Friendship for Grown-ups

Lisa Whelchel’s novel Friendship for Grown-ups: What I Missed and Learned Along the Way is a short autobiographical sketch of Whelchel’s journey through friendship, and how she learned how to open up and allow people to become her friends. While the book reads like an autobiographical story, there are lessons to be gleaned through-out the book.

I found Whelchel’s formatting interesting. It’s hard for me to be drawn in by nonfiction as is, so I wasn’t really captivated by the book. The fact that I finished the book in under 6 months (since it usually takes me much longer than that to read a nonfiction novel) shows that the book was interesting enough. The lessons Whelchel learned about friendship that were conveyed throughout the book were helpful and Biblical. With each new truth Whelchel stumbled across, she always tied it into God. I appreciated that, instead of simply throwing out her idea of how things should be done, she did tie her life lessons into God. This is a book worth reading, whether you make friends easily or not.

*I acquired this book from the site booksneeze.com*

The Clouds Roll Away -review

The Clouds Roll Away is a mystery novel by Sibella Giorello based in Richmond, Virginia. The novel is about forensic geologist, Raleigh Harmon, who must work to solve burgeoning racial crimes focused on an African American rap artist. While trying to solve the mystery of who is committing the hate crimes, Raleigh must also deal with her temperamental mother, catty boss, rich and ever-present ex-boyfriend, and new tenant in her childhood home.

I found The Clouds Roll Away to be a slightly difficult read at first because there seemed to be a great deal of missing information, until I realized about halfway through the book that it was the third book in a series, so I was missing some important background information. In order to truly appreciate the book, it seems necessary that one invest in the first two books of the series to get the background information to make sense of the third book. This was a slight disappointment for me since I have not read the first two books.

Lack of knowledge aside, I did not find the novel to my liking as far as mystery novels go because it seemed like a novel where the first 300 hundred pages are mediocrity leading up to the short climax and conclusion in the last 20 pages. A climax toward the end of a novel is acceptable of course, but only as long as the rest of the story is interesting enough to be captivating. Instead I felt like I was trudging through the story just so I could finish it instead of leaving a book half-read.

*I acquired this book from the site booksneeze.com*

Face of Betrayal -a review

Face of Betrayal by Lis Wiehl and April Henry is a story about three girl friends who work together to try to solve the mystery of a 17 year old girl who has gone missing. While working together to solve the mystery, each woman has to deal with their own real-life problems, and keep it together long enough to find the missing girl.

Face of Betrayal was an intriguing mystery that was not steeped in a fantastical plot that was unrealistic to life. Instead, the story allowed the three main characters to develop with each passing chapter as their personal struggles clashed with their struggle to find the missing girl. It was refreshing to read a story where the main characters were not perfect heroes that never had to deal with regular short-comings and trials of the everyday woman.

Also refreshing was the fact that as a book with a main character who was a Christian, the message of the novel was not dramatically Christian. Once again, the struggles the main character who was a Christian faced were regular struggles of a Christian that made her character relatable.

*I acquired this book from Thomas Nelson on the booksneeze site*