress of Autumn-Re and they changed her name to Asenath. She was told that the name Asenath “…will give you power in days to come.” Kiya was now to be known as “Lady Asenath, Chief Daughter of the Sun.”

As Asenath grows she is learning to be a “Royal” and getting used to servants and citizens bowing and greeting her but she never loses her “roots”. I loved the fact that she never thought of herself as above or better than anyone else and maintains her true self, often talking to the servants and always maintaining the spirit of her days as a peasant.

When she finally meets Joseph, he was a servant in another household in a different city. They correspond through letters for a year and it is through these letters that Asenath learns Joseph is from Canaan and learns who his ancestors are and the fact that they worship only one God. Joseph explains his close relationship with his father and his gift of a coat of many colours. Asenath doesn’t understand why Joseph had come to Egypt instead of staying in Canaan when he had such fond memories and close relationships with his family there.

Asenath finally gets to see Joseph again but he is accused of raping another woman and is thrown in prison. She returns home, packs her bags, and against her parent’s wishes, goes back to the city where Joseph is to try and get him out of prison.

Will she succeed? Will she and Joseph ever be together again? There is so much more to this story but I’ve already said enough and you’ll just have to purchase a copy to find out what happens. I know I couldn’t put this book down, I just had to keep reading, I was mesmerized.

I would love to see this author write a sequel to “Asenath” so we can continue to follow her life until her death. I know I’d be first in-line to purchase a copy.

Thank you Ms. Patricio for the pdf copy in exchange for my honest review. I’m so happy that you contacted me as this is one story I wouldn’t want to have missed.

RIVER'S CALL (INN AT SHINING WATER'S BOOK #2) (MELODY CARLSON)

2012-01-20T10:15:00.000-08:00

Story Description:

Anna Larson's daughter, Lauren, is confused, broken-hearted, and misguided. It's the turbulent 1960s and, feeling alienated from her mother, Lauren chooses to stay with her paternal grandmother. However, repelled by the woman's manipulative and spiteful ways, Lauren returns to her mother, the river, and the Inn at Shining Waters.

But as time passes, Lauren, now a mother to her own defiant teenager, faces a new crisis, one that puts the entire family at risk.

My Review:

Although Lauren was misguided, confused, and alienated from her mother, Anna, I wanted to strangle that girl all throughout the novel. Lauren had a profound impact on me and I saw her as seriously spoiled! She was an ungrateful, spoiled, temper-tantrum, whining child, teenager and young adult. At every turn I was frustrated with her and couldn’t imagine myself parenting her. On the other hand, I found her mother, Anna, to be a superbly pleasant, loving, tolerant and kind woman.

Anna worked hard to keep her Inn in tip-top shape for guests and Lauren was no help at all. When Lauren herself became pregnant and had her daughter, Sarah, history repeated itself but Sarah had her grandma Anna by her side which made her upbringing much better than Lauren’s had been.

Living on the river as Anna’s relatives had for generations, brought healing and calm to this very dysfunctional family but it took an almost tragic event for Lauren to finally see the light.

I thoroughly enjoyed this novel and would highly recommend it for everyone!

THE DRESSMAKER OF KHAIR KHANA (GAYLE TZEMACH LEMMON)

2012-01-18T19:08:00.000-08:00

Story Description:

The life Kamila Sidiqi had known changed overnight when the Taliban seized control of the city of Kabul. After receiving a teaching degree during the civil war—a rare achievement for any Afghan woman—Kamila was subsequently banned from school and confined to her home. When her father and brother were forced to flee the city, Kamila became the sole breadwinner for her five siblings. Armed only with grit and determination, she picked up a needle and thread and created a thriving business of her own.

The Dressmaker of Khair Khana tells the incredible true story of this unlikely entrepreneur who mobilized her community under the Taliban. Former ABC News reporter Gayle Tzemach Lemmon spent years on the ground reporting Kamila's story, and the result is an unusually intimate and unsanitized look at the daily lives of women in Afghanistan. These women are not victims; they are the glue that holds families together; they are the backbone and the heart of their nation. Afghanistan's future remains uncertain as debates over withdrawal timelines dominate the news.

The Dressmaker of Khair Khana moves beyond the headlines to transport you to an Afghanistan you have never seen before. This is a story of war, but it is also a story of sisterhood and resilience in the face of despair. Kamila Sidiqi's journey will inspire you, but it will also change the way you think about one of the most important political and humanitarian issues of our time.

My Review:

This was one book I simply couldn’t put down. Kamila Sidiqi’s journey into entrepreneurship will inspire you. In the face of war and with her community under the watchful eye of the hated Taliban, Kamila rose above the poverty and strict rules laid out by the Taliban to run a successful business employing neighbouring women by teaching them how to sew. These women became independent breadwinners for their families during a time when women were looked down upon and treated less than human. Without Kamila’s dedication, deep faith and belief that she could help to empower these women, their families would have starved to death or been forced to move during a dangerous time.

This incredible true story of Kamila Sidiqi will leave you rooting for her and making you feel empowered to go out and contribute to society. Ms. Lemmon has done a remarkable job at telling Kamila’s story and I’d like to say “thanks” for the best few hours of reading I’ve had in a while.

SERENITY BAY (BETTE NORDBERG)

2012-01-18T05:36:00.000-08:00

Story Description:

A charming island village in the Puget Sound seems like the perfect place to raise their children when Patricia Koehler and her husband move in. And the slow pace of life might be just the thing to bring the peace and quiet Patricia longs for. When she discovers a wonderful friend in Susan – a woman as outgoing as Patricia is shy – she knows she’s made a friend for life.

Yet all is not as it seems, and the Koehlers are not a perfect couple. When Patricia shares her secret agony with Susan, she finds the courage to face the problem with the love and support of her friend…but neither woman is prepared for the consequences unleashed by revealing the truth.

This moving story deals with contemporary family issues that come straight from today’s headlines.

My Review:

Ms. Nordberg introduces us to the sad subject of abusive relationships. Patricia was so happy and so in love with her doctor husband and he was the guy every girl would want. Taking Patricia on the most beautiful dates, attending to her every need, and lavishing her with flowers and words only endeared her more and more to this wonderful man. However, once married, the good doctor began to change and became an abusive and obnoxious man. I found it so hard to read through the beatings he laid on Patricia.

With the help of God, her good friend Susan and a new community, Patricia is able to begin life anew. There are so many twists and turns in the novel making for a very suspenseful read. People often assume because someone is a Christian and has a relationship with God that they would never be in an abusive relationship and that is just not true. You need more than a relationship with God you need courage and community as well to help you walk back into the light.

This was one book I just couldn’t put down and ended up reading it in one sitting!! Don’t miss out on this excellent book that provides us with a very important message.

PACIFIC HOPE (BETTE NORDBERG)

2012-01-14T20:24:00.000-08:00

Story Description:

The San Francisco Bay area dawns a typical day – sunshine, cool breezes, then rain – the afternoon Kate Langston’s entire world is set off-kilter. Successful in their careers and happily ensconced in the empty-nest stage of life, Kate and Mike’s twenty-six-year marriage has settled into a comfortable, if somewhat predictable routine.

A package sent through the mail shatters the world they have created together, and Kate walks out the door certain their marriage is over and wonders if her faith in God will ever be the same. Mike, devastated by what has happened to their relationship, determines to win back his wife, whatever the cost, even though his company appears on the brink of a criminal investigation. A voyage in the Pacific seems to be the lifeline he was seeking, but will Kate agree to sail with a husband she no longer trusts?

My Review:

Pacific Hope grabbed me from the very first page. Kate is devastated by the package of photographs she receives in the mail showing her beloved husband, Mike, with another woman. Kate walks out and flies home to be with her father who is ill with plans to divorce Mike when she returns. She needs to pray and hopes that her faith in God will lead her in the right direction.

Mike, on the other hand, has very different plans. Although his company is being investigated by the FBI and it is not a very good time for him to be away from work, his love for Kate overrides all. He agrees to pilot a sail boat from San Francisco to Hawaii for his friend and asks Kate to go with him.

The scenes and happenings on the boat will have you sitting at the edge of your seat!! At one point I was holding my breath. Kate finds out just how much faith she still has and prays that God is listening to her to help her out of the predicament she has found herself in.

Will she save herself and her estranged husband? Does she truly have the depth of faith she requires?

Bette Nordberg has done a fantastic job of telling about the workings of piloting a large sail boat. I found the information very interesting. I would highly recommend this book to everyone.

DETOURS (BETTE NORDBERG)

2012-01-12T01:24:00.000-08:00

Story Description:

Callie O’Brians ordinary life takes an unexpected detour when social services places a four-year-old orphan, Keeshan Hernandez, in her care. Overwhelmed, Callie is just about ready to give the boy back to the authorities when Marcus Jefferson suddenly arrives, claiming to be Keeshan’s uncle.

In the face of Marcus’ challenge, Callie realizes the strength of her ties to the little boy. Knowing she cannot simply give him to a stranger, Callie mounts a legal battle to keep Keeshan. Willing to sacrifice everything, Callie is unprepared for the strange attraction she has for Marcus. Can she let go of her own feelings long enough to do what is best for Keeshan? Is Marcus worthy of the prize Callie has to offer?

My Review:

I’ve quickly come to learn that Bette Nordberg has the uncanny ability to take any mundane, every day situation and turn it into something with substance and meaning.

Callie is a single woman who runs a coffee shop and an upholstery business and is just making ends meet. Her friend, Celia, and her four-year-old son, Keeshan, rent the guest house on Callie’s property. When Celia is killed, Callie is given temporary custody of Keeshan but Callie has never been around kids much and is feeling very inadequate about her skills as a caregiver to Keeshan.

Just as Callie is settling into a comfortable routine with Keeshan, Marcus Jefferson happens upon the scene. Marcus is a black man and Keeshan’s uncle. Here Nordberg opens the subject of interracial relationships. Callie becomes very protective of Keeshan as Marcus has applied for sole custody, but Callie also finds Marcus very attractive. However, having grown up with a racist father, the old tapes from her childhood are running through her head. Can Callie overcome her father’s voice from the past? Who will win custody of little Keeshan?

This is a story of accepting the detours that pop up into our lives and of learning to trust ourselves regardless of our past. I didn’t want this book to end and would love to see Ms. Nordberg write a sequel!!

A SEASON OF GRACE (BETTE NORDBERG)

2012-01-09T06:37:00.000-08:00

Story Description:

With candor and compassion, Silver Angel award-winning writer Bette Nordberg explores the struggles and heartaches associated with homosexuality and AIDS to create a gripping novel that reveals the comfort of a personal relationship with Jesus. Colleen is wary when her brother Stephen arrives, but she refuses to dwell on his homosexuality. After a family fight, Stephen angrily leaves. Colleen follows him, discovers he has AIDS, and invites him to live with her family. As Stephen's illness progresses, Colleen encounters fear, prejudice, and judgments from "it's a shame" to "God is punishing Stephen." Slowly Colleen considers a new answer. Maybe AIDS isn't a condemnation. Perhaps God has granted Stephen time to evaluate his life and discover the love of the Master Healer.

My Review:

If you don`t completely understand the true meaning of ‘grace’ in the context of your faith, you will by the time you`ve finished reading this novel.

Colleen hasn`t seen her twin brother, Stephen, for years until he shows up at Colleen`s house for their mother`s birthday party. Stephen has been away from his family due to disagreements over his alternative lifestyle and after another disagreement at the party he storms out of the house and goes home. Colleen is terribly upset and vows not to lose Stephen again and hops into her car and drives across the state to his home. Once there she finds out Stephen`s truth – he has the AIDS virus.

Colleen brings Stephen back to her home and eventually invites him to stay and live with her family so she can care for him. However, Colleen didn`t ask her husband, Kevin, or their two teenage kids how they felt about Stephen living with them. Travis, Colleen`s son doesn`t even want to be in the same room as his Uncle and Kevin questions her allowing Stephen to help bake Christmas cookies. The family`s fears about AIDS are depicted so well and pretty much mirror image how a lot of people in society today still view AIDS patients even with all the education that has been done. I think there will always be some type of stigma attached to AIDS and some will never feel comfortable with it.

Even in her church, Colleen faces criticism from fellow parishioners, including one woman who gets up, turns off the keyboard Colleen just finished playing on, and proceeds to clean every single white key, black key, and all other buttons before she herself would play it. Can you even begin to imagine how that would make you feel if you were in Colleen`s shoes?

Not only is AIDS a huge part of this story but so is faith. Colleen has a secret that her family knows nothing about and I think that held her back from really participating in her conversations with God and her ability to hunker down and feel totally at peace. But her decision to move Stephen into her own home basically forces her to delve deep into why she “really” brought him there and why it is so important for her to care for Stephen in his final days.

We need to remember that God allows us to experience grief and pain because it is a gift and through that we learn the true meaning of grace.

A Season of Grace would have been a difficult book to write I would imagine, but Ms. Nordberg handled it with grace, humility, and great compassion. This is more than just a novel it's a lesson, an opportunity to learn. Unconditional love is a great thing! I would highly recommend that everyone read this novel.

GENOA BAY (BETTE NORDBERG)

2012-01-07T09:45:00.000-08:00

Story Description:

In this contemporary romance, young widow Brandy Beauchamp inherits a long-established bed-and-breakfast on Vancouver Island from an old friend. It needs energy and commitment if the beautiful but neglected property is to be restored.

With her five-year-old daughter, Gabby, Brandy moves to British Columbia and sets about building a new life only to discover that a local property developer has very different plans.

The quirky old house is symbolic of the strange characters peopling this novel, each one a composite of its influences-as the house is a composite of its owners. Brandy Beauchamp's success becomes our success, despite treachery, adversity, and misfortune.

Nordberg has interwoven themes of courage and treachery with personal growth and discovery.

My Review:

Brandy, a young widow, and her five-year-old daughter, Gabby, head for Vancouver Island in Canada from Florida. Maggie Blackburn, the woman who took Brandy in as a wayward teenager and raised and loved her as her own has had a stroke and lies unconscious in the intensive care unit. Sadly, Maggie dies and Brandy inherits the bed and breakfast where Maggie lived. The B & B was no longer being used as such but a home for Maggie that was packed to the hilt with furniture, collectibles, antiques and the like. There was even an entire hull of a boat suspended from the ceiling in the great room!

Despite having no money, Brandy uproots her and Gabby’s lives in Florida and moves to Canada to prepare Maggie’s home to once again become a functioning Bed & Breakfast. However, along the way, Brandy is up against Murphy’s Law at every turn. After some renovations had been completed, a large fir tree crashes through the roof during a particularly bad wind storm. A nasty and under-handed developer wants to purchase the property from her and isn’t above conducting himself in some shady deals in order to hopefully force Brandy to sell to him.

Brandy struggles with her faith and is learning to listen to God and to follow His voice, but can she follow Him completely in the face of the tragedies she must endure? In the meantime, Brandy takes in teenager Celeste and her 10-year-old sister, Danny, while their Grandmother recovers in hospital from a broken hip and some other health problems. Then a fire breaks out and her little Gabby gets hurt and she has run out of money.

Brandy is now really struggling with her faith and needs to make a decision whether to carry on and hope for the best, or pull the plug on the entire project and move back to Florida and resume her old life.

GENOA BAY is a touching story of love, loss, grief, faith, courage, resilience, and the redemptive power of believing in trusting God and allowing oneself to move forward in that faith. I loved this book and will be keeping it as part of my permanent collection. Thank you Ms. Nordberg for a wonderful story that kept me turning the pages late into the night!

THE IMPACT OF A SINGLE EVENT (R. L. PRENDERGAST)

2012-01-05T18:47:00.000-08:00

Story Description:

A terrible car accident occurs. Richard and Sonia, a couple with a crumbling marriage, stop to help the critically injured victims. In the process, they find a 140-year-old journal by the side of the road. Six different people have written in the journal. Though the entries span three centuries, the writers share a quest: the search for meaning in their lives. These stories take Richard and Sonia on a personal and historic journey: across Canada to the jungles of India and back to the Canadian Rocky Mountains, where a final mystery awaits.

My Review:

Richard and Sonia happen upon a car crash on the highway. There are two people trapped inside an over-turned vehicle. The woman is hanging upside down in her seatbelt and the man is pinned in by the steering wheel. Sonia calls 911 on her cell phone to report the horrific scene displayed before them. Quickly the smell of gasoline permeates the air and the rush is on to remove these two people from their car before it catches fire or explodes into a fireball. They finally free them and manage to drag them to a safer place. The female is bleeding profusely from a chest wound where a large piece of glass has impaled her chest and the man is making horrible gurgling sounds from his throat. The ambulance finally arrives and the victims of the accident are on their way to the hospital.

Once the ambulance has gone, Richard and Sonia notice that the personal belongings of the passengers are strewn about the highway. Feeling badly for the couple they garner some garbage bags from the police and two old suitcases from the back of the car and begin the process of collecting their property and packing them in the bags and suitcases. When they are done, they head over to give the property to the police to deliver to the hospital for the couple, in case they survived, but the police wouldn’t have time and asked Richard and Sonia if they wouldn’t mind dropping them off themselves. They were a little taken aback but quickly agreed. As they were walking back to their own vehicle, Richard suddenly sees what looks like a book under the bumper of his car and bends down to retrieve it. Once inside the car where he could see, he quickly realizes this book is very, very old and appears to be a diary or journal of some sort.

It turns out to be a journal that is 140-years-old and has been passed along to different people who have recorded a story from their own lives into it. Although each person’s story is somewhat a condensed version, they are riveting stories that you simply can’t stop reading. Mr. Prendergast has smartly woven these stories together with a constant character that has come into possession of the journal.

I thoroughly enjoyed the amalgamation of stories from the different time periods. The characters in each life story were well-developed and the vividness of the writing made me feel as though I myself was there. I could see the sights, surroundings and smell the odours. I also loved the fact that the book was written by a Canadian and set in various parts of Canada!

The Impact of a Single Event had me pulled in right from the beginning and held my attention non-stop until the end. Speaking of the end, I loved the ‘twist’ at the end, totally unexpected but absolutely perfect! Don’t miss out on this one, once the word is out about how good this book is, it’s going to be a roaring success!!! Well-done Mr. Prendergast!

UNBROKEN (LAURA HILLENBRAND)

2012-01-03T00:45:00.000-08:00

Story Description:

On a May afternoon in 1943, an Army Air Forces bomber crashed into the Pacific Ocean and disappeared, leaving only a spray of debris and a slick of oil, gasoline, and blood. Then, on the ocean surface, a face appeared. It was that of a young lieutenant, the plane's bombardier, who was struggling to a life raft and pulling himself aboard. So began one of the most extraordinary odysseys of the Second World War.

The lieutenant's name was Louis Zamperini. In boyhood, he'd been a cunning and incorrigible delinquent, breaking into houses, brawling, and fleeing his home to ride the rails. As a teenager, he had channeled his defiance into running, discovering a prodigious talent that had carried him to the Berlin Olympics and within sight of the four-minute mile. But when war had come, the athlete had become an airman, embarking on a journey that led to his doomed flight, a tiny raft, and a drift into the unknown.
Ahead of Zamperini lay thousands of miles of open ocean, leaping sharks, a foundering raft, thirst and starvation, enemy aircraft, and, beyond, a trial even greater. Driven to the limits of endurance, Zamperini would answer desperation with ingenuity; suffering with hope, resolve, and humor; brutality with rebellion. His fate, whether triumph or tragedy, would be suspended on the fraying wire of his will.

In her long-awaited new book, Laura Hillenbrand writes with the same rich and vivid narrative voice she displayed in Seabiscuit. Telling an unforgettable story of a man's journey into extremity, Unbroken is a testament to the resilience of the human mind, body, and spirit.

My Review:

This isn’t normally the type of book I would choose to read but something about the synopsis on the cover propelled me into buying it and I’m glad I did. This is the incredible and true story of Louis Zamperini.

Louis Zamperini was a young child when his parents moved to Grammercy Street in Torrance, California. As a toddler he was inquisitive and incorrigible, as a youth he became a delinquent causing trouble, fighting, and stealing his way through each day. Louis was high strung and needed a positive outlet for his destructive and abhorrent behaviour and took up running. Little did he realize when he first began that he would be heading to the 1936 Olympics held in Berlin, Germany chasing the 4-minute mile record! Louis trained hard and more than earned every win and every trophy. He constantly broke records set by previous runners and became quite a sensation.

Louis joined the air force in the Second World War and became the squadron’s bombardier, a job he took seriously. One bright morning in May of 1943 his team flew out over the Pacific on a mission only to crash into the ocean. Only Louis and two other airmen from his flight survived. They floated in a raft over miles and miles and miles of ocean for 47 days and struggled with extreme heat, salt sores, swollen lips that grew grotesquely up to their noses, hunger and starvation, extreme thirst and large sharks that attempted to jump into their quickly shredding life raft. On the 47^th day they were rescued by the enemy Japanese and sent off to POW camps. There Louis faced the toughest days of his life. One particular sadistic guard had a penchant for Louis and sought him out daily to apply beatings so severe that you wouldn’t believe any human being could survive. He was tortured, punched repeatedly, had buckle belts swung and smashed into his head, and was demoralized and dehumanized.

Unbroken is the unforgettable story of Louis’s survival, and redemption and the resilience of his mind, body, and spirit.

SPACE (EMILY SUE HARVEY)

2012-01-01T15:42:00.000-08:00

Story Description:

In Space, Emily Sue delivers us a deeply moving story of a family on the brink. Dan and Deede Stowe have worked for years, planning and saving for their idyllic retirement years. Just when they finally are about to realize their dream, their adult, recovering drug-addict daughter, Faith, moves back in with them and everything changes. Their ”miracle child”, complete with druggie baggage, upsets the tranquil balance of the Stowe’s existence. Private romantic moments evaporate. Faith’s endless needs intrude hour by hour, devouring both their finances, their emotions, and most crucially, their space. In turn, Faith finds herself bereft of everything she cherished most, her health, her marriage, her child, her family, her reputation and, most of all, a space to call her own.

Amid chaotic challenges, all three battle to find peace with each other, a harmony that doggedly eludes them. For the sake of family solidarity, each is forced to sacrifice elemental components of self, until desperation turns them one against the other. Will love be enough to turn the tide? Is it strong enough to warm again hearts grown cold?
Space is a vivid, candid, and life-affirming story from a masterful storyteller of the heart.

My Review:

Dan and Deede Stowe are a match made in Heaven. They love each other immensely and are looking forward to retiring and spending all their time together. However, those plans are derailed once their drug-addicted, divorced daughter, Faith, moves back in and changes their entire family dynamics, the course of all their lives, and most importantly, impedes on their space. She begins the long arduous journey of destroying each of their psyches and relationships and forces Dan and Deede to sacrifice their life-savings to pay for drug rehabs, court costs due to issues with police, and hefty lawyer fees.

This is truly a well-written book. I was so sucked in to the story that I kept forgetting that it was “fiction”. The story is so well penned and I actually know a couple of people who went through an almost exact situation with their own children. I was really expecting to find out at the end of the book that Ms. Harvey had tricked us into believing it was fiction only to find out it was non-fiction but that wasn’t the case. This was a solid read and included extended family members and their faith in God to cope with Faith’s tragic life. This is one of those books that I would read again and will highly recommend to all my friends.

THE CAPTIVE HEART (DALE CRAMER)

2011-12-31T03:50:00.000-08:00

Story Description:

Ravaged by disease, preyed upon by ruthless bandits, the Bender family’s second year in Mexico has taken a grievous turn. Faced with impossible choices, the expatriate Amish discover, more than ever before, what it means to live by faith and not by sight.

But it’s Miriam who must make the hardest choice as her heart takes her on a new and dangerous course. Domingo. “He is gentle,” his sister said, “until someone he loves is threatened.” Is Miriam that someone?

“Cualnezqui,” he often calls her – the Nahuatl word for Beautiful one. The chiseled native has proven himself a man of principle, grace, and power. Yet is he the pearl of great price for whom Miriam would sacrifice everything, or is he merely a friend? Tormented by conflicting emotions, she’s haunted by vivid dreams: Dressed in the coarse cotton pants and shirt of a peasant, she stands on the precipice of a sun-washed ridge searching desperately for Domingo. Domingo the fierce. Domingo the protector. Domingo the forbidden.

This epic story was inspired by actual events!

My Review:

I stayed up all night and read this in one sitting I was totally riveted to the story of the Amish Bender family who were spending their second year in Mexico. Fighting off bandits and disease they sacrificed, hoped, stayed steadfast and prayed. Their biggest challenge was learning to live by faith.

Miriam, one of their daughters was in love with Domingo, a strikingly handsome native who was not Amish and if Miriam ever married him she would be shunned by her family. Domingo was a gentle man until someone he loved was threatened and when that very thing happens he goes to all lengths to save the one he too secretly loves.

The vividness of the imagery in the novel made me feel as though I was there, stomping through the dusty ground, feeling the grit in my nose and eyes. I could see the mountains, the crops, the buildings and felt as if I were right there.

One particular attack by bandits left Miriam’s sister Rachel kidnapped, her brother Aaron stabbed and left for dead, and simple-minded Ada was left to care for the baby. Ada was like a baby herself even though she was a grown woman. What she went through to find her way home toting a 30 pound child was truly engrossing, I couldn’t read fast enough. Staggering in the pitch dark, not knowing where she might fall off the edge of a cliff she walked, crawled and felt her way along the open expanse. Once surrounded by a pack of coyotes her only weapon was a harmonica the child had in his pocket. Blowing loud notes only scared them off for so long.

This is one of the best novels I’ve read this year and would highly recommend it to everyone!

"Book has been provided courtesy of Baker Publishing Group and Graf-Martin Communications, Inc.

Available at your favourite bookseller from Bethany House, a division of Baker Publishing Group".

THE MAID OF FAIRBOURNE HALL (JULIE KLASSEN)

2011-12-30T14:51:00.000-08:00

Story Description:

To escape a scheme to marry her off to a dishonorable man, Margret Macy flees London disguised as a housemaid. If she can remain unwed until her next birthday, she will receive an inheritance, and with it, sweet independence. But she never planned on actually working as a servant. And certainly not in the home of Nathaniel and Lewis Upchurch – both former suitors.

As she fumbles through the first real work of her life, Margaret struggles to keep her identity secret when suspicions arise and prying eyes visit Fairbourne Hall. Can she avoid a trap meant to force her from hiding?

Brimming with romance and danger, The Maid of Fairbourne Hall takes readers inside the fascinating belowstairs world of a 19^th-century English manor, where appearances can be deceiving.

My Review:

This was a wonderful story of a well-to-do young woman who disguises herself as a servant and takes up a job in another rich household to hide out from the man she is supposed to marry. Margaret cannot stand her suitor and refuses to marry him but needs to keep herself hidden until her 21^st birthday when she is set to inherit a large sum of money from her aunt. She does not want her husband-in-waiting to get this money so becomes a servant in the same household of the man she truly does love and wants to marry.

Margaret changes her name to Nora and bides her time as a housemaid until her birthday when she’ll receive her inheritance and finally have independence. However, some of the residents of the household think she looks familiar and one recognizes her despite her disguises but chooses to say nothing until near the end of the book.

The book was so interesting, the characters were well developed and all the information about housemaids and servants was quite interesting. Not a job I should like for sure. I would definitely recommend this book to all my friends. Very well done and extremely enjoyable!

THE KEEPER (SUZANNE WOODS FISHER)

2011-12-24T18:08:00.000-08:00

Story Description:

Life on Windmill Farm hasn’t been the same since Julia Lapp’s father has had trouble with his heart. But that doesn’t stop Julia from hoping for a bright future. She has planned on marrying Paul fisher since she was a girl. Now twenty-one, she looks forward to their wedding with giddy anticipation. But when Paul tells her he wants to postpone the wedding – again – she is determined to change his mind. She knows who is to blame for Paul’s sudden reluctance to wed: the Bee Man.

Roman Troyer, the Bee Man, travels through the Amish communities of Ohio and Pennsylvania with his hives full of bees, renting them out to farmers in need of pollinators. A mysterious man who relishes his nomadic life, Roman especially enjoys bringing his bees to Stoney Ridge each year. But with Julia seriously at odds with him, Windmill Farm is looking decidedly less appealing.

Can Julia secure the future she’s always dreamed of? Or does God have something else in mind?

My Review:

I loved this story and fell in love with Julia, Roman and M.K. especially. M.K. was quite a little curious imp who wasn’t backward at coming forward and always had her nose poked in somewhere. Roman was somewhat of a nomad but had a kind heart but had been terribly hurt and was literally holding himself hostage through his grief. Julia was an immensely strong young woman, she just didn’t realize it yet.

The really lovely thing about this particular novel is that not only is it a great story but it deals with two very important issues. One of which is organ donation and I encourage everyone to seriously think about this and if you’re ever in the position to help out in this way, I sincerely hope you’ll consider saving some other lives. I highly recommend this book for everyone!

"Book has been provided courtesy of Baker Publishing Group and Graf-Martin Communications, Inc.
Available at your favourite bookseller from Revell, a division of Baker Publishing Group".

TOMORROW'S SUN (BECKY MELBY)

2011-12-21T23:23:00.000-08:00

Story Description:

Emily Foster won’t allow herself to move on until she earns enough money to make restitution for the accident that stole a young girl’s dreams. Flipping houses sounds like the fast track to her goal, but when her first project turns out to be a stop on the Underground Railroad, Emily finds herself drawn to, but at odds with, the contractor she hires. Jake Braden needs to focus on gaining guardianship of his late sister’s twins, but the story of lost love uncovered in Emily’s house sets the stage for what might become his own lost love.

My Review:

Nice story but I found it a little bit slow getting into it. However, I did fall in love with the Emily’s character and found the information regarding the Underground Railroad interesting.

NEXT OF KIN (SHARON SALA)

2011-12-21T03:03:00.000-08:00

Story Description:

Beth Venable has seen too much. Witness to a major mob hit, she's placed in protective custody until the trial. But after her third safe house is riddled with bullets, she goes off-grid to save herself. What the FBI can't do, her kinfolk will.

The beautiful but forbidding Appalachian Mountains of Kentucky welcome Beth back, dirt roads and rustic shacks a world apart from L.A. But her homecoming, even her blissful reuion with strong, silent Ryal Walker is made bittersweet by the fight she's brought to the clan's doorstep. Hidden in a remote cabin with the man she's always wanted, Beth begins to dreaam of a new life: her old one. But after so long, with such dangers stalking her, is it impossible.

But love can distill life down to its essence: an elixir of pure hope, nerve and the will to survive.

My Review:

Beth Venable, 27, is staying overnight in the apartment of her good friend Sarah Steinman as there had been a gas leak in Beth’s Los Angeles apartment and everyone was being evacuated for a 24-hour period. That one evening spent at a friend’s home was about to change Beth’s life forever! Spying a telescope in the corner of the living room, Beth innocently peered through the lens at the stars in the sky then began scanning around looking at other things. The scope lands on the apartment across the way from Sarah’s and the window is wide open and lit up, not darkened like hers. From the expression on their faces it looked as though the couple in that apartment were having an argument and before Beth had the chance to feel guilty and look away for spying the action went from arguing to violence in a heartbeat. The man abruptly shoved the woman against the back of the couch and she reacted with a hard slap to his jaw. Beth saw instant rage fly across the man’s face and then all of a sudden there was a knife in his hand. He slit the woman’s throat from ear to ear so fast, had it not been for “..the arterial blood spray that splashed across the windows, Beth would have thought she’d imagined it.” Beth started jumping up and down and screaming: “Oh my God, Oh my God, Sarah, help, help! He killed her!” Just as Beth was explaining to Sarah what happened, the man turned toward the window almost as if he could see Beth. Although her apartment was shrouded in darkness, she ducked out of the way anyway. Sarah called 911 for her and they waited for the police to arrive.

After going to the station and giving a statement to the police about the circumstances surrounding that entire evening, including why Beth was at Sarah’s apartment in the first place and not at her own, she was dropped back off at Sarah’s apartment. Once Beth was inside she noticed Sarah’s bedroom door had been left a bit ajar and walked in slowly calling out: “Sarah? “Sar-ah?” She could hear the t.v. in Sarah’s bedroom and as she pushed open the door all the way she found her best friend sitting up in bed with a bullet hole through her forehead!! Obviously the killer had come back and mistakenly thought it was Sarah who had witnessed the murder and killed her in error.

The policeman who had walked Beth to the door heard her scream and was back inside the apartment within a matter of minutes. Beth was scared to death thinking the killer may still be inside the apartment.

The FBI gets involved and has to move Beth to THREE different locations because the killer kept finding her. After the third move, Sarah ran away and decided to take matters into her own hands and contacted some of her family members whom she hadn’t seen in years. What follows is an unbelievable display of what it means to have “family” in the true sense of the word where it doesn’t matter what has happened in the past or is currently happening, if a family member is in trouble then everyone rallies around and does what they can to help.

The best part for Beth is once again seeing Ryal Walker, her first and only love whom she last saw when she was 17-years-old. He is 8 years older than Beth but with the two of them, age seems to have no limits.

This book was 330 pages long and I literally sat and read it in one sitting . It was so well written and so powerful that I just couldn’t tear myself away from the book at all. This is one book that you simply cannot miss!!

DINNER WITH LISA (R. L. PRENDERGAST)

2011-12-19T13:47:00.000-08:00

My Review:

Joseph Gaston and his four children are seated on two seats of the train rushing through Ontario toward its destination of Philibuster, Alberta. Joseph is a widower and nearly 40-years-old. His children: Clare, 6-months; Nolan 11; Cole 7; and Sarah 4 are the light of his life. Poor little Sarah had succumbed to vomiting due to motion sickness and thus sat alone holding a bowl in her wee lap. Joseph knew that if his wife, Helen, were still alive, she would know how to help Sarah immediately. Joseph and his family are heading west toward a new life filled with hope and prosperity.

The train was grinding to a halt in Philibuster, a small town to stay with Joseph’s brother, Henri, and his sister-in-law, Tilda. It’s the 1930’s and the country is in the grip of the Great Depression but hope abounds for Joseph and his family, or so he thinks. Joseph is filled with optimisim about his new job until he finds out the job no longer exists. What is he going to do now with four children to feed and no income? He begins to worry and the burden and sense of responsibility he feels towards his family is almost crushing, but with the help of his brother Henri, Joseph may be able to survive but not before enduring more problems than one man deserves.

The character development is magnificent in this novel as are the descriptions of the town, its people and surroundings. I felt as though I’d been pulled into the book and could almost walk alongside Joseph seeing the sights and smelling the odours of the town around him. Joseph never lost his sense of belonging and he always had hope. He was forced to fight many battles one which included his sister-in-law wanting to take his children for her own feeling that she could do a much better job of raising them.

To me, this was a story of one man overcoming great adversity through hope. As long as you have hope, you have a horizon in the distance, you can see the light at the end of the tunnel and that is just where Joseph heads. I read this novel is one sitting, I was glued from beginning to end and would highly recommend it to everyone! Well done.

A PERFECT SQUARE (VANNETTA CHAPMAN)

2011-12-15T11:32:00.000-08:00

Story Description:

There's more to the quaint northern Indiana town of Shipshewana than handcrafted quilts, Amish-made furniture, immaculate farms, and close-knit families. When a dead girl is found floating in a local pond, murder is also afoot. And Reuben Fisher is in jail as the suspect!

Reuben refuses to divulge any information, even to clear himself of a crime Deborah is certain he didn't commit. So, with her English friend Callie-fellow sleuth and owner of Daisy's Quilt Shop-Deborah sets out to uncover the truth. But the mystery deepens when an elderly man seeks Callie's help in finding his long-lost daughter, missing since the days of the 1965 Palm Sunday Tornadoes.

An old man who has lost his past. A young man who may lose his future. Once again Deborah and Callie find themselves trying to piece together a crazy quilt of lives and events-one that can bring unexpected touches of God's grace and resolve to the tragedy that has shaken this quiet Amish community.

My Review:

Deborah, Esther and Callie are piecing together a different type of quilt in this saga. They’re piecing together a the pieces to a murder after finding a young girl drowned in a pond after stopping to pick wildflowers at the side of the road. Not being right friendly with the local police, Officer Taylor, the girls try to gather their own information and piece together who, why and how this beautiful young woman was killed. I couldn’t help but cry when they approached Mr. Lapp with the crime scene photos. Excellent novel and I would highly recommend it to everyone!

GONE TO GROUND (BRANDILYN COLLINS)

2011-12-15T10:19:00.000-08:00

Story Description:

Amaryllis, Mississippi is a scrappy little town of strong backbone and southern hospitality. A brick-paved Main Street, a park, and a legendary ghost in the local cemetery are all part of its heritage. Everybody knows everybody in Amaryllis, and gossip wafts on the breeze. Its people are friendly, its families tight. On the surface Amaryllis seems much like the flower for which it's named-bright and fragrant. But the Amaryllis flower is poison.

In the past three years five unsolved murders have occurred within the town. All the victims were women, and all were killed in similar fashion in their own homes. And just two nights ago-a sixth murder.

Clearly a killer lives among the good citizens of Amaryllis. And now three terrified women are sure they know who he is-someone they love. None is aware of the others' suspicions. And each must make the heartrending choice to bring the killer down. But each woman suspects a different man.

My Review:

Not often I love all the main characters in a novel but I sure did this one. Three very unlikely women to ever become friends do and their relationship blossoms. Trying to solve the murder of Erika Hollinger is proving to be a bit more complicated than they first thought it would be. Each of the three women thought they knew who the killer was but once they sit down to discuss the situation, each of them comes up with a different name with different proof. Now what? You’ll have to read the book to find out but I will tell you that you’ll fall in love with Tully, Cherrie Mae and Deena. A thoroughly enjoyable read that I would highly recommend to anyone.

THE FORGOTTEN CHILD (LORHAINNE ECKHART)

2011-12-14T01:36:00.000-08:00

Story Description:

He wasn’t looking to love again. But what he got was a woman who shook his lonely bitter world upside down, and touched him in a way no other woman could.

Emily Nelson, a courageous young mother, ends a loveless bitter marriage and strikes out on her own. She answers an ad as a cook and live-in caregiver to a three-year-old boy on a local ranch. Ranch owner Brad Friessen hires and moves in Emily and her daughter. But Emily soon discovers something’s seriously wrong with his boy. And the reclusive difficult man that hired her, can’t see the behavior and how delayed his son is. Emily researches, until she stumbles across what she suspects is the soft signs of autism. Now she must tell him. Give him hope, and help him come to terms with this neurological disorder—to take the necessary steps to get his child the help he needs.
As their lives become intertwined, it’s unavoidable the attraction—the connection that sparks between them. And just as they’re getting close, Brad's estranged wife Crystal returns after abandoning them two years earlier. In amongst the shock and confusion there’s one disturbing fact Brad can’t shake. How does she know so much of his personal business, the inner working of the ranch and Emily's relationship with his son?

Crystal must’ve had a plan as she somehow gains the upper hand, driving a wedge in the emotional bond forged between Brad, Emily and the children. The primary focus for care and therapy of three-year-old Trevor is diverted. The lengths Crystal will go—the lies—the greed, just to keep what’s hers are nothing short of cold and calculating. Emily’s forced out of the house. Brad fights to save his boy—to protect what’s his. And struggles over his greatest sacrifice—Emily, and the haunting question—has he ultimately lost her forever.

My Review:

Thirty-five-year old Emily had been married to Bob for 12 years but the marriage was stale and wasn’t going anywhere and Emily didn’t love Bob anymore.   After telling him she was leaving and moving out with their young daughter, Katy, Emily finds a job as a live-in caregiver to a ranch owner, Brad and his troubled son, Trevor. However plain it is for Emily to see that something is seriously wrong with Trevor, it’s not so easy for Brad.   After Emily does a lot of research online, she finally confronts Brad with the information that he can no longer ignore. He has to accept that his boy is different.

Things are also beginning to heat up between Emily and Brad when suddenly this arrogant, whirlwind of the Tazmanian devil comes sweeping through the house. It’s Brad’s wife, Crystal. She has to be the most ignorant, self-centered woman I’ve ever met and I detested her in the story. Not often a character affects me as much as Crystal did and that means the author did a fantastic job. I just wanted to shake this woman from head-to-toe. She had no interest whatsoever in her own child and undermined all the therapy that had been done with Trevor up to that point. Needless to say, she also drove a pretty thick wedge between Emily and Brad to the point that she moved out and was forced to find another job.

Brad is just sick with worry over losing Emily and Katy but has he lost them forever??   You definitely have to read this book to find out. I was hooked from the first page to the last. Excellent!!

A FATHER'S LOVE (LORHAINNE ECKHART)

2011-12-12T21:10:00.000-08:00

MY REVIEW:

Beautifully written young adult story about coming of age. Fourteen-year-old David Lattimer has been bestowed the long honoured tradition of hunting for the family's Christmas Goose. With his ten-year-old sister, Rose, at his side, David sets off to fulfill his family obligation but what he doesn't realize is that he is going to need more than his Grampa's shotgun to get the Goose and survive this trek!

This short story is sure to delight young readers who will be captivated by what happens to David and Rose.

SPECIAL DELIVERY (KATHI MACIAS) BOOK TWO OF THE "FREEDOM" SERIES

2011-12-12T20:25:00.000-08:00

Story Description:

In book two of the "Freedom" series, readers find Mara fighting against her attraction to Bible college student Jonathan Flannery. Mara also wrestles with risking her own precarious safety to become involved in the rescue of another girl who is pregnant and desperately wants to escape her captors and save her own life as well as her child's.

Halfway around the world in a brothel in Thailand, a young girl is rescued with the promise of being reunited with her younger sister who was adopted by an interracial couple in the States, friends of Jonathan's family. Meanwhile, Jefe, Mara's uncle, who held her as a sex slave in his brothel in San Diego for years-seeks revenge for Mara's testimony that put him behind bars for life.

Will his underworld connections be successful in kidnapping and killing the girl who believes she has finally won her freedom?

My Review:

Mara is a waitress at a seafood café earning enough money to rent a room and meet her basic needs. It has taken her 2 whole years to finally gain citizenship in the United States, free from her homeland of Mexico at last. Her parents had sold her into slavery, and her uncle, Jefe, who had raped her for the first time and then prostituted her out until his capture and arrest and was sent to prison. To Mara, she had no family all of them were dead to her. At nearly 20 years of age, Mara has no interest in finding a man for herself as she’d already had enough of men and their sexually tortuous ways. She said she’d already had enough of the “male population to last her for several lifetimes.”

Leah is out of high school and Jonathan has completed two of his four years of Bible College. Jonathan had come home for Leah’s graduation and will be staying for two months.

Two years earlier, Jonathan had helped break up a human-trafficking ring that forced teens and young children to be sex slaves right in their own San Diego area. Mara was one of those girls and Leah questions Jonathan now as to whether he still wonders about her and where she eventually ended up. Jonathan admits that he wonders and things about her often and what is is doing now. Because of that rescue, Leah and Jonathan’s family are now involved in the ministry of rescuing human-trafficking victims and helping them recover, get established, and begin new and productive lives.

On her way home from work one evening, Mara thinks back to the night she stood in the darkness with a lovely young man who made her feel truly human for the first time a long time. That man was Jonathan and she wonders now where he is and whether he ever did go to Bible College as he had planned.

Mara's uncle was in jail now serving a life sentence for human-trafficking and prostitution. Thanks to Mara he won't again see the light of day. However, her uncle is enraged that she testified against him and doesn't plan on allowing Mara to live happily ever after. Even in prison, Uncle Jefe has connections.

What then sets off is a string of page-turning events that will keep you glued to your chair until the last page has been turned. What a powerfully packed punch this story delivered!!! I’d highly recommend it to anyone.

SMITTEN (COLLEEN COBLE, KRISTIN BILLERBECK, DIANN HUNT & DENISE HUNTER)

2011-12-11T21:03:00.000-08:00

My Review:

This is really a novel in four parts – four great romance stories that are interconnected and quite ingeniously done! Denise, Diann, Kristin, and Colleen really are very good friends in real life and it reflects in their writing. You can tell these gals have a blast together. Anyway, let’s get on with the review.

Natalie Mansfield was watching her five-year-old niece, Mia, decorate the town with other children from the area. Natalie commented to her great-aunt Rose, how fast Mia was growing. At seventy-eight Rose will still a beautiful looking woman.

As the two women stood chatting, Natalie noticed a group of workers across the street all standing around looking as though they’d just lost their best friend. Natalie noticed one of those men was her old friend Murphy Clinton. She scurried over to him to ask what had happened and he told her that “the mill is closing…this town is finished.” You see, the mill was the main employer in their town of Smitten, Vermont.

Sitting in Natalie’s coffee shop, her friend, Reese Mackenzie said “we can’t make them keep the mill open.” Rumors had been circulating for months but no one believed it would ever come to fruition. Natalie’s coffee shop was struggling enough without the mill closing down. If she had to close down “Mountain Perks”, how would she care for Mia? Julia Bourne tried to tell Nat that this was something she couldn’t control and her other best friend, Shelby Evans, was deeply saddened and wanted her kids to group up there.

The four friends decided to “create” a “honeymoon haven” in Smitten to draw tourists to bring in revenue to their town. They began writing ideas down such as: loud speakers piping in romantic songs around the town and village square; a lingerie shop that sells perfume; a fudge store; plush hotels and beds and breakfasts with tubs for two; and other such ideas. They’re turning a logging town into a honeymoon hotspot and each friend finds a love of her own along the way. I must add that the Mayor was not at all happy at the prospect of having his town turned into a resort town focused on romance!

This is a fast reading page-turner from beginning to end that kept me laughing all the way through. Great read and I’d highly recommend it for everyone. Book Two titled: “Secretly Smitten” is to be out in December of 2012 and I can’t wait to read it!!

MICHAEL VEY - THE PRISONER OF CELL 25 (RICHARD PAUL EVANS)

2011-12-09T22:08:00.000-08:00

Story Description:

“My name is Michael Vey and there’s something you don’t know about me, something that scares people more than you would believe. It’s my secret – and it’s part of the story I’m about to tell you.”

To everyone at Meridian High School, Michael Vey is just your average, ordinary fourteen-year-old. But Michael is anything but ordinary – in fact, he is electric.

When Michael’s best friends, Ostin Liss and cheerleader Taylor Ridley, make an accidental discovery, the three of them learn that there are other kids with similar powers – and that someone, or something, is hunting them.

After Michael’s mother is kidnapped, Michael will have to rely on his wits, his unique power, and his friends to combat the hunters, free his mother, and save the others.

My Review:

This was Paul Evans’ first stab at a young adult novel and he didn’t disappoint!! The story of Michael Vey is filled with action from the get-go and doesn’t let up until the end. You’ll literally be glued to the book until the last page is turned. I can’t wait for the second instalment in the Michael Vey series!! Highly, highly recommended.

90 MINUTES IN HEAVEN - A TRUE STORY OF DEATH AND LIFE (DON PIPER) WITH (CECIL MURPHEY)

2011-12-08T19:43:00.000-08:00

Story Description:

On the way home from a conference, Don Piper’s car was crushed by a semi that crossed into his lane. Medical personnel said he died instantly. While his body lay lifeless inside the ruins of his car, Piper experienced the glories of heaven, awed by its beauty and music.

Ninety minutes after the wreck, while a minister prayed for him, Piper miraculously returned to life on earth with only the memory of inexpressible heavenly bliss. His faith in God was severely tested as he faced an uncertain and grueling recovery. Now he shares his life-changing story with you.

90 Minutes in Heaven offers a glimpse into a very real dimension of God’s reality. It encourages those recovering from serious injuries and those dealing with the loss of a loved one. The experience dramatically changed Piper’s life, and it will change yours too.

Don Piper has been an ordained minister since 1985.

My Review:

Can you imagine waking up and finding out that you’d been dead for the past hour and a half? In January of 1989, that is exactly what happened to 38-year-old Don Piper, and during those 90 minutes he was in heaven!

His description of the sights, sounds, colours, and music in heaven were magnificent, a proper description defies words.

His recovery was inordinately long and excruciatingly painful. He still lives 24/7 with intense pain and his condition profoundly affected his emotions during his recovery. He was reluctant to talk to a psychiatrist or counsellor for how would he explain being in heaven for 90 minutes? They’d think he was truly crazy! Don knew what he saw in heaven but feared they’d think he was delusional and how could he sound rational saying he wanted to die because he wanted to go back to heaven? Don decided not to speak to anyone of what he saw as his “intimate experience”. After his experience in heaven, he didn’t want to remain here trapped in this world of pain and begged God to take him back.

The gamut of negative emotions Don felt during his recovery was so self-defeating but I believe necessary. He had to endure the pain, the depression, the anger, the underlying hostility and refusal to allow anyone to help him with anything in order to grow spiritually and understand his real role in this life. It was almost like going through the grief process but he stumbled terribly at some of those stages while quickly comprehending others. At one point he becomes paranoid thinking the nurses were conspiring against him. He wanted instant black and white answers to questions from his doctor’s where none existed. All they could offer were the “gray” areas and that was just not acceptable to Don. He couldn’t figure out “why” God had sent him back to endure all the pain and agony he was going through.

Aside from the tortuous and painful recovery Don received a cache of miracles from God which you can read about in the story. But God needed Don to experience certain things and learn from those things before providing him the miracles, in my opinion, that he deserved.

I would highly recommend this book for anyone who has lost a loved one, is recovering from a serious illness, or had a near death experience themselves. Excellent!

THE CHRISTMAS NOTE (DONNA VANLIERE)

2011-12-07T08:34:00.000-08:00

Story Description:

Gretchen Daniels has recently moved into a condo with her two children to be closer to her mother, Miriam. She and her children are building a life together in a new community. A mysterious young woman, Melissa McCreary, lives next door to them. She has few possessions, little personality, and keeps to herself. One day a local landlord who is looking for Melissa knocks on Gretchen’s door for assistance. Melissa’s mother has died and in the coming weeks the landlord needs Melissa to empty her mother’s apartment. Gretchen reaches out and offers to help Melissa, but the apartment is a gut-wrenching shambles of a home. There is little worth saving except for a few photos and a note that is discovered on the crate beside the bed. It is unfinished, but in the two scribbled lines Melissa discovers secrets about her family that she never could have imagined. Can two very different women embark on a journey that explores a long-buried need for forgiveness, hope, and redemption?

My Review:

This is a beautifully written Christmas story that will be sure to make your heart flutter. I was drawn in from the first page to the last and read it in one sitting. I didn’t want the book to end and hope Ms. VanLiere will publish a sequel as the ending was left up to the imagination of the reader. Highly recommended.

LOST DECEMBER (RICHARD PAUL EVANS)

2011-12-04T20:14:00.000-08:00

Story Description:

When Luke Crisp graduates from business school, his father, CEO and co-founder of Fortune 500 Crisp’s Copy Centers, is ready to share some good news: he wants to turn the family business over to his son. But Luke has other plans. Taking control of his trust fund, Luke leaves home to pursue a life of reckless indulgence.

But when his funds run out, so do his friends. Humbled, alone, and too ashamed to ask his father for help, Luke secretly takes a lowly job at one his father’s copy centers. There he falls in love with a struggling single mother and begins to understand the greatest source of personal joy.

LOST DECEMBER is Richard Paul Evans’s modern-day holiday version of the biblical story of the prodigal son, a powerful tale of redemption, hope, and the true meaning of love.

My Review:

A beautiful written and poignant story about Luke Crisp who graduates from Wharton University with an M.B.A. to prepare for taking over his father’s Fortune 500 photocopy company. But after meeting up with a gang of friends while living in Philadelphia, the first time he’d ever lived alone, Luke decides to tour Europe with this rowdy group and tells his father he is not, ever, going to take over Crisp’s Copy Centers. This disappoints his father terribly.

Once in Europe, Luke is duped and learns a hard, hard lesson that you don’t always know the people you think you know. This is a wonderful story of love, grace, redemption, betrayal, greed, hope, and most of all the true meaning of love.

Once again Evans hasn’t disappointed. I was so enamoured that I read it in one sitting and I highly recommend this novel.

BENEATH A MARBLE SKY (JOHN SHORS)

2011-12-03T14:33:00.000-08:00

Story Description:

Journey to dazzling seventeenth-century Hindustan, where the reigning emperor, consumed with grief over the tragic death of his beloved wife, commissioned the building of a grand mausoleum as a testament to the marvel of their love. This monument would soon become known as the Taj Mahal – a sight famous around the world for its beauty and the emotions it symbolizes.

Princess Jahanara, the courageous daughter of the emperor and his wife, tells their mesmerizing tale, while sharing her own parallel story of forbidden love with the celebrated architect of the Taj Mahal. Set during a time of unimaginable wealth and power, murderous sibling rivalries, and cruel despotism, this impressive novel sweeps you away to a historical Hindustan brimming with action and intrigue in an era when, alongside the brutalities of war and oppression, architecture and the art of love and passion reached a pinnacle of perfection.

My Review:

Although a fictionalized story about the building of the great and majestic Taj Mahal in Hindustan, a huge percentage is steeped in truth. John Shors did a large amount of research and although a few liberties were taken for reading pleasure, this is the most beautiful and superbly penned saga that I believe all high school history classes should have BENEATH A MARBLE SKY as part of their mandatory curriculum.

Told in flashbacks to her grand-daughters, Princess Jahanara, the daughter of the emperor and his beloved wife whom he built the structure for, we step back in time to a period rich in culture, tradition, and unbelievable killing and wars. The clarity and vividness of the writing plunges you onto the dust laden streets. I felt like I’d been picked from my chair and plunked down into the 17^th century clad in period costume living every moment of the story as if I were a part of the skin of Jahanara. I could hear the sounds, see the sites, and taste the residue of sand and dirt in my mouth and nose.

Can you imagine someone loving you so deeply to build such an incredible piece of architecture to honour you for the person you were, the life you lived, and to house the remains of your body in death for eternity? Unbelievable!

This is such an accomplished piece of writing and John Shors’ architecture of the story, and his writing, equals or greater, to the exquisite beauty of the Taj Mahal itself. I highly recommend this book and it will be placed in an honoured spot on my keep permanently shelf!

MUMMY TOLD ME NOT TO TELL (CATHY GLASS)

2011-12-01T11:22:00.000-08:00

Story Description:

Seven-year-old Reece was the last of six siblings to be taken into foster care. By the time he arrived at Cathy’s his disruptive behaviour had seen him go through four carers in little over a month. But as an experienced foster carer, with a reputation for handling difficult children, Cathy welcomed Reece into her home despite knowing virtually nothing about his family history.

Little by little Reece began to warm to Cathy and her family, and learned to trust those around him. But his total refusal to discuss anything to do with his home life suggested there was more to his behaviour than social services knew or understood. When Cathy was finally allowed to read his files she discovered the truth was far more shocking then she could ever have imagined…

My Review:

I was totally pulled into the story of seven-year-old Reece right from the beginning and have never felt so deeply sorry for a young child in my life as I did Reece. The abuse he suffered at the hands of his own family is utterly appalling to say the least.

Cathy Glass, with her many years of experience of caring for children such a Reece, was able to provide him with the love, guidance, support, discipline, morals, and values he needed to grow into a healthy productive member of society. Without her advocacy of Reece, who knows what would have happened to this poor child. Thank goodness there are people like Cathy Glass who are willing, out of the goodness of their hearts, to take these children in and give them some semblance of a normal life.

THE SEEKER (ANN H. GABHART)

2011-11-30T02:52:00.000-08:00

Story Description:

Charlotte Vance is a young woman who knows what she wants. But when the man she planned to marry joins the Shakers – a religious group that does not allow marriage – she is left dumbfounded. And when her father brings home a new wife who is young enough to be Charlotte’s sister, it is more than she can bear. With the country – and her own household – on the brink of civil war, this pampered gentlewoman hatches a plan to avoid her new stepmother and win back her man by joining the Shaker community at Harmony Hill. Little does she know that this decision will lead her down a road of unforeseen consequences.

Ann H. Gabhart brings alive the strikingly different worlds of the Southern gentry; the simple Shakers, and the ravages of war in 1860’s Kentucky to weave a touching story of love, freedom, and forgiveness.

My Review:

Charlotte Vance’s fiancé, Edwin Gibley, announces that he is going to join the ‘Shaker’s up in Harmony Hill. The Shakers “originated in England in the eighteenth century. Its leader, a woman named Ann Lee, was believed by her followers to be the second coming of Christ in female form. The Shaker doctrines of celibacy, communal living, and the belief that perfection could be attained in this life were all based on revelations that Mother Ann claimed to have divinely received. The name Shaker’s came from the very way they worshipped at times when a member received the “spirit”, he or she would begin shaking all over”.

Charlotte just couldn’t believe Edwin would give up a life of being married to her to live as a single man in an odd religious society. They were to be wed next month in May. As if this wasn’t bad enough news, Charlotte’s father arrives home after time away escorting a new wife on his arm! And, she had to be at least 20 years younger than her father. Yes, Selena Harley Black was to be the new mistress of Grayson.

As Charlotte stood outside in the night air watching her father’s home-coming party through the window, she was trying hard to convince Edwin to give up his ridiculous idea of joining the Shaker community. But, Edwin had heard enough from Charlotte and went back to the party leaving her alone in the darkness when suddenly a male voice said: “He must be an extremely foolish man to turn his back and run from such a beauty” Charlotte was startled and whipped round to find a tall, dark handsome man who introduced himself as Adam Wade, an artist who was commissioned to paint a wedding portrait of the new Mrs. Vance. Was painting the new Mrs. Vance all that Mr. Wade would be involved in at the Grayson Estate?

This was a spell-binding piece of historical fiction set in the 1800’s. The characters were well-developed and I felt myself feeling the emotions of each character. I found the Shaker doctrines to be interesting and gleaned a lot of information about this old but odd order. Good reading!

THE BELIEVER (ANN H. GABHART)

2011-11-27T05:17:00.000-08:00

Story Description:

Will a forbidden love destroy all they know?

Elizabeth Duncan has nowhere to turn. In charge of her younger brother and sister after their parents die, her options are limited: she can give in to the unwanted advances of an odious landowner - or she can flee.

When Elizabeth hears that the Shaker community in the next county takes in orphans, she presents herself and her siblings at Harmony Hill. Despite the hard work and strange new beliefs around her, Elizabeth is relieved to have a roof overhead and food to eat. But life gets complicated when she finds herself attracted to a handsome young Believer named Ethan.

Ethan has never looked on the opposite sex as anything but sisters, but he can’t shake the new feelings that Elizabeth has awakened in him.

Will Elizabeth be forced to leave the village to keep Ethan from stumbling Or could Ethan’s love for her change their lives forever?

My Review:

Elizabeth Duncan, her younger brother, Payton, and young sister, Hannah, had nowhere to go after their father died unexpectedly. Elizabeth began digging a grave while Payton built a wooden box to put their father’s body in for burial. As she was digging the grave along came the uncouth, slime-ball owner of the property they were living on. Colton Linley was a disgusting specimen of a human being and Elizabeth could barely tolerate him.

Colton jumped down into the grave that was now shoulder deep to tell Elizabeth he was there to collect his debt that her father owed him for use of the cabin they were using as their living quarters. Elizabeth knew her father owed Colton nothing but he insisted that her hand in matrimony was the deal the two men had verbally agreed to and he was there to collect. Elizabeth couldn’t even barely tolerate standing next to the man, never mind marry him! With much persistence on Colton’s part, Elizabeth finally told him to give her 2 days to grieve properly for her father and then she would willingly go with him to be wed. This gave her 2 days to figure out where they were going to go. They packed up only what they could carry and set off on foot.

The Shaker Village was in the next town over in Harmony Hill. Elizabeth had heard they took I orphans and decided they would be safest there, away from Colton Linley. But the Shakers have strange beliefs and conduct in dances where the ‘brothers’ and ‘sisters’ thrash around. They do not believe in marriage or having children and don’t live as families. The women are all housed together as are the men and the children. They tarry day and night like workhorses growing their own food, mixing their own medication from various roots, barks, mushrooms, berries and the like. They all refer to each other as Brother and Sisters and are not allowed to carry on conversations with the opposite sex.

However, Elizabeth didn’t plan on meeting someone like Ethan which makes her life very complicated. Ethan is a devout Believer but once he lays eyes on Elizabeth it awakens feelings in him that he’s never experienced before.

Will Elizabeth be forced to leave the Shaker Village to keep Ethan from falling away from his beliefs? Or will Ethan’s love for her change their lives forever?

I was totally pulled into this story from beginning to end. So many twists and turns and unexpected situations. A really enjoyable read!

NANJING REQUIEM (HA JIN)

2011-11-24T07:16:00.000-08:00

Story Description:

The award-winning author of Waiting and War Trash returns to his homeland in a searing new novel that unfurls during one of the darkest moments of the twentieth century: the Rape of Nanjing.

In 1937, with the Japanese poised to invade Nanjing, Minnie Vautrin—an American missionary and the dean of Jinling Women’s College—decides to remain at the school, convinced that her American citizenship will help her safeguard the welfare of the Chinese men and women who work there. She is painfully mistaken. In the aftermath of the invasion, the school becomes a refugee camp for more than ten thousand homeless women and children, and Vautrin must struggle, day after day, to intercede on behalf of the hapless victims. Even when order and civility are eventually restored, Vautrin remains deeply embattled, and she is haunted by the lives she could not save.

With extraordinarily evocative precision, Ha Jin re-creates the terror, the harrowing deprivations, and the menace of unexpected violence that defined life in Nanjing during the occupation. In Minnie Vautrin he has given us an indelible portrait of a woman whose convictions and bravery prove, in the end, to be no match for the maelstrom of history.

At once epic and intimate, Nanjing Requiem is historical fiction at its most resonant.

My Review:

This was a beautifully written story rich with Asian flavour. Ha Jin has done a remarkable job in writing about a very dark period in Japan's history. Everyone needs to read this book!!!

FALLING TOGETHER (MARISA DE LOS SANTOS)

2011-11-24T07:08:00.000-08:00

Story Description:

What would you do if an old friend needed you, it meant turning your new life upside down? Pen, Will, and Cat met during the first week of their first year of college and struck up a remarkable friendship, one that sustained them and shaped them for years - until it ended abruptly, and they went their separate ways. Now, six years later, Pen is the single mother of a five-year-old girl, living with her older brother in Philadelphia and trying to make peace with the sudden death of her father. Even though she feels deserted by Will and Cat, she has never stopped wanting them back in her life, so when she receives an email from a desperate-sounding Cat asking her to meet her at their upcoming college reunion, Pen goes. What happens there sends past and present colliding and sends Pen and her friends on a journey across the world, a journey that will change everything.

My Review:

No comment, wasn't really into this one at all and couldn't finish. Therefore I cannot give an honest review.

GLASS BOYS (NICOLE LUNDRIGAN)

2011-11-24T06:48:00.000-08:00

Story Description:

With vivid and unflinching prose, Nicole Lundrigan has created a suspenseful and deeply human saga of the persistence of evil and the astonishing power of love.

When Roy Trench is killed in a drunken prank gone wrong, his brother Lewis sees blood on the hands of the man responsible: the abusive alcoholic, Eli Fagan. Though the courts rule the death an accident, the event opens a seam of hate between the two families of Knife's Point, Newfoundland.

Desperate to smother the painful past with love, Lewis marries Wilda, and the pleasure he takes in their two children -- Melvin and Toby -- recalls the happier days of his childhood with Roy. But as he watches his small family fracture, the darkness of the past begins to cloud the present, leading Lewis back to Eli Fagan -- and his watchful stepson, Garrett Glass.

In the style of Newfoundland literature, established by Michael Crummey and Lisa Moore, Glass Boys is the haunting story of an unforgivable crime that brings two families to the brink.

My Review:

I found this book terribly hard to get into but once I perservered and pushed myself to keep reading it turned out to be not a bad story. However, it's not one that I would put on a highly recommend list.

MEGAN'S WAY (MELISSA FOSTER)

2011-11-21T05:41:00.000-08:00

Story Description

What would you give up for the people you love?

When Megan Taylor, a single mother and artist, receives the shocking news that her cancer has returned, she'll be faced with the most difficult decision she's ever had to make. She'll endure an emotional journey, questioning her own moral and ethical values, and the decisions she'd made long ago. The love she has for her daughter, Olivia, and her closest friends, will be stretched and frayed.

Meanwhile, fourteen-year-old Olivia's world is falling apart right before her eyes, and there's nothing she can do about it. She finds herself acting in ways she cannot even begin to understand. When her internal struggles turn to dangerous behavior, her life will hang in the balance.
Megan's closest friends are caught in a tangled web of deceit. Each must figure out how, and if, they can expose their secrets, or forever be haunted by their pasts.

My Review

MEGAN’S WAY is a story wrought with the strength of friendships, making choices, and keeping secrets. I’ve never read a book that focused so much on the thoughtfulness of others. Megan, Holly, Jack, Peter, and Olivia are all deeply thoughtful and caring people who are totally committed to each other. Each of them, through different circumstances, were forced to look deep within themselves and deal with their past and present decisions. Over time, people’s depth of morals, values, and traditions change – some for the better, some for the worst.

Megan and her daughter, Olivia, had a strong relationship filled with so much love and closeness that they had a bit of a paranormal connection in that they could feel each other’s pain.

The decision Megan made in the end is the same decision I think I would have made as well if I were ever in the same circumstance that Megan was. Tough decisions are not easy to make but Megan’s overwhelming love for her daughter propels her to that end.

The characters were so well developed and I was immediately drawn in right from the beginning of this book. I had to keep the Kleenex box at hand for a few pages here and there. I would highly recommend this book for everyone and believe once you’ve read it, you’ll think of your own mortality a little bit differently.

THE VIRGIN CURE (AMI McKAY)

2011-11-18T09:13:00.000-08:00

Story Description:

“I am Moth, a girl from the lowest part of Chrystie Street, born to a slum-house mystic and the man who broke her heart.”

So begins THE VIRGIN CURE, bestselling author Ami McKay’s much-anticipated new novel. Set in the tenements of lower Manhattan in 1871, where the author’s own great-great-grandmother once worked as a groundbreaking female physician, the novel is told in the voice of Moth, the daughter of a Gypsy fortune teller and a ne’er-do-well who abandons them both a smile and a tip of his hat. Left to struggle on their own, Moth and her Mama lead a hard life, one that requires Moth to become more streetwise with each passing day. Although she comes to believe she’s seen it all, nothing prepares Moth for the terrible surprise her mother gives her when she turns twelve: the news that she must leave her home to live as a servant in the house of Mrs. Wentworth, a lady of station and means (and, as Moth soon discovers, inventive cruelty).

These betrayals lead Moth to the Bowery, a wild, murky thoroughfare filled with house-thieves, pick-pockets, beggars, sideshow freaks, and prostitutes. Hungry, desperate, and haunted by a sexual predator, Moth sees an introduction to Miss Everett, the owner of a nearby brothel, as her way to a better life or, at the very least, a soft bed and a full belly. To Miss Everett, Moth is simply another chance for profit, as her establishment is known as an infant school, caters to gentlemen who pay dearly for companions who are “willing and clean,” the most desirable of them all, young virgins like Moth.

In this new life, Moth finds friendship with the other girls in the house as well as with Dr. Sadie, a visiting physician who has followed her social conscience into working with prostitutes and the poor. While Moth’s housemates risk falling prey to the myth of the “virgin cure” – the belief that deflowering a girl can heal the incurable and tainted, Dr. Sadie warns Moth to question and observe the world around her so she won’t share the same fate. Still, Moth dreams of her own big house on Gramercy Park and of answering to no one but herself. There’s a high price for such independence, though, and no one knows that better than a girl from Chrystie Street.

My Review:

Moth and her mother live alone in a stark and dirty tenement after her father left them when she was just three-years-old. He left with the bit of money saved in a cookie tin and her Mom’s only piece of silver she owned, which was a tarnished sugar bowl.

Moth wanted affection from her mother. She wanted to hold her mom’s hand, sit on her lap and kiss her cheeks like all little girls do but her mother pushed her away telling her: “…when you were a baby, I held you until I thought my arms would fall off. Oh, Child, that should be enough.” Moth said she didn’t mind because she loved her mom anyway.

The summer Moth turned twelve, her mother sold her to a woman named Mrs. Wentworth and shed no tears when she was taken by this woman as her mother wouldn’t stand for it. She always said: “American girls don’t whimper.” Moth took a seat in Mrs. Wentworth’s carriage but couldn’t see where they were going as all the curtains were closed. After a while the carriage rolled to a stop and all Mrs. Wentworth said was: “You’re to go right to bed…I want you rested for tomorrow.” As Moth was falling asleep in her new residence she whispered out loud into the room: “How much did you get for me, Mama”? What a sad thought to know that you’ve been ‘SOLD’ by your own mother!

Mrs. Wentworth began whipping Moth’s wrists on the soft side of her arms leaving bruises the colour of a rainbow. She then began slapping her across the face for the smallest of infractions. She was jealous of Moth’s beauty and she was out to destroy that beauty. Moth suffered so much pain for such a young girl.

Can you imagine growing up poor, living in a filthy dirty tenement, your mother is a Gypsy fortune-teller, you have hardly any food and then you’re sold by the very woman who gave birth to you!

I was immediately drawn in by this story, I was mesmerized and could picture in mind’s eye the brothel, the rooms and could actually “feel” Moth’s embarrassment at having to undress for the men. I was so attuned to Moth’s psyche that I could feel what she felt and shared her heartbreak and pain at every turn and that makes for some very good writing. To enable a reader to get into the mind of the character is no easy feat but Ms. McKay pulls it off without a hitch.

The book definitely lived up to long wait and I’d highly recommend it to everyone and plan on keeping this as part of my permanent collection.

WHEN THE SOUL MENDS - BOOK # THREE - "SISTERS OF THE QUILT TRILOGY" (CINDY WOODSMALL)

2011-11-15T15:40:00.000-08:00

Story Description:

Returning to the home she fled in disgrace, will Hannah find healing for the wounds of the past.

After receiving a desperate and confusing call from her sister, Hannah Lapp reluctantly returns to the Old Order Amish community of her Pennsylvania childhood.

Having fled in disgrace more than two years earlier, she finally has settled into a satisfying role in the Englischer world. She also has found love and a new family with the wealthy Martin Palmer and the children she is helping him raise. But almost immediately after her arrival in Owl’s Perch, the disapproval of those who ostracized her, including her headstrong father, reopens old wounds.

As Hannah is thrown together with former fiancé Paul Waddell to work for her sister Sarah’s mental health, hidden truths surface about events during Hannah’s absence, and she faces an agonizing decision. Will she choose the Englischer world and the man who restored her hope, or will she heed the call to return to the Plain Life–and perhaps to her first love?

When the Soul Mends is the third and final book in the Sisters of the Quilt series.

My Review:

Hannah finally returns home for a family funeral and for her sister, Sarah, who seems to have gone off the deep end. Her mental stability is being questioned by all who encounter her. Sarah is often seen with matches and various farms and barns are being burned down including the Esh family’s barn where their son, David, was killed and their other son, Matthew injured. Hannah had been gone from Owl’s Perch for more than two years.

Sarah has been convinced, in her own mind that Hannah’s baby is alive and they have hidden her somewhere. She is coming unglued at the seams searching for the baby.

Back in Ohio, Hannah has carved out a nice life for herself living with Martin and his niece and nephew whom Hannah adores. Life is good for Hannah there. Now back in Owl’s Perch, she faces Paul Waddell her former fiancé and will she be able to return to the English world in Ohio or will she succumb to old memories and feelings and return to her Amish ways with Paul?

WHEN THE SOUL MENDS reminds us all about forgiveness and how being true to yourself in your forgiveness is a lesson we all need to remember. God already knows what’s in your heart so integrity plays a big part here people, for the only one you’re fooling is yourself. I would highly recommend this trilogy “Sisters of the Quilt” to everyone! Excellent reading!

WHEN THE MORNING COMES - BOOK TWO - "SISTERS OF THE QUILT SERIES" BY CINDY WOODSMALL

2011-11-14T02:46:00.000-08:00

Story Description:

Her relationship with fiancé Paul Waddell in tatters, Hannah Lapp has fled her secluded Old Order Amish community in hopes of finding a new home in Ohio with her shunned aunt. Hampered by limited education and hiding her true identity, Hannah struggles to navigate the confusing world of the Englischers.

Back in Owl’s Perch, Pennsylvania, Paul is wracked with regret over his treatment of Hannah. Fearing for her safety, he tries to convince Hannah’s remaining allies–brother Luke, best friend Mary, and loyal Matthew Esh–to help search for his love. Hannah’s father, however, remains steadfastly convinced of her sinful behaviour. His blindness to his family’s pain extends to her sister, Sarah, who shows signs of increasing instability.
Convinced her former life is irreparably destroyed Hannah finds purpose and solace in life with her aunt and in a growing friendship with Englischer Martin Palmer. Will the countless opportunities in her new life persuade Hannah that her place is amongst the Englischers— or will she give in to her heart’s call to return home and face her past?

When the Morning Comes is book two in the Sisters of the Quilt series.
My Review:

The story opens with Hannah on the train thinking about the baby she had carried inside her only days ago. Her body ached from the absence of the life she’d had inside her.

Hannah disembarks the train in Alliance, Ohio but not another soul gets off with her, she is alone. The conductor tells her that he hopes she has made plans because the station in Alliance is locked 24/7. For hours she’s just traveled from Owl’s Perch, Pennsylvania to Alliance, Ohio and she felt lonely as the train pulled away from the station leaving her standing all alone on the platform. Hannah spotted a sign with the emblem of a phone on it and headed toward it to call 411 for her Aunt’s phone number. She made her way to the phone but soon realized there was no phone at all. What would she do now, she’ll freeze to death by morning?

Scanning the area around her and the dilapidated homes, Hannah soon realized that Alliance was as poor as she was. She tried the doors of some of the stores but, as expected, they were all locked. Too tired to do anything else, she slid to the ground in one of the more protected doorways for the night and as she dozed in and out of sleep she has memories of her mother teaching her how to sew and cook; Mary her best friend always standing by her no matter what, even when it meant she would lose her fiancé Luke, Hannah’s own brother.

The next morning, Hannah meets a young man who helps her hire a driver to search around town for her Aunt Zabeth and the story takes off from there. I was so mesmerized that once again, I turned everything else out in my mind, i.e. the phone, the t.v., other people talking to me, etc. I just couldn’t stop reading and next thing I knew I was on the last page of the book!!! Can’t wait to sink my teeth into the last and final book, number 3!!

WHEN THE HEART CRIES - BOOK ONE IN THE "SISTERS OF THE QUILT TRILOGY" (CINDY WOODSMALL)

2011-11-12T07:50:00.000-08:00

Story Description:

When Hannah dares to love across the boundaries of tradition, will she lose everything?

Despite being raised in a traditional Old Order Amish family, seventeen-year-old Hannah Lapp desires to break with custom, forgo baptism into the faith, and marry outside the cloistered community. She's been in love with Mennonite Paul Waddell for three years, and before returning to college for his senior year, Paul asks Hannah to be his wife. Hannah accepts, aware that her marriage will change her relationship with her family forever.

On the evening of their engagement, tragedy strikes and in one unwelcome encounter, all that Hannah has known and believed is destroyed. As she finds herself entangled in questions that the Old Ways of her people cannot answer, Hannah faces the possibility of losing her place in her family, in her community- and in the heart of the man she loves.
When the Heart Cries is book one in the Sisters of the Quilt series.

My Review:

Hannah Lapp is 17-years-old and she yearns to be “as modern as personal computers and the internet”. Freedom beckoned to her, but so did her relatives.

Hannah is Amish and is in love with Paul Waddell who is a Mennonite. Today is his last day at his Grandmother’s farm as he’s returning for his fourth year at college. All Hannah would have of Paul during the fall, winter and spring would be his letters which he mails via his Grandmother’s house. Hannah’s father would end their friendship immediately if he ever found out about it as the Amish and Mennonites don’t mix. Paul was getting a degree in social work.

Paul asks Hannah to marry him and she accepts. They both know Hannah marrying Paul will affect her relationship with her family for the rest of her life. Since she had not been baptized into the Amish faith, she wouldn’t be “shunned” if she chose to marry a Mennonite. But her father would not allow an outsider’s influence to enter his home any more than he would electricity.

After Paul has left for college, Hannah is walking home when a horribly traumatic event happens which changes her life. Her family hides the event and almost treats Hannah as though she is a leper. I felt so terribly bad for Hannah, my heart was aching for her and I wanted to wrap my arms around her and help her. I was stunned that her family would treat her this way. Soon rumors about various things began circulating around the community about Hannah and she was frowned upon by more and more people when what she really needed was love and support. The emotional upheaval Hannah went through was heart wrenching. I was so drawn into this story and can`t wait to read Book 2 and Book 3 to complete the trilogy.

THE "WHAT'S FOR DINNER" SOLUTION? (KATHI LIPP)

2011-11-08T18:19:00.000-08:00

Book Description:

For many women, dread turns to panic around 4:00 in the afternoon. That’s when they have to answer that age-old question, “What’s for dinner?” Many resort to another supermarket rotisserie chicken or—worse yet—ordering dinner through a drive-thru intercom.

In The “What’s for Dinner” Solution, popular author and speaker Kathi Lipp provides a full-kitchen approach for getting dinner on the table every night. After putting her 21-day plan into action, women will: save time with bulk shopping and cooking; save money, no more last-minute phone calls to the delivery pizza place; save their sanity and forget the last-minute scramble every night and know what they're having for dinner.

The book includes real recipes from real women, a quick guide to planning meals for a month, the best shopping strategies for saving time and money, and tips on the best ways to use a slow cooker, freezer, and pantry.

With Kathi’s book in hand, there’s no more need to hit the panic button.

My Review:

This is a great comprehensive little book that should be in every man and woman’s pantry. It gives you recipe ideas, how to properly store foods, preparing foods correctly, how to make grocery shopping easier and more pleasant and how to unpack when you get home and hundreds of other great tips that some of us seemed to have missed along the way.

There were 5 specific recipes in the book that our family loved and they were: Asparagus Parmesan; Pizza Fondue; Walnut Meatballs, Garden Pasta, and Lemon Chicken; as well as a few Slow Cooker recipes that were absolutely to die for!

This is one little book that I’ll refer to time and time again and you will too!

**PREVIEW COPY COURTESY OF NET GALLEY, WITH THANKS!**

LOST AND FOUND (GINNY L. YTRRUP)

2011-11-08T17:28:00.000-08:00

Story Description:

It appears Jenna Bouvier is losing everything: beauty, family, and wealth. When her controlling and emotionally abusive mother-in-law accuses Jenna of an affair with her spiritual director and threatens to expose them, Jenna also risks losing her reputation as a woman of faith. Will she capitulate to her mother-in-law’s wishes again or fight for what she holds dear? As Jenna loses her life, will she find it?

Andee Bell has found exactly what she wanted: fame, fortune, and respect. There’s also a special man in her life—Jenna’s brother. Despite her success, a secret quells Andee’s contentment. As memories torment, will she find peace in a relationship with God, or will she sabotage herself while also taking down the only person she cares about? As Andee finds her life, will she lose it.

Moving between San Francisco and the Napa Valley, Jenna and Andee form an unlikely relationship that leads them to a crossroad. They can follow familiar inclinations, or risk it all and walk in faith.

My Review:

Jenna is terrible at losing things she doesn’t mean too but somehow always manages to misplace everything. Brigitte, her evil, controlling and abusive mother-in-law, doesn’t believe Jenna “accidentally” loses these things. Jenna feels the missing items are an: “…outward manifestation of something inward”. Luckily for her, her husband, Gerard, hasn’t noticed any of the lost items, nor she feels has he noticed the most important thing she has lost…”herself”.

Jenna and Brigitte’s relationship is anything but close. Jenna often cries out to God, begging for answers to how to please Brigitte and how to honour God in her relationship with Brigitte. Her answer: “Stand back, Jenna”! But Jenna doesn’t understand what it means to “stand back from Brigitte or from her life”. But she does know there is a “change on the horizon, but change involves Jenna’s willingness to obey. Jenna knows she must first stop drinking and doesn’t understand why she would turn to a “substance” instead of to “Him”.

This was an exceptional story that had me so pulled in from beginning to end that I tuned everything else out in my life! I didn’t hear the t.v., the telephone, or people talking to me. Jenna’s story will take you on a whirlwind of intrigue, sympathy, excitement, and some very thought provoking moments. The characters were so well developed that I kept forgetting they were fictional people. Just like in real life you have the people you like and those you dislike and I certainly had a dislike toward the very evil and corrupt Brigitte, Jenna’s mother-in-law! I also had a dislike for Andee in the beginning but as the story progressed, I began to understand who she finally became or was striving to become, thanks to Jenna. There is so much I want to say in this review but it wouldn’t turn out to be a review without spoilers so I’m going to stop here and just hope that everyone reads “LOST AND FOUND”. Thank you Ms. Yttrup for 402 pages of phenomenal reading!

**PREVIEW COPY COURTESY OF NET GALLEY, WITH THANKS!**

REMEMBERING CHRISTMAS (DAN WALSH)

2011-11-07T07:52:00.000-08:00

Story Description:

Rick Denton lives his life on his terms. He works hard, plays hard, and answers to no one. So when his mother calls begging him to come home after his stepfather has an aneurysm, Rick is more than a little reluctant. What was supposed to be just a couple of days helping out at the family bookstore turns into weeks of cashing out old ladies and dealing with the homeless guy who keeps hanging around the store. The one bright spot is the lovely and intriguing young woman who works at his side each day.

As Christmas nears, Rick’s old life beckons, the hurts from his past loom large, and the decisions he makes will determine more than just where he spends Christmas Eve.

My Review:

This was an absolutely beautiful story of remembering, forgiving and never forgetting that who you “see” may not be who you really think they are. It’s difficult for some people to be kind at the best of times, never mind when you’re cranky and being uprooted from your job as Rick was in this story. However, what he ended up learning changed the course of his life forever. Just “remember” to take a good look at who you “think” you’re talking too! I would hope that everyone will read this story especially during this upcoming festive season!!

"Book has been provided courtesy of Baker Publishing Group and Graf-Martin Communications, Inc.
Available at your favourite bookseller from Revell, a division of Baker Publishing Group".

THE CHRISTMAS SHOPPE (MELODY CARLSON)

2011-11-06T03:03:00.000-08:00

Story Description:

The small town of Parrish Springs is not quite ready for Matilda Honeycutt. A strange woman with scraggly hair and jewellery that jangles as she walks, Matilda keeps busy stocking and arranging her new shop on the town’s quaint and lovely Main Street. When rumours start to fly about what might be going on behind the papered-up windows and the locked door, the image-conscious residents start looking for a way to get this woman and her wares out of their town before Christmas.

But Matilda Honeycutt has a little something for each one of them sitting on those cluttered shelves, just waiting to be discovered.

My Review:

Matilda Honeycutt is new in town and has purchased the old Barton building with an apartment upstairs. And no one seemed to know where Matilda came from or exactly when she came to town. Councilman George Snider thought she looked like a bag lady. Matilda was an older woman with brown eyes, gray hair but her face seemed young.

Councilman Snider was extremely angry that he lost the bid to purchase the old Barton building to Matilda and was trying to find a loop-hole to toss her out! He felt she was “up to no good”. George tells newspaper man Tommy Thompson that: “…this strange broad sneaks into town with no friends, no connections, no nothing. She doesn’t seem to know a single soul, doesn’t even have a residence here”. George’s housekeeper’s sister works at the Golden Door Motel which Matilda has been staying and says she is: “one weird wacko”. George wanted to know how Matilda knew about the sealed auction for the building in the first place, why she is “sneaking around, why is she in a hotel instead of with family or friends, and why is a hoarder, complete with garbage and junk in her hotel room and her car, why she’s going around town dressed like a bum but yet paid in cash for the Barton place”! Since Tommy is a newspaper man, Snider wants him to sniff around and see if he can find what this Matilda is up too and what she has to hide.

What IS Matilda up to?

An endearing story that reminds us all of the little things that change the course of our lives forever if we’ll just stop long enough to take the time to look. This is a lovely story for all!!

"Book has been provided courtesy of Baker Publishing Group and Graf-Martin Communications, Inc.
Available at your favourite bookseller from Revell, a division of Baker Publishing Group".

A LANCASTER COUNTY CHRISTMAS (SUZANNE WOODS FISHER)

2011-11-06T02:30:00.000-08:00

Story Description:

Mattie Riehl was hoping to give her husband, Sol, the Christmas gift they have both longed for – news that a baby was on the way. But as usual, she is disappointed. The holidays bring an acute awareness to Mattie that her dream of a big Amish family isn’t likely to become a reality. Will those empty chairs at the table ever be filled?

Then a winter storm raging outside blows an impatient young woman and her husband into the Riehl home on Christmas Eve – and into a much slower pace of life.

Both couples are about to find out if they can weather the storm – and if miracles still happen at Christmastime.

My Review:

Mattie Riehl, her husband, Sol, and their 6 ½ year old son, Danny, were waiting in the doctor’s waiting room. Being a social and outgoing little boy, Danny strikes up a conversation with the English woman sitting across from them. After she asks Danny how old he is, HE asks her the same question which brings a sharp reprimand from his mother. However, the woman didn’t mind and said she was 25-years-old and her name was Jaime Fitzpatrick.

Mattie was seeing the doctor for a recheck after experiencing a miscarriage four weeks ago. The doctor counsels Mattie not to give up hope.

Jaime was there to have a prescription refilled for sleeping pills. Her mother had just passed away this summer and now in the Christmas season, she still isn’t sleeping well.

Little did Mattie and Jaime realize that they would soon meet again and end up sharing two days together witnessing God’s love and power.

This was a beautifully written story of family, losing and regaining faith, and honesty and integrity. Remembering that when bad, painful, uncomfortable or sad things happen to us it doesn’t mean God has forsaken us for He is right there by our sides as we go through it. God never promised us no pain or sadness in our lives but instead, to always be there with us when these unpleasant situations arise in our lives. Don’t give up on God because He doesn’t give up on you!

"Book has been provided courtesy of Baker Publishing Group and Graf-Martin Communications, Inc.
Available at your favourite bookseller from Revell, a division of Baker Publishing Group".

A LIFE OF JOY (AMY CLIPSTON)

2011-11-05T14:31:00.000-07:00

Story Description:

In A Life of Joy, the fourth installment in the series, eighteen-year-old Lindsay Bedford has reached a crossroads. Should she stay in the small Amish community she's known and loved for four years or return to the English life in her hometown in Virginia where her older sister is a college student? An extended visit to Virginia might just tip the scales as Lindsay reconnects with friends, joins a new church, works on her GED, and is pressured by her sister to stay and 'make something of herself.' Will Lindsay leave her aunt Rebecca and become English or settle in Bird-in-Hand and join the Amish church?

My Review:

Lindsay Bedford couldn’t decide whether to be baptized with her two best friends Katie and Lizzie Anne. She had lived in the English world before coming to live with her Aunt Rebecca and Uncle Daniel four years ago. Once she turned 18, there was more an expectation for her to be baptized into the Amish community. Lindsay did feel like the Amish world felt right for her, but something deep down in her heart was holding her back from making the final commitment. Lindsay felt that her friends were disappointed in her for her indecision.

Lindsay works at the Kauffman bakery and she notices that her Aunt Rachel seems to be unusually tired when she returns home from the bakery each day. She asks if she is feeling okay and Rachel tries to reassure Lindsay that she is just tired and needs to go to bed earlier at night. Looking after her 3-year-old son and 18-month-old daughter must be wearing her out more than she thought. Daniel too notices Rachel’s tiredness and is worried about her and asks if she needs to see a doctor but Rachel refuses saying the pain in her stomach is from eating too much. She tells Daniel that he worries too much. Is Rachel suffering from indigestion or is it more serious than that?

I absolutely loved this book and felt as though I was with Lindsay wherever she went. I could picture in my mind’s eye Bird-in-Hand, Pennsylvania where she lives with Rebecca and Daniel and Virginia Beach where she stayed for a while with good family friends Trish and Frank. Lindsay is a devoutly independent and mature girl for her age who remains true to her deepest beliefs. I’d recommend this book for everyone!!

THE BOY WHO MET JESUS (IMMACULEE ILIBAGIZA, STEVE ERWIN

2011-11-04T05:02:00.000-07:00

Story Description:

It's the greatest story never told: that of a boy who met Jesus and dared to ask Him all the questions that have consumed mankind since the dawn of time. His name was Segatashya. He was a shepherd born into a penniless and illiterate pagan family in the most remote region of Rwanda. He never attended school, never saw a bible, and never set foot in a church. Then one summer day in 1982 while the 15-year-old was resting beneath a shade tree, Jesus Christ paid him a visit. Jesus asked the startled young man if he'd be willing to go on a mission to remind mankind how to live a life that leads to heaven. Segatashya accepted the assignment on one condition: that Jesus answer all his questions -- and all the questions of those he met on his travels -- about faith, religion, the purpose of life, and the nature of heaven and hell. Jesus agreed to the boy's terms, and Segatashya set off on what would become one of the most miraculous journeys in modern history. Although he was often accused of being a charlatan and beaten as a result, Segatashya's innocent heart and powerful spiritual wisdom quickly won over even the most cynical of critics. Soon, this teenage boy who had never learned to read or write was discussing theology with leading biblical scholars and advising pastors and priests of all denominations. He became so famous in Rwanda that the Catholic Church investigated his story. The doctors and psychiatrists who examined Segatashya all agreed that they were witnessing a miracle. His words and simple truths converted thousands of hearts and souls wherever he went. Before his death during the 1994 Rwandan genocide, Segatashya continued his travels and conversations with Jesus for eight years, asking Him what we all want to know: Why were we created? Why must we suffer? Why do bad things happen to good people? When will the world end? Is there life after death? How do we get to Heaven? The answers to these and many other momentous, life-changing questions are revealed in this riveting book, which is the first full account of Segatashya's remarkable life story. Written with grace, passion, and loving humour by Immaculee Ilibagiza, Segatashya's close friend and a survivor of the Rwandan holocaust herself, this truly inspirational work is certain to move you in profound ways. No matter what your faith or religious beliefs, Segatashya's words will bring you comfort and joy, and prepare your heart for this life . . . and for life everlasting.

My Review:

Segatashya was a young visionary who had apparitions of Jesus Christ in the remote Rwandan village of Kibeho during the 1980’s. The heaven sent messages were of “…great and immediate concern to everyone in the entire world. They contained warnings for Rwanda, for our planet, and for our individual souls – warnings about the terrible things that could befall us as individuals and as a species if we did not embrace the pure and loving lifestyle being offered to us”.

It was July 2^nd, 1982 that Jesus first appeared to Segatashya who was a poor, illiterate, African peasant boy who was also a pagan. Before Jesus appeared to the teenage boy, he had never been inside a church, and didn’t have any real notion of who Jesus Christ was. The apparitions ended exactly one year later on July 2, 1983.

The most important message Segatashya shares with us is: “that Jesus urgently desires us to prepare for the afterlife and make sure that our souls are ready to enter heaven”.

I was totally mesmerized by this book and at 256 pages, I read it in a couple of hours. I just couldn’t put it down and it gave me a whole lot of food for thought. It doesn’t matter what your religion is, this book is aimed at everyone. You’ll be amazed at the innocence of the questions and the bargaining that young Segatashya does with Jesus Christ. I’m going to sit down and read this book for a second time to ensure I didn’t miss any details at all. I want to take it all in, comprehend it and then decide what to do with the information. Don’t miss this once in a lifetime opportunity to have a frank and open discussion with Jesus Christ through this innocent and honest teenaged Segatashya. Excellent, excellent book!

**PREVIEW COPY COURTESY OF NET GALLEY, WITH THANKS!!**

THE CONCUBINE'S CHILDREN (DENISE CHONG)

2011-11-04T04:45:00.000-07:00

Story Description:

To me, China was what was left behind when the boat carrying my grandmother, pregnant with my mother, docked in Vancouver. China was the soil underfoot in the photograph of the two sisters who, as I thought then, would never meet the third, my mother. China was where you’d find yourself if you dug a hole deep enough to come out the other side of the Earth.

THE CONCUBINE’S CHILDREN is the story of a family cleaved in two for the sake of a father’s dream. There’s Chan Sam, who left an “at home” wife in China to earn a living in “Gold Mountain” North America. There’s May-ying, the wilful, seventeen-year-old concubine he bought, sight unseen, who laboured in tea houses of west coast Chinatowns to support the family he would have in Canada, and the one he had in China. It was the concubine’s third daughter, the author’s mother, who unlocked the past for her daughter, whose curiosity about some old photographs ultimately reunited a family divided for most of the last century.”

My Review:

This was an exceptional work of family history that was well researched and well written. The story was utterly amazing, gripping and held my attention from the first page on. It took a great deal of courage for Denise Chong to pen this fictional memoir of her family and she made the story come alive against the backdrop of two widely different countries. It had a narrative flow that captured the essence of the truth.

This was an intriguing journey that crossed all cultural boundaries. I’ll be keeping this book as part of my permanent collection. Excellent!

THE BEAUTY OF HUMANITY MOVEMENT (CAMILLA GIBB)

2011-10-30T18:13:00.000-07:00

Story Description:

Camilla Gibb’s previous novel, 2005’s Scotiabank Giller Prize–nominated Sweetness in the Belly, was set mostly in Ethiopia. For her newest work, the author turns her attention to Vietnam. The novel’s central character, Old Man Hung, is an itinerant pho seller in Hanoi who has forged an extended family from the son and grandson of an illustrious poet. Hung has honoured the poet’s memory since the latter disappeared after publishing a politically charged magazine in the 1950s.

One morning, Maggie, a curator at a posh hotel in the new Vietnam, appears at Hung’s cart searching for information about her father, a dissident artist who vanished after the fall of Saigon. Maggie serves as the catalyst in the lives of Hung, whose history involves a difficult and painful journey through Vietnam’s tumultuous past, and the young man Tu’, who has had a much easier life working as a tour guide for vacationing Westerners.

The Beauty of Humanity Movement starts slowly. Gibb carefully sets up the many strands of the story, shuttling back and forth from present to past. She also provides a primer on the city’s iconic soup; the reader comes to understand that the history of pho mirrors the history of Vietnam and the trajectory of Hung’s life. At one point, Hung is so impoverished he is forced to make his noodles out of pond grass.

The novel is full of book-club friendly themes such as lost love, forgotten memories, changing values, displacement, and family. These themes work for the most part, but certain details, such as the inclusion of the Vietnamese version of American Idol, feel more like convenient devices than necessary parts of the story.

Gibb brings The Beauty of Humanity Movement to a poignant close, reconnecting the story’s disparate strands. However, certain earlier scenes – such as one in which Hung returns to his village to find it decimated by his own country’s soldiers – don’t quite come alive, and as a result the emotion of the story occasionally gets lost.

My Review:

I don’t think I could write a better review than what is already in the “story description” so I’ll leave it at that. I didn’t really enjoy the story all that much to be quite honest.

WHITE LILY (TING-XING YE)

2011-10-29T08:46:00.000-07:00

Story Description:

Nearly a century ago, in the Forbidden City, China’s last emperor reigned from his dragon throne. Although he was only a boy, the imperial decrees issued in his name echoed in every corner of the country. Every man had to shave his head and wear a single pigtail to symbolize his submission to the emperor, and every woman was second in importance to the men in her family. Women were obedient to their fathers and brothers and later to the husbands in their arranged marriages. Certainly no woman was encouraged to attend school or to show any independence.

Into this world, in a village in the lower reaches of the Yangtze River, White Lily was born. She had a happy childhood, running and playing, until, at the age of four, she was forced to undergo the painful procedure of foot binding required for all females of her social class. But White Lily has her heart set on more than a traditional role in society, and she enlists the support of her beloved elder brother. Together they devise a plan to defy tradition and convince their father that White Lily’s feet and mind must be allowed to grow.

My Review:

At only 64 pages this was a quick read. It’s a YA novel but packs a punch and is well written for such a short story.

STRETCH MARKS (KIMBERLY STUART)

2011-10-28T16:44:00.000-07:00

Story Description:

Mia Rathbun is an overworked and underpaid Chicago social worker who belongs to PETA and recycles the tops of pizza boxes. Her boyfriend, Lars, is a free-spirited freelance writer (read: mooch) who disdains the conventions of marriage but is happy to build a life with Mia. That is until Mia becomes pregnant.

Left on her own, Mia just begins to accustom herself to the looming prospect of single parenthood when her mother, Babs, shows up to "help." The two have an estranged relationship but are forced to acknowledge their connection as Mia's belly grows and she has few other options. The story is told with Stuart's characteristic irreverent and authentic humour with healthy doses of poignancy and grace.

My Review:

Ms. Stuart never fails to make you laugh and fall in love with characters that are so real they could be your best friend. Mia is shocked to discover she’s pregnant and isn’t sure how to take it until she tells her live-in, moochy boyfriend, Lars. When she thinks about it she decides she’s happy and tells Lars who appears less than pleased but is willing to go along with whatever Mia wants to do or does he?

Enter Barbara, a.k.a “Babs”, fresh off the cruise ship from her job as a hostess. Bad enough that Mia and Babs have endured an estranged relationship for years but it gets worse when Babs moves in to an apartment on the first floor of the same building as Mia. Talk about a little too-close-for-comfort.

As Mia’s pregnancy progresses, things begin to heat up until they boil over at shower hosted by Babs which Mia ends up walking out of.

You’ll laugh, you’ll cry and you’ll feel a real sense of kinship with STRETCH MARKS, don’t miss it!!

ROOM (EMMA DONOGHUE)

2011-10-27T19:10:00.000-07:00

SORRY FOLKS, FOR SOME REASON I COULDN'T GET A PHOTO OF THE BOOK COVER TO APPEAR HERE. I KEPT GETTING AN ERROR MESSAGE. ANYHOO, ON WITH THINGS...

STORY DESCRIPTION:

To five-year-old Jack, Room is the world. . . . It’s where he was born. It’s where he and Ma eat and sleep and play and learn. There are endless wonders that let loose Jack’s imagination -- the snake under Bed that he constructs out of eggshells; the imaginary world projected through the TV; the coziness of Wardrobe beneath Ma’s clothes, where she tucks him in safely at night, in case Old Nick comes.

Room is home to Jack, but to Ma, it’s the prison where she’s been held since she was nineteen -- for seven long years. Through her fierce love for her son, she has created a life for him in that eleven-by-eleven foot space. But Jack’s curiosity is building alongside Ma’s own desperation, and she knows that Room cannot contain either indefinitely. . . . Told in the inventive, funny and poignant voice of Jack, Room is a celebration of resilience -- and a powerful story of a mother and son whose love lets them survive the impossible.

My Review:

I don’t really know what to say about this book. I do know that I’m disappointed as I don’t think it lived up to all the hype and hoopla that was generated by the public, but then again, I’m only one person. Obviously this just wasn’t the book for me. I found it silly and boring to be quite honest. Enough said.

WAITING TO FORGET (SHEILA KELLY WELCH)

2011-10-27T09:55:00.000-07:00

Story Description:

T.J. has always looked out for his little sister, Angela. When Momma used to go out and leave them home alone, he'd lock the door so they'd be safe, keep Angela entertained, and get out the cereal and milk for her. When Momma's boyfriend got angry at them, he'd try to protect Angela. Later, at their foster homes, T.J. was the only one who knew how to coax his little sister out of her bad moods. The only one who understood why she made origami paper cranes and threw them out the window. But now T.J. is sitting in the waiting room at the hospital, wondering if Angela, unconscious after a fall, will ever wake up. Wondering, too, if he will ever feel at home with his and Angela's new parents--Marlene, who insists on calling him Timothy, and Dan, who seems to want a different son. Going back and forth between Now and Then, weaving the uncertain present with the painful past, T.J.'s story unfolds, and with the unfolding comes a new understanding of how to move forward.

My Review:

T.J. is sitting in the hospital emergency room waiting. His little sister Angela had already been brought in by ambulance ahead of them. Marlene and Dan were in with her now, but he was told to wait and that’s just what he’s doing.

Angela had fallen twelve feet. Marlene and Dan Westel had become T.J. and Angela’s ‘adoptive parents’ a year ago. T.J. was 12 and Angela was 8.

When T.J. was quite young, his mother Celia left him and Angela with her friend Tanya, he had just begun kindergarten and little Angela was still stumbling around in smelly diapers. Celia told Tanya that she was just going to get her hair done but T.J. knew that was a lie. He’d heard his Mom on the phone talking to a man making arrangements to meet at a bar. However, Celia did not return to pick up T.J. and Angela that night or the next morning. Tanya was angry as she had a job interview that morning and didn’t know what she was going to do with Celia’s kids.

Tanya decides to leave 5-year-old T.J. alone to look after baby Angela and leaves the apartment. He tried to get Angela cereal but she spilled it and began to cry. She pooped in her diaper so T.J. took if off to try and clean it in the bathroom as there were no more clean ones left. While he was doing that, Angela sat down with her bare bottom on the scratchy living room carpet and began crying louder because it hurt her diaper rash so badly. Then she began banging her feet and fists on the floor which was interrupted by a banging on the apartment door. T.J. was sure it would be his Mom so he opened the door to find a neighbour standing there: “Are you kids all alone here?” The older woman came in, used the phone, then collected up Angela and gave her a bath. Next thing T.J. knows is that two police officers are in the apartment just as Tanya returns home. Tanya tells police that Celia often left the kids alone. T.J. and Angela are put into the police car and driven to a “blue house” where they lived about a year. Thus begins their life of foster home jumping.

As T.J. sits and waits in the waiting room of the emergency department he looks through his “life book” and reminisces about his and Angela’s lives so far. T.J. had a lot of responsibility for a little boy while living with his mother, always feeling responsible for his sister and worrying about his mother. The constant worry ate him alive.

I was so enamoured with little T.J. He was yet a little boy in many ways yet a strong, independent young man at other times. I loved this book for its endearing qualities, good writing and good characterizations. I would highly recommend it to anyone!

UNTO THESE HILLS (EMILY SUE HARVEY)

2011-10-25T13:09:00.000-07:00

Story Description:

Unto These Hills is an unforgettable novel of love, scandal, family, and roots by one of the most emotionally authentic authors of our time. Taking us into the deep South's Tucapau Mill Hill, it introduces us to the unforgettable Sunny Acklin. Betrayed, abandoned, and violated, Sunny faces one seemingly insurmountable challenge after another. But she never loses her spirit or the memory of the love that once so richly illuminated her world. As years go by, Sunny does everything she can to make something of her life until at last an opportunity arises, one charged with promise...and undeniable risk.

From its vivid evocation of mill hill life to its pitch perfect rendering of the complexities of family and relationships, Unto These Hills is at once epic and intensely intimate. It is the richest novel yet from a writer who fluently speaks the language of our deepest feelings.

My Review:

Unto These Hills is set in the Deep South in a little place called ‘Tucapau Mill Hill’ and 15-year-old Sunny Acklin is dressed for the May Pole dance. Sunny’s boyfriend, Daniel, is 16 and already a strapping 6 foot tall. He and Sunny are planning to be married in the future. Daniel lives across the street from Sunny just having moved in a few months ago. Daniel was a foster child who came to live with the Collin’s family when he was 9-years-old. In a few short months Daniel’s family became central to Sunny’s life.

There is an abundance of other lovable characters in this story: 11-year-old Timmy and 9-year-old Sheila are Sunny’s younger siblings and 16-year-old Francine her older sister. There is Dorthea Hicks, Daniel’s 16-year-old foster sister, 15-year-old Emaline who is Sunny’s best friend and Ruby and Robert Acklin, Sunny’s parents, to name a few. Each character is well-drawn and their personalities shine through in this marvelously penned story.

One afternoon Sunny’s Mom ducks into a store telling Dad, Sunny and her siblings to stay in the car because she is going in to buy them all a surprise! But after waiting an inordinate amount of time for her to return, Robert gets out, enters the store but doesn’t see Ruby anywhere. Mr. Mason the owner tells Robert that Ruby ducked out the back door and got into another car. Sunny knew then that her mother was gone and not coming back. Her mother was guilty of “sexual immorality” and “neglecting her kids”.

Ruby Acklin’s name was worse than mud; it was “slime”. She had run off with the village doctor who was 10 years younger than Ruby. Each family member dealt differently with Ruby’s leaving. Shortly after that their Daddy left too. He went up north to hunt for a job leaving the kids in their Nana’s care. Francine locked herself in her room and smoked cigarettes hidden under her mattress. Little Timmy and Sheila hung off Sunny like extra arms and legs, but for Sunny, her mother’s leaving has left her feeling “…depleted in many ways”. She felt a sense of “aloneness” each day and said it was a “defining time in my life, one that remained like a raw, open wound”.

Sunny Acklin is such a lovable character who does absolutely everything she can to make her life something she can be proud of. Finally an opportunity comes her way but is it what it seems? Will it lead to joy and jubilation or is she taking a risk?

UNTO THESE HILLS was a joy to read, an epic tale rich in strong characterization and storyline. I would highly recommend this to everyone and will definitely be reading more of Ms. Harvey’s work!

HEAVEN IS FOR REAL (TODD BURPO WITH LYNN VINCENT)

2011-10-24T02:36:00.000-07:00

Story Description:

A young boy emerges from life-saving surgery with remarkable stories of his visit to heaven.

HEAVEN IS FOR REAL is the true story of the four-year old son of a small town Nebraska pastor who during emergency surgery slips from consciousness and enters heaven. He survives and begins talking about being able to look down and see the doctor operating and his dad praying in the waiting room. The family didn’t know what to believe but soon the evidence was clear.

Colton said he met his miscarried sister, whom no one had told him about, and his great grandfather who died 30 years before Colton was born, then shared impossible-to-know details about each. He describes the horse that only Jesus could ride, about how "reaaally big" God and his chair are, and how the Holy Spirit "shoots down power" from heaven to help us.

Told by the father, but often in Colton's own words, the disarmingly simple message is heaven is a real place, Jesus really loves children, and be ready, there is a coming last battle.

My Review:

A lovely and endearing story about four-year-old Colton Burpo who underwent emergency, life-saving surgery and miraculously slipped from his body and went to Heaven where he met Jesus. Describing heaven as only a four-year-old who has been there can, is truly astounding. He meets the sister he never knew he had and brought his parents comfort upon learning that it was a “girl” they had miscarried a couple of years before and never named her. For his Gramma, always wondering whether her deceased husband had ever made it to heaven, brought great relief to her ongoing worry.

It was a page-turner that I couldn’t put down and ended up reading it in one sitting. This story just might win some non-believers over to the believer side. I’d definitely read this one again just for the beautiful descriptions of heaven told by Colton to his family.

TELL IT TO THE TREES (ANITA RAU BADAMI)

2011-10-22T15:48:00.000-07:00

Story Description:

One freezing winter morning a dead body is found in the backyard of the Dharma family’s house. It’s the body of Anu Krishnan.

For Anu, a writer seeking a secluded retreat from the city, the Dharmas’ “back-house” in the sleepy mountain town of Merrit’s Point was the ideal spot to take a year off and begin writing. She had found the Dharmas’ rental through a happy coincidence. A friend from university who had kept tabs on everyone in their graduating year – including the quiet and reserved Vikram Dharma and his first wife, Helen – sent her the listing. Anu vaguely remembered Vikram but had a strong recollection of Helen, a beautiful, vivacious, social and charming woman.

But now Vikram had a new wife, a marriage hastily arranged in India after Helen was killed in a car accident. Suman Dharma, a stark contrast to Helen, is quiet and timid. She arrived from the bustling warmth of India full of the promise of her new life – a new home, a new country and a daughter from Vikram’s first marriage. But her husband’s suspicious, controlling and angry tirades become almost a daily ritual, resigning Suman to a desolate future entangled in a marriage of fear and despair.

Suman is isolated both by the landscape and the culture, and her fortunes begin to change only when Anu arrives. A friendship begins to form between the two women as Anu becomes a frequent visitor to the house. While the children, Varsha and Hemant, are at school, Anu, Vikram’s mother, Akka, and Suman spend time sharing tea and stories.

But Anu’s arrival will change the balance of the Dharma household. Young Varsha, deeply affected by her mother’s death and desperate to keep her new family together, becomes increasingly suspicious of Anu’s relationship with her stepmother. Varsha’s singular attention to keeping her family together, and the secrets that emerge as Anu and Suman become friends, create cracks in the Dharma family that can only spell certain disaster.
My Review:

TELL IT TO THE TREES wasn’t quite as good as Badami’s previous novels. The subject matter and story were good but I somehow felt she rushed through the book to finish for some reason. I also found her characters a wee bit lacking in substance and description and she could have spent more time developing the characters. Aside from that, I would still recommend this as a fairly good read but I personally would not read this one again.

HOTWIRE (ALEX KAVA)

2011-10-21T17:40:00.000-07:00

Story Description:

On a crisp fall evening in western Nebraska, what started as a group of kids filming their drug-induced party ends in an explosive light show, leaving the victims apparently electrocuted, with odd scorch marks being the only evidence. While Maggie tries to make sense of the different stories, sifting through what is real and what is hallucination, she realizes that the surviving teens are being targeted and systematically eliminated.

Meanwhile, on the East Coast, Army Colonel Benjamin Platt is at the scene of a deadly outbreak, desperate to identify the pathogen that has infected children at a Washington, D.C., elementary school. Despite the miles that separate them, the two cases collide as Maggie and Platt uncover the secrets that were meant to stay hidden in the remote Midwest landscape.

My Review:

Dawson Hayes was a geek who did odd things like wearing all black on Football Fridays when everyone else wore school colours. He’d brought his Dad’s “taser” to the party in the Nebraska National Forest which made him feel powerful. Dawson felt like he could do anything! The taser was easy to use…just point, aim and bam! 50,000 volts of electricity would be delivered to the recipient and Dawson knew that he could control anyone and everyone with it.

Johnny B. was a quarterback, homecoming king and was charming beyond words. He liked to conduct “experiments” like the one he was doing tonight and his guest list at this party only included 7 people. Dawson had already helped him set up the video camera amongst the trees where it couldn’t be seen. All the kids, including Dawson and Johnny were chewing “salvia”, a more potent type of weed that Johnny said was like: “rock-‘n’-roll fireworks squeezing your brain, convincing you that you could fly.” Johnny was secretly filming this drug-induced party.

Dawson saw something among the trees, a pair of fiery red eyes that suddenly came running out of the brush racing straight at him. He held up his arm, pointed the taser and pulled the trigger. The creature moved backwards and fell and Dawson began running. The branches in the bush tore his clothing, slashed his skin and he couldn’t see. He hit a wire, “hard”, and the jolt of electricity knocked him off his feet and by the time he had hit the ground, his shirt was slick with blood!!

Special Agent Maggie O’Dell of the FBI specialized in criminal behaviour and profiling. She had advanced degrees in behavioural psychology and forensic science. Her boss, Raymond Kunze had sent her to Nebraska to teach some classes but she ended up at the crime scene of the teenagers in the forest off Highway #83. A group of teenagers had been severely injured, each with varying degrees and numbers of wounds. One girl had a large bite mark on her arm but the absence of blood perplexed Maggie. Then she tripped and fell her penlight rolling about 3 feet away from her in the brush. She reached her light and the beam shone directly into the wide-open eyes of a boy who appeared dead. Then he blinked!! His body was wrapped in barbed wire. Altogether there were 2 dead teenagers and 5 injured.

What is going on in this forest? Who or what has attacked these kids? Well, hang onto your hats folks for this is one rollercoaster ride of suspense you don’t want to miss! Alex Kava never misses the mark!