Looking for a Miracle: Brides of Lancaster County Book 2 by Wanda E. Brunstetter

Looking for a Miracle is a novel about an Amish woman in Lancaster County, PA named Rebekah Stoltzfus. Rebekah was paralyzed in a freak accident when she was a child, and as a result she is wheelchair bound. Looking for a Miracle takes Rekekah's point of view, her suitor's point of view (Daniel) and her sister, Nadine's, point of view. Rebekah must deal with her disability with relation to growing into a self-sufficient woman and how that relates to love and marriage.

I listened to the audio book version. I give this book three stars. *** I enjoyed the story and would listen to it again if given the chance, but I found myself a little frustrated by it at the same time. Looking for a Miracle is what I would call a "sweet romance." I expected it to be pretty chaste, which it was. What frustrated me about the novel were some of the same things that I also liked about it.

The biggest thing that irritated me was that the characters were a little too realistic. Nadine was constantly whining about how Rebekah got to do things she wasn't allowed to do. Rebekah was constantly focusing on the limitations her disability posed. Though very realistic teenage behavior and behavior for someone learning to cope with a disability, I felt like I wanted to give both characters a good talking to, slap them in the face, and just tell them to deal with it. Nadine's character in particular was very realistic in her self centeredness, but it got old page after page. I wanted to suspend my disbelief a little more. Brunstetter's constant use of showing the readers these two character's thoughts annoyed me. It's bad enough to hear a teenager constantly whine in real life about her siblings, but to hear their thoughts was a little much for me.

But it was realistic...

One thing that kept me engaged in the plot was that Brunstetter did an excellent job of dropping just enough Pennsylvania Dutch into all the character's speech to remind me that in real life these characters would be using very little English amongst themselves. Brunstetter uses a lot of Pennsylvania Dutch to English cognates, which greatly added to their characterization. I found myself looking for some print books about the Amish just to see how some of these words were spelled.

Another thing I liked about Looking for a Miracle is that Brunstetter's characters aren't romanticized to the point of being flat. It's easy to pigeonhole the Amish into an idea of what they should be like, but Brunstetter's writing shows the common humanity these characters have. The Amish get angry, irritated, lazy, sad, etc. just like others. I think Looking for a Miracle's best feature as a novel was Brunstetter's ability humanize the characters into people I'd like to know if I could meet them even though this was a work of fiction.

One thing that I would have liked to have addressed a little more in the book was what Amish group was fictionalized. Was this Old Order Amish? Beechy Amish? Etc.? As I choose book 2 to listen to and review, perhaps the answer is in Book 1 and I need to read book 1. I have a knack for picking books up the middle of a series. Other than the specific Amish group, choosing book 2 was very easy to understand the plot. This wasn't a novel in which not reading book 1 detracted from the story as I plucked this one from the middle of a series.

Brunstetter also does a good job describing the way of life the characters have established. I could picture all the gas powered items, the farm, the singings, etc.

I think the other thing keeping me from rating this book higher than 3 stars was the pacing. It was fitting that the pacing of the plot was slow; The Amish have a slow pace of doing things. I just wasn't used to taking 6 1/2 hours to listen to a storyline I could have summarized in three sentences. Perhaps I should read more sweet romance before being as harsh, but oh well. I did enjoy the novel, though.

Brunstetter surely didn't have any control over the last thing that made me rank the book lower, but I have to write about it. I listened to the audio book without seeing the cover. Library audio books are sometimes that way. When I finished Looking for a Miracle and looked the title up on Amazon to link to this page, I was disappointed because the book version has the characters' faces on the cover. The Amish don't like themselves portrayed with their faces showing. The publisher surely knows it. I know that Brunstetter knows it because her web page tactfully leaves the faces obscured with the images portrayed.

Chosen Prey by John Sandford

Chosen Prey by John Sandford is the 13th book in John Sandford's Prey series. John Sandford is the pen name of John Roswell Camp. He is originally from Cedar Rapids, Iowa. Oddly enough, I didn't know this when I chose to read/listen to Chosen Prey. I have to root for my fellow native Iowans.

In Chosen Prey, The police chief, Lucas Davenport, hunts a serial killer named James Qatar. I'm not including any spoilers in this review, so I'm not going to get into a lot of detail about killings other than to say Sandford establishes very early in the book that Qatar is the killer. It's up to Davenport and his team of investigators to find him before he kills again.

Overall I enjoyed Chosen Prey very much. It was a page turner, and although I knew who the killer was, I was on the edge of my seat while reading/listening to the audio book version of the novel. Sandford does a good job of creating realistic characters and building tension from scene to scene and chapter to chapter. I even found myself identifying with Qatar at times. It's a rare quality to identify with a serial killer when I read. I think that's why I was so drawn in. I almost didn't want him to be caught.

I give this book three and a half stars. *** 1/2. There were more aspects I liked than didn't like, but a few things about Chosen Prey really bothered me too. One of those things wasn't within Sandford's control. The audio book version I used had an author interview at the end lasting nearly 40 minutes. When Chosen Prey ended, I was expecting another 40 minutes of story. Had I read the book version this wouldn't have been a problem. As it was, however, I felt cheated that the novel ended when it did. I kept waiting for one more plot twist, and suddenly the whole thing was over.

Marshall, Davenport, Lucas, and Qatar were finely crafted characters. Dell, Marcey, and Weather were harder for me to get to know. Their personalities and actions were important to the plot, but I didn't feel like I related with any of them. I think part of this was because Weather's last name was used. I wasn't sure if Dell was the investigator's first or last name. Marcey felt like a secretary to me rather than a cop. Her role worked with the plot, but I felt like a whole can of worms was opened that wasn't able to be resolved. I wanted to know if she went back to more in depth police work.

Perhaps part of my problem was choosing the 13th book in the series rather than book number one. Overall I was still able to enjoy the novel on its own merits without having to have read the preceding 12 novels, but my favorite kind of series as a reader is one in which I can pluck a book out of the middle and not have a lot of loose strings.

My other issue was that Qatar's bag of bloody clothes isn't really tidied up. Lucas Davenport spends a lot of time looking for it, and the bag with the clothes isn't really a closed issue at the end of Chosen Prey.

I did manage to listen to 13 hours of audio in 3 days, so I was pretty sucked into the plot. I would have given this one 4 stars if the bloody clothes would have been better addressed. Maybe I just need to read book 14?

Absence of Nectar by Kathy Hepinstall

Absence of Nectar by Kathy Hepinstall was a delightful book. Hepinstall weaved several stories into Absence of Nectar, all of which could have stood on their own and been interesting without the other subplots. Alice, the narrator, tells the story in a way that is both easy to understand but is also believable. Telling the story through the eyes of an eleven year old I think added to the genius of the book because Alice's perception of the events was a lot different than it would have been had her brother, Boone, been the narrator. It wasn't until the end of the book that I really started to think of the events more as Boone's story than Alice's. I think the case could be made that either of the two children could have been the main character.

I listened to Absence of Nectar on audio book, and I was glad that I did. Hepinstall's language throughout the book felt poetic in its rhythm. I definitely wouldn't classify it as a prose poem, but the rhythm of the words on the page helped me to stay interested in the plot. I listen to a lot of audio books, and very few achieve this quality.

I found myself liking all the characters in Absence of Nectar except for Simon Jester. I don't want to spoil the plot, but I will say that Hepinstall's writing makes it easy to hate some of the characters I ultimately ended up liking. There was enough room for redemption to keep them from becoming flat on the page.

Although I enjoyed Absence of Nectar, I'm not sure how I categorize it. I've seen it listed as a thriller when looking up information online. I don't agree that it's a thriller per se, but I'm not sure it's genre fiction at all. There's a little bit of everything in the book. Death, life, romance, tragedy, etc. I think contemporary fiction is probably the best label for it. There's a universal quality to the plot that makes me think readers of many different types of fiction would enjoy reading Hepinstall's work.

I give Absence of Nectar four stars. **** Without a doubt, I recommend the book.

There were a few things that bothered me about the plot that keep me from giving it five stars. First and foremost, I found myself wondering why Boone was so religious/spiritual. Alice gives details over and over again on her take on her pagan gods and her own sacrifices to them to keep her family safe from Simon Jester, but ultimately Boone is more spiritual than she is. He's always talking about God and so forth, but there's never really an explanation for why. Did he have a conversion experience? There isn't anything particularly useful by way of exposition that would suggest Alice and Boone's parents were spiritual or even took the kids to church or made them read the Bible. Yet, Boone borders at times on being a religious fanatic during certain parts of the novel. I don't know many people who were that way as kids without either the parents being pretty zealous or the kid having some huge experience causing him to talk about God all the time.

At one point, Alice and Boone are in a Catholic church and Alice describes the church in enough detail to make me think that either Hepinstall intended the kids to be Catholic or she stepped out of Alice's perspective for a few pages to add detail regarding their setting. Other parts of the story would suggest the kids weren't Catholic, though. The biggest two things were that both Alice and Boone's mother and father divorced and remarried.

Given the vast detail and length (it took over 10 hours on audio book to listen to the unabridged version) these are somewhat minor things I'm criticizing. Even with those questions lingering, I finished Absence of Nectar in 3 days.

Touched by Venom: Book One of the Dragon Temple Saga by Janine Cross

Before I get into the meat and bones of Touched by Venom, I want to preface the review by saying I'm a new reader to the fantasy genre, with this book being the first full length, non-erotica fantasy novel I've ever read. For those who are loyal fantasy readers, you may want to skim past a few of my comments because I'm a newbie, and my background in picturing new worlds is somewhat blossoming as a reader. Ok, on the review...

Touched by Venom was an excellent read. I highly recommend it to both new readers of fantasy and those who devour fantasy books like chocolate. Cross weaves the details of the world she creates into the story with skill, and she keeps Zarq, the protagonist, involved in a lot of action throughout. I was compelled to keep reading, even when I didn't understand what was actually happening, because Cross left me with the trust that eventually I'd understand and the pieces would fit together. She delivers on the promise. Her imagery is vivid and her characters complex.

At first I was jarred by all the new vocabulary and trying to keep the meaning of everything straight, but after a chapter or two I was able to cope with it. Her world is consistent and the magic understandable. I wouldn't consider this a work of erotica, but I was impressed by how well Cross pulls off some of the more adult scenes in the work. She doesn't carry them too far, which would have been easy to do given the scope of scenes, especially those involving the dragons and sexuality.

The only part that I would change if this was my novel (which it's obviously not) is that Waivia and the mother character's relationship seemed like back story during almost the entire novel. I would have liked to have seen a little more of their relationship prior to when Waivia is taken away. It would have made some of the later scenes more realistic to me.

I know the author has nothing to do with the pricing of the work, but I was pleasantly pleased with the $6.99 price in US dollars. The cover is intriguing, which is what initially led me to make the purchase. I had never heard of Cross prior to my trip to Barnes and Noble, but I was determined to leave the story with a work of fantasy. It's one of the cheaper reads I've had in awhile of books I've purchased first hand in soft cover. Given the amount of bang for the buck, I give this one five stars. ***** After I finish my stack of books to read, I'll definitely be purchasing the next book in the series, Shadowed by Wings. When I turned the page to the last page of Touched by Venom, I wanted more story. Cross does a good job of making this book a page turner, right up to the end.

Firmin by Sam Savage

What initially drew me to purchase Firmin was the unique shape of the book. I have trouble browsing physical books in a bookstore without buying anything. When my fingers found the large bite mark that was taken out of the side of the trade paperback, I knew I had to buy it. Any company that would publish a book about a rat and then take a bite out of the book as if a rat had been chewing on it, had a good marketing team. Coffee House Press knew what it was doing.

Savage's character, Firmin, is both funny and likable. He has a witty/dry sense of humor as he relates his tale of living in Pembroke Books and eating the pages of the many books. This is how Firmin learns to read. I identified with Firmin from the get go, especially when he told of how he was the odd rat out when it came to nursing as a baby rat. His mother birthed one more rat than she had nipples, which led to Firmin's runt status in the litter.

I won't give away more of the plot, but I will say that although there are illustrations in the book and the bite out of the side were cute, I wouldn't recommend assuming that Firmin is a children's book. There are a lot of very adult topics covered, not the least of which that Firmin finds a good deal of food from the floor of a movie theater that shows porn flicks after the regular crowd of movie goers has left for the day. With that said, Firmin is not an erotica work by any means, but I wouldn't just hand the book to a ten year old.

I give Firmin 3 and a half stars.

What holds me back from giving it a higher rating was the price. The list price I paid was $12.00 for a 165 page book. The other thing holding me back from giving it a higher rating is that Firmin's character is hard to really get into at first. He uses a lot of academic words (because he read/ate all the books in Pembroke Bookstore). Compared to later chapters, the beginning is a little hard to follow if the reader hasn't read all of the books referenced. For a story about a rat, the language could have been toned down a little in the beginning when the reader needs to be hooked.

For images of Firmin, check out:

http://www.amazon.com/Firmin-Sam-Savage/dp/0385342659/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1239499798&sr=1-1

http://www.amazon.com/Firmin-Adventures-Metropolitan-Sam-Savage/dp/1566891817/ref=sr_oe_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1239499798&sr=1-1

I was unable to find a website or blog for Sam Savage to include in my sidebar. If you happen to know of one, please either email me at jenredkissed[at]gmail[dot]com or add a comment to this posting.

~Jen

A Rage To Kill: And Other True Cases by Ann Rule

A Rage To Kill is volume six in Ann Rule's Crime Files series. I haven't read any of the other books in the series and the lack of reading them didn't affect my understanding of this book. It's one of the joys of picking up a random non-fiction book to read and then review. A Rage to Kill is the first of Ann Rule's books I've ever read.

Before I discuss the content between the covers of this work, I want to comment on a few stylistic things I liked about Ann Rule's writing. First and foremost, her writing is concise, clear, and achieves the feat of seeming both plain spoken and yet sophisticated. She writes each true crime story in a way that left me feeling for the victim and the victim's family while yet sparking my curiosity about each of the killers.

Another nice thing about A Rage To Kill Was that I began reading it while I still lived in Iowa. I finished reading about one of the cases and then began the task of packing up all of my belongings for an interstate move to Tennessee. Four months went by before I found my mass market paperback to resume reading. I was able to pick up on a new case without any problems rather than having to reread in order to understand what I was consuming.

I have a fascination with murder cases and mystery fiction, so my interest in Ann Rule's book was high from the beginning. Another refreshing aspect of A Rage To Kill was that most of the individual killers were caught through good, old fashioned police work or mistakes made by the killers. There was a lack of the CSI effect to which modern police and attorneys refer. The public has grown to except a dramatic piece of DNA evidence that will solve a case in a matter of a few minutes or days. In reality, most cases don't have DNA evidence back and processed for several months and many times the DNA evidence simply isn't present or usable in real cases.

Rule included ten different murderers, ranging from a man who killed a bus full of people to people who killed their victims one person at a time. The story that most grabbed my attention and actually kept me awake for a few nights while I processed the information I had read earlier in the day was the spree killer, Christopher Wilder. I had never heard of spree killers before and was haunted by Wilder's actions. He not only murdered and tortured his victims, but he seemingly felt no remorse and preyed upon beautiful women in shopping malls and other public places. My false sense of security in public places was stripped from me as I read through his deeds. I live less than a two minute drive from a large shopping mall, and I couldn't help but imagine something similar occurring practically under my nose. Some of the things he did to the women he tortured will never be erased from my memory from reading Rule's book. Wilder's deeds were utterly disturbing.

I recommend this book and give it four stars, ****. The only thing holding me back from giving it a fifth star is that some of the cases were a bit outdated. The copyright is 1999 and many of the cases are a few decades old. I personally was still intrigued, but without a cold case type of story, cases that are from the 60s, 70s, and 80s, could be a turn off to some readers.

The Book of Useless Information by Noel Botham & The Useless Information Society

I'll start by saying I couldn't find a web page for Noel Botham. If you would like to see the cover for this book, go to http://search.barnesandnoble.com/The-Book-of-Useless-Information/Noel-Botham/e/9780399532696/?itm=2. I also was unable to find an official website for The Useless Information Society. Everything within both google searches brought up the books by the aforementioned society and Noel Botham.

The Book of Useless Information is first book in a series that has been published by Noel Botham & The Useless Information Society. This one was another airport purchase for me. I would recommend it for a flight or long layover as every page of this 286 page book contains random facts. Most of the information presented are the types of bits of info that are probably useless enough to never end up in a trivia game, but most of the tidbits are funny or raised my eyebrow when I read them.

What drew me to first browse through this title before buying it was the picture of the squirrel on the front cover. All of the titles in the series, at least that I've seen, have a squirrel on the front. The entire time I spent flipping through its pages, I kept wondering if there were going to be citations anywhere. There weren't footnotes or references at the end. Skeptic that I am, my first impulse was to know the source of all the facts. If there had been citations, I would have given this book five stars for its entertainment value. There was a page before the main body of the text that lists the members of the Useless Information Society, but try as I might, I didn't even see a website reference that I could inquire more about the references used.

Because I have no easy way to validate the information presented, I give the book two stars. Do I regret the purchase? No. Even if some of the information may be inaccurate (I have no clue), the hours spent in the airport flew by as I read. I normally have a difficult time concentrating while I read in airports with the intermittent announcements, foot traffic, and conversation from my husband.

Flesh and Bone: A Body Farm Novel by Jefferson Bass

Flesh and Bone: A Body Farm Novel by Jefferson Bass was a book I stumbled upon while attending Killer Nashville 2008. Dr. Bill Bass was the keynote speaker and also half of the Jefferson Bass writing team. I was mesmerized by Dr. Bass, a renowned forensic anthropologist. He was a delightful speaker who is one of, if not the expert in the field of forensic anthropology. Not only was he informative, but he had a wonderful sense of humor. I imagine that anyone who can work with bodies all day would have to have a sense of humor just to be able to sleep at night.

It was Dr. Bass' two presentations that convinced me to purchase the three paperback Body Farm novels available while attending the conference. There was a fourth out in paperback, but I'm not in the habit of buying hardback books if I've already bought other books in the same purchase. Though I didn't stay to ask him to sign the three novels I bought, I was pleased when I opened them because he had signed the copies that Barnes and Noble had for sale prior to his talk. A signed author copy always encourages me to read, read, read!

Although the majority of the talk was regarding real life cases in which Dr. Bass had worked, he explained that he provides the science behind the novels while the other half of the writing team, Jon Jefferson, writes the prose. Because the protagonist in the novel, Dr. Bill Brockton, is a forensic anthropologist, I felt that the amount of science and explanation that the character went through as he solved the murders in this book were justified. If I hadn't heard Dr. Bass speak before reading and purchasing Flesh and Bone, I may have felt it was a little overkill.

After seeing the pictures in Dr. Bass' presentation about various things that the human body does when it decays outdoors, I could more easily picture some of the things that Dr. Brockton experiences in the novel. What stuck with me the most was that the skin on a body's hand (and fingerprints) will shed away from the flesh after a period of time like a snake shedding its skin. I would have never in my wildest dreams have imagined a dead body to do that in the course of decomposition. There was a lot of science, but I wouldn't say that I felt grossed out by the descriptions either.

There were several plot points that took me by surprise while reading Flesh and Bone. I was able to guess a few things too. I would say that Flesh and Bone was a good read, even if it is only read a little bit at a time. I took around four months to read it, usually while on my half hour lunch breaks at work. There are some books that get confusing if stretched out that long. Flesh and Bone had a plot that was easy enough to remember if read in 20 minute chunks.

Overall I give this book four stars. The only thing that held me back from rating it as five stars was that I was able to guess some of the things that happened at the end. There was still enough of a surprise factor for me to rate it highly, however.

The Pillars Of The Earth by Ken Follett

The Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett has been one of the most refreshing books I have ever read. I was captivated by the plot from page one. Follett built this characters in such a way that I felt like I knew them, heroes and villains alike. This was a rare treat of a book to read. The copy I read was mass market paperback. 983 pages flew by faster than any other book I've consumed thus far because I had to find out what was going to happen next.

Because I don't give the books' plot away in the course of my reviews, I won't go into so much detail as to ruin the book, but I will mention a few things in case you're wanting to go out and buy a copy. Follett's characters travel extensively throughout Europe. The time period is the twelfth century England. If you're a history buff or love historical fiction, this is the book for you! My head hurts when I think about the amount of research that would have been necessary to write this novel.

Another reason I recommend The Pillars of the Earth is that it is a very simple, yet deep story. Both of my parents read it before I did. My mother mainly reads light romance and Oprah pick books. I've never seen my father read fiction. EVER. He also loved Pillars of the Earth. I'm a bookworm and enjoy many types of books, but when I realized both my mother and father had read Pillars of the Earth from the library, I was shocked. My mom read it in under three weeks, then my father read it when she renewed it.

Naturally, I wanted a copy for myself. Books that are nearly 1000 pages don't agree with me if I'm forced to read them in a short amount of time. It made an excellent Christmas gift. Even so, I finished it in approximately three weeks as well, even though I owned a copy of my own. My mother-in-law is also reading Pillars of the Earth and has discussed early chapters with me already.

Overall, this book is a must read! *****