Bombs went off, earthquakes shook the ground, and people walked around with machine guns. That was my life. I grew up in Guatemala, with my father being a professor of Greek and New Testament theology at the Spanish seminary. This e-book has 34 short chapters describing life from the point of view of a child. It will make you want to climb trees and catch butterflies with your own children. This is not a spiritual book – it’s a recollection of memories. From boarding school to theater to furlough, I give you the blunt reality of life as only a child can see it.

I first read about this book when Evans wrote a guest post on Christian e-books today. I grew up going to church & being fascinated by missionaries, but never thought about what the kids went through – children who had no choice in the matter but to endure hardship because of decisions their parents made. So I wanted to read more, and wrote to Evans asking to review her book & I was thrilled when she did say yes.

Unfortunately, I didn’t realize that the book was really written from the viewpoint of a child (see the first paragraph above, she does clearly tell you that the story is from the point of a view of a child), and she also tells you it is not a spiritual book – and that disappointed me as well. I guess I was hoping to hear more about the family’s missionary work in general, from the viewpoint of someone who wasn’t a missionary, and that was not discussed at all in the book.

That being said, Evans does a great job writing and sharing her memories of growing up and living in Guatemala, from a friend’s house getting bombed to a little festival/carnival of sorts that her friends put together, complete with a haunted house of sorts on the roof of the house. She lived there for nine years, so she and her family really got to know the area.

Overall, I think this is a great book, but I think preteens and teens would get the most out of it.

If you’d like to know more, there’s a facebook fan page and watch Susan’s video on you tube… (embedding never seems to work for me, so if the video doesn’t load, go to http://youtu.be/DqfFj-symw8)

Catalina by Danny Fahey

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

One day the orphan Catalina is taken home by her lone surviving relative, Aunt Griselda. Unfortunately for Catalina, all does not quite go as expected. Her aunt hates her and makes her life miserable. She learns she is to be sold to Stefano the Knife-thrower and used as a human target. To escape a certain death, Catalina leaps through a mysterious crossover point and ends up in a new land called Arboroth. There, she is encounters a wolf-boy and a talking rat. She is beset by a cruel and inhospitable landscape, and all the while hunted by a pack of relentless hounds. Then Catalina discovers her aunt is also in Arboroth. And Griselda isn’t happy.

Catalina reminds me a of fairy tale, good verses evil, complete with an evil aunt who also happens to be a witch. Catalina is a very strong female lead and I think makes a great role model, which is one of the reasons why I did like the book.

The story is well written & grabs you from the first page, but unfortunately, the tale (for me) slows down a lot for most of the middle. I didn’t really feel like the story was anything original – and yes, I know, everything’s been done before & nothing is truly original anymore! But you just knew everything was going to work out in the end, and worse yet, I felt like I knew what was going to happen in every scene before it happened. I liked the story, I liked the characters, I liked the writing – I just didn’t love any part of it. I do, however, strongly think that the intended audience (young adult) would like the book a lot more than me. This comes up occasionally – I love young adult books, but sometimes they are just a little too young for me, and that’s to me actually a sign of a very well written book.

I received a copy of this book to review from the author.

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