Tuesday, May 29, 2012

Smitten by Colleen Coble, Kristin Billerbeck, Diann Hunt and Denise Hunter

Ridiculously short overview: This is a book with 4 stories in one that revolves around one main plot: The closing of Smitten’s lumber mill. It’s the town’s primary export and without it, the town could fail. But the women of Smitten have a plan to save the town by turning it into a romantic destination for lovers.

What drew me the most to this book was the fact that it was written by four different authors. One begins the main plot, two fill in the middle, and the last one resolves it.

Natalie, Julia, Shelly and Reese are the four driving forces behind the plan to save Smitten and the stars of each short story. Even though these women were written by all four authors, I thought the authors did an excellent job in staying true to the voice of each one.

The stories do feel very much connected to each other. We hear about Natalie’s cooking, her aunts and her little niece throughout all four stories. And of course, the further you read the more you see the friendship between the four women unfold and strengthen. But I was disappointed that the issue of Mia’s biological mother, and Natalie possibly adopting her, was never once touched on by the other authors. In fact, it was left unresolved which is very unsatisfying to me.

My favorite story out of all of them was the final story, Reese: All Along by Denise Hunter. Hunter knows how to write a short story. She dealt with the main plot but she didn’t try to cram storylines worthy of a novel into thirteen chapters. The story flowed and was resolved in a very believable way. Hunter was also the only one with a male lead who wasn’t set against the plan to save Smitten. I was glad I didn’t have to read the same male perspective for the fourth time. Overall, Reese: All Along was funny, compelling, and very sweet. Definitely worth the read.

I received this book for free by winning a contest on Twitter. It’s the first thing I’ve ever won and I was grateful for the opportunity to read this book. If you’re thinking of buying Smitten, I’d recommend it for anyone who can look past rushed endings and crazy plot lines to the heart of the characters. I believe you’ll at least enjoy getting to know Colleen Coble, Kristin Billerbeck, Diann Hunt and Denise Hunter as I did through their fictional counterparts. Be sure to read the inside cover!



Maggie's star rating: * * * *

Saturday, May 26, 2012

The Pirate and His Lady

Maggie here.

As I was walking around downtown St. Augustine, I came across a quaint little shop full of treasures. But the best treasure of all was hanging on their door... a silhouette of a pirate and his lady.


On several occasions, Aridin refers to Nessa as "pretty lady". 
And I'm sure more than once thinks of her as his. 

"Pretty lady," he said, "I know you'd prefer to be elsewhere, but you can't find me that repulsive? I've been told on numerous occasions that I'm quite comely." He lifted his eyebrows, not meaning the invitation to be serious, but if by chance she wanted to take it...--from The Healer and the Pirate
How does "his lady" react? Find out in our free preview of The Healer and the Pirate.






Wednesday, May 23, 2012

A few reviews of Beckon and Alzheimer's - Truth is more compelling than fiction - CSFF Blog Tour

Julie again. If you didn't see it, my review of Beckon published yesterday evening! (Not without difficulties.)

Alternatively, I agreed with almost everything in Jessica Thomas' review.
I LOVE Shannon McDermott's thoughts on character deaths (here) and her first paragraph of her first review post had me laughing out loud.

Moving on! In Tom Pawlik's Beckon, one of the point of view characters, George, is a man desperately seeking to get his wife back, while he's losing her to Alzheimer's.  I don't feel like it's a bad portrayal, but I couldn't get out of my mind an article I'd read on the BBC website recently.

One of the people described is an engineer husband caring for his wife, who has Alzheimer's.  The husband optimistically noted that his wife--who was not as far gone as George's, granted--still had about 30% of her personality left. He shows patience where George shows nothing but frustration and desperation.

The whole article is sad, detailed, and fascinating. Interestingly, it ends with the journalist's own version of hope...perhaps more gentle and optimistic than the work of fiction that made me remember it.

Tuesday, May 22, 2012

Beckon by Tom Pawlik: Review (CSFF Blog Tour)


Book:  Beckon by Tom Pawlik (blog, Facebook, Twitter).

EDIT:  Blogger decided to make the entire body of my review all caps. Yes, the book is THAT EXCITING, but it was not my intent. So apologies in advance for any weird formatting.

This is Julie again, posting for the CSFF Blog Tour! I have a review system you may (or may not) want to look at to see HOW I come up with my ratings and what I rate on.

Ridiculously simplified summary: An anthropology graduate seeks answers about his father. A young police officer seeks her missing cousin. And a rich man seeks a cure for his wife's Alzheimer's. Their journeys lead them to Beckon, Wyoming. Come. And live forever.

Content: Before you go any farther, keep in mind that I like a happy ending. The kind of ending where at least most of the main characters are as happy or happier at the end of the story than they were at the beginning.

This is not one of those books.

Beckon is labeled suspense, but I'd call it suspense like the movie Jurassic Park--except Jurassic Park has some moments of wonder and whimsy before the dinosaurs start eating everyone. This book is so violent, I’m tempted to call it horror. It disturbed my sleep multiple nights. I thought the Christian content was mostly confined to people coming to grips with their own mortality, though 2 characters were strong Christians and talked/thought about that a bit.

Rating: 

Compelling: 9 out of 10. Almost throughout, it's a page turner. There are entire paragraphs of flashback to explain each point-of-view character's circumstances, which made the beginning of the book in particular drag a bit for me. Despite that, once I was past the first few chapters, the book kept me reading, and I stayed up late a few nights with it.

Characters: 4 out of 10. Every character has a detailed backstory, so it's clear Pawlik put a lot of thought into them. It's providential how one point-of-view character meets someone who changes her worldview.

My main problem is that I just couldn't get into Jack's point of view. Looking back, I think it's the style, which just isn't the close third-person point of view I've been taught to write. Here are the first two paragraphs of the book (in effect, a flashback):

The last time he saw his father alive, Jackson David Kendrick was only nine years old.

The gray light of dawn was seeping in between his bedroom curtains when Jack woke to find him standing in the doorway. Dr. David Kendrick was a willowy, spectacled anthropologist at the University of Chicago. His black skin and wide brown eyes gave him a youthful appearance, but the flecks of silver frosting the edges of his hair made him look more distinguished and professorial. So people who didn't know him could never tell if he was twenty-nine or forty. But this morning, his normally thoughtful eyes looked weary as he sat on the edge of Jack's bed.  

I’m sure the style is intentional, but it’s not how a nine-year-old (or even most 20-somethings) would see the scene, even though it refers to David as "his father" or even "his dad," indicating we're not seeing through an impartial narrator. I'm just used to reading a "close" point of view where the narration sounds kind of like something the point-of-view character would say or think. The distanced approach is likely standard for the genre--it reminded me a tiny bit of Arthur C. Clarke’s Rendezvous with Rama in that regard, actually (blocks of narration setting up characters who are there, in large part, to discover weird things).

Unfortunately, I also couldn’t bring myself to like Jack. I don't feel like his cause was ever worth risking his own life for, let alone the lives of others. Other characters in the book note that Jack has an almost callous disregard of his friends and associates, and I can’t really disagree.

I felt like women were short-changed (several were victims with menfolk trying to save them, and the rest were just victims--though in fairness, with this much violence, there were a lot of victims of both sexes). Elina's main POV section is a mere 35 pages, compared to Jack's 140-page section and George's 95 pages.

Elina has an interesting, nuanced past, but while she displays strength early on, by the end she's screaming like a kid. (True, she was in a very scary situation, but I expected a police officer to be at least as brave as a civilian just out of college.) On the plus side, it was nice to see a Hispanic character (something I haven’t seen in many Christian books). There's a lot of use of Spanish that sounded realistic to me, as well as a surprisingly sympathetic take toward illegal immigrants.

George seems a bit spry to me for a 70-something-year-old man, but as my main interaction with 70-something-year-old men is greeting them at church, I can't comment much on him. He seemed the most realistic to me (though truth is more compelling than fiction--a little bit on that tomorrow). There are some genuinely touching moments with George and his wife (I found the latter the most likable character in the book).

Writing/editing: 8 out of 10. Like many books I've read lately, I felt like the end fell apart a bit, glossing over some important bits and not answering all the questions. On a micro scale, though, I didn’t notice any grammatical problems. The story overall played out at a good pace, and the mystery unraveled well.

Plausibility/believability: 4 out of 5. I thought the storyline was basically plausible. I'm not sure the overarching villain would have been able to do all he did for so long without getting caught, but it seemed believable enough while reading. There is also a lot of pseudo-science that also sounds real.

Positive: 1 out of 5. A couple female characters show bravery in Christ. Other than that, there are a few prayers and that's all I remember. Many, many people (innocent and not) die terrible deaths with at best an unknown salvation status. At least one protagonist takes pleasure in the deaths of those who caused him pain. That was realistic, but not uplifting...I felt like I might as well have been reading a secular book, though a secular book would have likely had  sex outside of marriage and cursing.

Gut reaction: 2 out of 5. Technically, it was a good book, and it did keep me reading. I just feel sad because I saw precious little hope in this world. I would have rather read more about the consequences and possible redemption of characters who took the cure in Beckon, and less about monsters (human and not).

Bonus points: 5 out of 5.

Recommended for: Fans of exciting suspense/horror/monster books. This is potentially a very good crossover book for non-Christian readers who just want an exciting book, and a perfect book for Christian readers who want to be creeped out and disturbed but don't want explicit content (except violence).

Probably not good for: People with a fear of spiders or insects; people who expect happy endings; people expecting an explicitly Christian book.

Total Rating: 3.3 out of 5 stars

Here are the other participants in the CSFF Blog Tour.  Check them out!

Noah Arsenault
 Julie Bihn
Thomas Clayton Booher
 Thomas Fletcher Booher
Beckie Burnham
Brenda Castro
Theresa Dunlap
Nikole Hahn
Ryan Heart
Bruce Hennigan
Janeen Ippolito
Becky Jesse
Jason Joyner
Carol Keen
Leighton
Rebekah Loper
Katie McCurdy
Shannon McDermott
Karen McSpadden
Rebecca LuElla Miller
Nissa
Joan Nienhuis
Faye Oygard
Crista Richey
Kathleen Smith
Jessica Thomas
Steve Trower
Fred Warren
Shane Werlinger



*I received a copy of this book free from Tyndale in exchange for this review.*

Monday, May 21, 2012

What would you do to live forever? - CSFF Blog Tour

Julie here. This month, the CSFF Blog Tour is reviewing Beckon by Tom Pawlik (blog, Facebook, Twitter). The cover reads (rather compellingly) "COME. AND LIVE FOREVER."

I'm not interested in vampires at all, yet I've found immortal characters fascinating ever since I read Tuck Everlasting, which touches on some of the technical problems with living forever (such as needing to move to new places every so often because people get freaked out you never change...never mind potential loneliness). Immortality has certainly been a popular theme in recent fiction (see the Sorcerer's Stone/Philosopher's Stone in Harry Potter, all of Twilight, etc.).

Some of these stories involve gaining immortality with ease.  Others (including Beckon) have a very, very, very steep cost.

What would you do to live forever? As a Christian, I think the story is more, what would Christ do to give you eternal life, and will you accept it?

Check back tomorrow for a review. And check out the others on the tour!

Noah Arsenault
 Julie Bihn
Thomas Clayton Booher
Thomas Fletcher Booher
Beckie Burnham
Brenda Castro
Theresa Dunlap
Nikole Hahn
Ryan Heart
Bruce Hennigan
Janeen Ippolito
Becky Jesse
Jason Joyner
Carol Keen
Leighton
Rebekah Loper
Katie McCurdy
Shannon McDermott
Karen McSpadden
Rebecca LuElla Miller
Nissa
Joan Nienhuis
Faye Oygard
Crista Richey
Kathleen Smith
Jessica Thomas
Steve Trower
Fred Warren
Shane Werlinger

*I received a copy of Beckon at no cost from Tyndale in exchange for a review/promotion.

Saturday, May 19, 2012

Book Teaser for part 2 of The Kinyn Chronicles

Maggie here. I went away on vacation last week and while I was traipsing across the state... I did some research. This research just may have something to do with a certain sequel....

Castillo de San Marcos, St. Augustine Florida

Saturday, May 5, 2012

Orange Flower Scones

Julie here. So early in in The Healer and the Pirate, Nessa and her grandfather, Nicoli, arrive in the town of Tilos. While they came on urgent business, Nessa can’t help but notice the sights, sounds, and smells all around her, including the citrus tang of orange flower scones. And she just might have gotten to eat one, if a dashing pirate hadn't kidnapped her. I thought it would be fun to try to make some but, well, I’m not exactly talented on the inventing recipes front. Or the buying exotic ingredients front. Or the spending a lot of money front. Anyway, my grand ideas of creating an exotic recipe with crazy ingredients like orange flower water were quickly abandoned. Then I was in a local grocery store (Fry’s) and what did I find?


OK, they’re labeled Cranberry Orange Mini Scones. I've only seen them in one Fry's, but you get 8 of them for $1.49!!!!! Probably the best deal in the bakery. Anyway, I had to have them. I don’t think they had quite the same fragrance as the ones in Tilos (and sad to say, I’m not sure the ones in Tilos had icing, either). But besides that, I think they tasted quite a bit like the scones Nessa could have had.

The scones in Tilos certainly didn’t contain cranberries, but the flowers (which aren’t quite like our orange blossoms) are made into a pulp and sweetened, then dried and cut up into small pieces for flavoring. A splash of their version of orange water brings a flavor similar to our cranberry orange scones.

$1.49...let’s see...that’s like a third of a copper, maybe a quarter of one, for 8 scones, each a little smaller than the palm of your hand.

Food in general is more expensive in Kinyn than it is in America, and the processes of farming and cooking are generally more labor-intensive. Not always much more intensive, though...after all, the land is blessed with all sorts of magic. So a third of a copper for 8 mini scones would be an amazing deal in Kinyn too!