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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The Anne Boleyn Collection: The Real Truth about the Tudors by Claire Ridgway

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I picked this book on amazon when it was first published. I’m a fan of the author’s blog, though I don’t always have time to read it. I knew some of the information would be repetitive, but I was expecting some new information as well.

I wasn’t expecting that within the book itself, there was a lot of repeat information. I got the impression she just gathered up all the articles on her blog with the same tag & put them together as a book, instead of actually editing the articles by hand to make sure they didn’t mention the same info over & over again. A few beta readers probably would have helped, too.

That being said – I do enjoy Ridgway’s blog & I am a big Tudor buff – both the fiction stuff & the real actual historical facts & I do think this book is a great place to start, especially if you are new to her blog.



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INFECTED by James Schannep

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I was recently asked to review this book by the author, & I said yes because it was a “Choose Your Own Adventure” book, something I LOVED as a kid. The premise was zombies, & I don’t read zombie fiction, but I couldn’t resist reading this.

It’s such a fun romp! It’s a typical choose your own adventure book: lighthearted, with extreme choices – stay in your home, or run & fight zombies. Things of that nature. The continuity was quite good – I remember reading the choose your own adventure books, & a lot of times the section you read would talk about a house, when the last section you read you were in a barn. I didn’t find anything like that in this.

It’s a fast read, I think I started over & read through the story about 4 times in an hour.

I’d definitely love to read more, & now I need to read more zombie books!



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Out of Mormonism: A Womans True Story by Judy Robertson

My rating: 1 of 5 stars

I picked this book up on amazon when it was available for free. For the last few years, I’ve been interested in reading about the Mormon lifestyle (lifestyle, not so much the religion itself) & about how people have escaped the life.

I couldn’t have been more disappointed with the book.

The book begins with her life pre-Mormonism, but the author, Judy, only gives the most basic explanation of why & how they converted to Mormonism. Something as life changing as CHANGING YOUR RELIGION isn’t going to happen overnight; I think she was trying to simplify the story, in order to move the plot along, but she oversimplified way too much. As she talks about converting, she kept talking about how internally she kept screaming that this was wrong — and I just don’t buy it. Maybe it’s the way she wrote it or maybe it just seems way too awfully convenient to me that she had doubts – because seriously, if she had doubts, why on earth would she have converted? If she did have doubts, then she should have explained it better so the reader would better understand where she was coming from.

The next section of her book explains how they converted, some of the things that they had to do day to day, & then all of a sudden they decide not to be Mormons any more & they are just allowed to leave. I don’t really know much about that (which is why I read the book in the first place) but it just seemed way too easy to just leave. If it was really that easy to leave, why wouldn’t more Mormons who want to leave the church, actually leave the church? So their friends were disappointed… so what? I just didn’t get that.

The last half of the book was extremely preachy: I think what Judy & her husband is doing is wonderful, helping other Mormons to escape, but the whole second half of the book is devoted to that work. If that was the whole point of the book (which after reading the book, it seems that way to me), then the book should have been called How I Help Mormons to escape, instead of Out of Mormonism, because little was devoted to her escaping.

On TOP of all that, the book was so badly written & edited, I kept cringing inside, & I’m by far not the best writer. So if I’m cringing, imagine how bad the writing was.



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