Found in Translation -review

Found in Translation by Roger Bruner

Found in Translation is a Young Adults (misnomer, I feel like they should call "Young Adults" the "Old Juveniles" or "Preteen/Teen." Young Adult is college students, not high school students) novel about a spoiled southern girl who goes on a mission trip to Mexico. There she is encountered with a situation she was not prepared for, and it changes her life.

I thought it a good book. Since the main character, Kim, was slightly spoiled and strong-willed, it made for an interesting first-person narrative. At times I had to remind myself that Kim's thoughts were most probably not the author's thoughts, because she annoyed me at times. It worked out well though, because by the end of the story I had experienced Kim's maturation with her. I was able to watch her thoughts change as the mission trip made her a better person.

Since the description of the book said Kim was 18, I was expecting something a bit more grown-up, for lack of a better word. Instead I got a girl fresh out of high school. I was instead expecting a college-age girl, so it was a bit jolting to deal with high school thoughts instead of college thoughts. As a Young Adult (Old Juvenile) book it worked well. I imagine Young Adults (Old Juveniles) would like this book and the way Kim acted like a teen. I did not find the tone of the narrative at all cliche or condescending like some Young Adult books tend to be. It actually felt like an 18-year-old telling her story.

I did think the inclusion of a black girl, Aleesha, in the story was a bit weird at moments only for the fact that her race was continually pointed out. Perhaps it is a cultural thing, but race has never been a big deal where I live, so it was jarring to read a story where the fact that a girl was black seemed to be a central point of the story. It was nothing racist (I got the distinct impression that neither Roger Bruner nor Kim were racists. Kim was just sheltered). Just something weird.

Personally, even though the story was well-written and had a good premise to go on, I did not feel emotionally invested in the story. I thought it taught great lessons about surrendering our will to God, but it didn't really touch me personally.

Love on Assignment -Review

Love on Assignment -by Cara Lynn James

This is a romance story about Charlotte Hale in the beginning of the 19th century. Charlotte Hale takes an undercover assignment as a reporter at a Professor Daniel Wilmoth's home to try and discover any sordid information about him that can be published in order to ruin his reputation. Charlotte takes a job as Daniel's governess for his two children so that she might spy on him, and while working for him she finds her faith in Christ growing and her feelings for Daniel blossoming into something romantic. As her feelings change, Charlotte finds herself presented with the dilemma of fulfilling her job and ruining Daniel or failing as an undercover reporter so that she might protect Daniel against her boss's unscrupulous scheming.

Over all, I was not a fan of the story. I felt as if the story dragged on at a lagging pace, and it made it less than enjoyable to read. The story may have better served as a novella instead of a novel, because all of the important bits of the story could have easily been condensed into one. If it had been a novella, I think I might have liked the story well enough.

That is, of course, except for the fatal flaw. As I expressed earlier, I am not a fan of romance novels where either the male or female character must become a stronger Christian in order for the romance to work out (the only novel I've ever read where this worked at all was Redeeming Love). I did not like that Charlotte went from a poor Christian to a good Christian for the sake of romance. I do not mind people being saved in books, but I think it should be done for some other purpose other than a successful romance.

I don't particularly enjoy giving bad reviews, because I realize it is very hard to write stories, so who am I to critique another person's labor of love? And so I will say that this book will probably be enjoyed by a great many people. I just happen to not be one of the people that enjoyed the book. Not my cup of tea, I suppose.

Pale Demon(Rachel Morgan/The Hollows #9) -Review

Yay finally got to read on of my guilty pleasures. I must say I wasn't disappointed, which could have happened since I waited so long to read this book. I still find Rachel slightly irritating, but she was slightly less irritating in this book than I remember her from the previous books.

This review will be pretty much pointless for anyone who hasn't read the first 8 books, so I'm not going to try to make it understandable for anyone who isn't familiar with the series.

First for the likes:

1) like how much Trent was in this book. He and Jenks are my favorite.

2) barely any sexual content (I'm probably one of the few people that could do without the sexual content in this series. romance is fine, but I'm not big on reading about other people's sex lives)

3) less Ivy/Rachel drama.

4) the plot was not predictable (to me at least, but I don't pick up on things, so maybe it was predictable to others), and I liked the plot twists thrown in there (I won't tell you what. As the Doctor would say, "Spoilers.")

Dislikes:

1) Rachel is still having issues getting off her high horse (admittedly, she was able to at least slightly admit the hypocrisy of disdaining Trent even though she does things just as bad)

2) Despite the unpredictability of the plot, it did rather drag on a bit.

3) stupid witch ghost boy is still in the picture. Although I guess he couldn't just disappear. Kim Harrison could have conveniently left him out of the story. Maybe in between the last story and this one, Algaliarept could have killed him. I would have appreciated that.

If you're a fan of the series, I guess you will either love or hate this story depending on how much you like Trent. Since I would be content to read an entire series centered around him, this was good for me.

Deadly Ties -Review

Deadly Ties by Vicki Hinze was a nice break from otherwise dreary fiction lit that I have been reading for the past month or so (yay for decent books!). Not that I read boring books intentionally. It just sort of happens. In any case, it is a story mainly about Lisa Harper, an emotionally scarred women that wants nothing more than to have a happy and easy life like the other Christians she knows. Things don't work out as planned when her psychopathic (well, I deem him psychopathic) stepfather does everything within his power to try and ruin her life so that she will be permanently separated from her mother. To help defend Lisa against the psychopath Dutch is her (handsome) friend, Mark Taylor.

It's a suspense story with a dose of romance, or maybe a romance story with suspense. I'm not quite sure. Either way, it is not straight-up romance, so it's good. What I loved most about the story is that neither Mark nor Lisa were nonbelievers at the beginning of the story that had to become a Christian by the end of the story so that they might marry each other and be happy. That plot is overdone quite a bit in the Christian romance drama.

Even though the plot is not something that would happen to your average Joe, the emotional struggles are something that other Christians can find themselves going through at different levels. This made the story more intimate for the reader. Instead of just reading about some crazy suspense story or some fantastical romance, we read about two Christians struggling to survive trials. It was nice that they were not super Christians who could handle anything without a single emotional response.

I also enjoyed the plot itself. It was fast-paced enough to keep me interested, but not so fast it was ridiculous. Hinze also made an effort to develop her characters, make them realistic, so that the reader could become emotionally invested in their story. My only problem was toward the ends things got a wee bit cheesy for me. That is to say, the overwhelming girl-power stuff at the end killed it for me. Men not being allowed to cuss without fear of getting hot sauce in their tea, people having weddings planned for them by moms and elderly women friends, wives/girlfriends manipulating their men into submission. It kind of killed it for me. It was only for the last few chapters that this became a problem though, so I wasn't completely turned off from the story. Just mildly.

All in all, it was a good story, and I look forward to reading more from Vicki Hinze.

*I acquired this book from Waterbrook Multnomah Publishers

An Amish Love -Review

I really cannot fathom why I got this book. I already know I am not a fan of Amish romance novels, so it was a bit of a silly idea for me to request this book from booksneeze. Whatever the silly reasoning, I got the book and so I had to read the three novellas within. Oh, what a chore. While I am sure, these three authors (B. Wiseman, K. Fuller, K. Long) are decent novelists in their own right, I was biased from the start because of my predisposition to dislike Amish romance novels. Thankfully, I was able to become passingly enthralled by the story line of some of the stories.

A Marriage of the Heart -Kelly Long

Kelly Long's novella was a romance about Abigail Kauffman and Joseph Lambert. Abigail Kauffman seems to be a naive girl who wants to escape her Amish town, and so tricks Joseph Lambert into a marriage with her right in the beginning of the story. We are left with the two in a loveless marriage where the reader is left wondering if everything will turn out all sunshine and roses. (Not to give any spoilers, but it's a romance novel, so I wasn't really wondering how the story would end. It's about like Disney, yeah?).

It was not until the climax of the story that I felt drawn in at all. I won't reveal anything, but I did find myself a little bit satisfied by the little injection of reality into the story that pushed it over the edge from being one-dimensional to something a bit more. I rather liked Joseph Lambert by the end of the story.

Overall, I imagine a woman who is a fan of Amish romance stories would have given this one a 3/5. Since I'm not a fan, I'm thinking a 1.5/5 or a 2/5.

Healing Hearts -Beth Wiseman

Healing Hearts is about the return of a husband, Naaman Lapp, who left his family for near on a year with no legitimate explanation, and now his wife, Levina, and his family must learn to accept his return. His wife has grown closer to God whilst he was gone and she has become a stronger woman, but forgiveness does not come easy to a husband of 31 years that left for nearly a year. Hurt goes deep with that sort of thing.

While I think this could have been a brilliant story, the fact that it is a novella completely ruins it for me. Even as an Amish story, I can tell I would have probably loved it just because it is an intriguing story idea. The major failing in this story is that I feel like I came in on the middle. The story starts with Naaman's return home, and the reader must go from there. This makes it hard to sympathize or empathize with any of the characters in the beginning, because they are all new to me. I have never experienced abandonment by a family member, so in order for me to feel emotional about it, I need to live it out through someone else's eyes. However, I cannot, because I only get the second half of the story.

However, the second half of the story given to me was full of enough character development to redeem the story from a possible 1 star rating. I found the struggle of trying to renew trust and the development between Naaman and Levina quaint, if a bit nauseating. The plot twist with Larry was annoying to me, since I'm not big on meddling (unless we're dealing with Emma, in which case meddling makes the story amazing). Personally, I would have liked the story if it started from before Naaman left and centered solely around Naaman and his son, Adam. Everything else was a bit distracting to me. I give it a 2.5/5

What the Heart Sees -Kathleen Fuller

Right away, we have a blind Amish girl. I feel as if I've read such a story before, back when I actually liked reading Amish romance. Something by Beverly Lewis, I believe. Ellie Chump also lost her sight in a car accident, except in this novel she was actually in a car and not a wagon, and it's not hysterical blindness. It's blindness caused by a head injury. Five years after the accident, an estranged Christopher Miller returns, and he and Ellie run into each other (not literally. figuratively). While Ellie seems to have healed from her accident 5 years past, Christopher is still in emotional pain. We are left wondering if Ellie can help heal Christopher's heartache whilst possibly falling in love at the same time.

I though this was a rather decent story. Cliche, yes, but then most romance novels are, so who am I to complain since I still enjoy reading them? There is a spiritual lesson of forgiveness to be learned in this story -now that I think of it, I think forgiveness is an element in all of the stories. I wonder if that was coincidental. The story was well-written, and I found myself intrigued despite the Amishness of it.

I think women who like Amish novels would have given this a 4/5 or 4.5/5. I give it a 3/5.

~~

Funny thing I did not realize until I was halfway finished with the final novella in the book was that all three stories took place in the same community, and characters from each story was mentioned in the other two. On that note, it is important you read the three stories in the order they appear in the book, since you will stumble across spoilers if you don't read them in order.

(In case I was unclear in the beginning, I received this book from booksneeze.com)

Life Without Limits -review

I requested (and received) Life Without Limits by Nick Vujicic from Waterbrook Multnomah Publishers for free because his story seemed like it might be a very inspiring and captivating read. It was indeed inspiring. I was not disappointed in that respect.

The story of Nick Vujicic is probably a well-known one. A man born without limbs, except for a small malformed foot. He overcame these limits (hence the title "Life without limits. I think "limits" was a play on the word "limbs." If so, I got a good chuckle out of the pun) in order to become an inspirational speaker. More than becoming an inspirational speaker, it seems Vujicic leads a very busy life. He has gone surfing before, he can swim. It's all rather amazing.

In his story, Nick Vujicic tells many short anecdotes from his life and follows up on these anecdotes with little inspirational blurps about how "If I can do this, then you can be happy/hopeful/successful/etc too." ... yeah, it sounds better in his own words. I really liked the way he would go from personal anecdote to inspirational paragraph. It helped to make his point. Instead of him just saying "You should be happy," he actually explained how despite his circumstances he found things to be happy for, and in a like manner we can find things to be happy for too.

Because his story is so amazing, and the messages he is trying to share with the world are so helpful and wonderful, I almost feel bad with the critique I am about to give. I am not critiquing his message, though. His message is quite good. My only issue with his book is that some of the inspirational messages he provided in the book sounded very cliche. I would have preferred he came up with an original way to make his point instead of using cliche phrases like "Anything is possible." However, he made up for such cliche phrases with amusing phrases like "So walk with me, the man with no arms and no legs, into a future filled with hope!"

Over all, I loved the message Nick Vujicic is trying to spread around the world. Personally, the book was slow-going for me since I'm not a fan of non-fiction, but I still thought it was good. It was hard for me to get into the story at first, since I'm not a huge non-fiction fan, but once I got into it, I was captivated -despite some of the cliche phrases. I'd recommend others read it.

[as an aside: a branch-off from this review can be found on this blog post where I talk about hope: Living With Hope]

Immanuel's Veins -review

Immanuel’s Veins is a fiction novel by Ted Dekker set in 18^th century Russia. The novel follows the tail of a warrior, Toma Nicolescu, and a family of three women he is sent to protect. Once at the estate of the Cantemir family, Toma realizes he is not there to protect against a normal enemy, but against a danger he has never encountered before. It is a novel of jealousy and love.

As far as independent novels go, Immanuel’s Veins was decent enough. As a Dekker novel, I was disappointed. It did not hold his normal thriller/suspense style, which left me more disappointed than I would have been if I was simply reading the novel by an author used to writing in the romance genre. The message I garnered from the story was inspiring, but my personal bias outweighed the otherwise intriguing story. Personally, I would recommend this book for people who are not die-hard Dekker fans, but I would not recommend it for Dekker fans who are looking for a classic Dekker read.

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