This little book was a fun read. It's author TC Christensen is a filmmaker and he made a movie called 17 Miracles, it's about the Willie and Martin handcart companies. The movie was amazing. I loved the characters and the way the tragic story was portrayed. I was really excited to see this book which pretty much answers questions that people have written to TC Christensen and asked him about the movie and the handcart companies in general. I loved the way it was written with TC Christensen answering questions and then Jolene Allphin, historical consultant person, also answering the same question. This book is a great book to read to find out more about both 17 Miracles and the two handcart companies.
Danny North is a young boy growing up in a family of mages. He knows that as he grows up his own abilities will start to appear, but as he ages and his cousins start to be able to show off their abilities and nothing seems to work for him, he knows that he is a drowther, non-magical, even though both of his parents are very strong mages. So Danny starts to run, he runs to get away from his family, his status and his home, but he tries very hard not to run the same way twice, because if the adults of the North family find out he's leaving the family farm, he will be in big trouble. Soon Danny realizes that his running is really creating gates that only he can go through, so he's not really a drowther, he's a gate mage. Not that that's really any better. The last gate mage was a trickster and sealed up all of the gates in the whole world, so the magical families have all sworn to kill any gate mages that are born into their family lines. Danny tries to keep his being a gate mage a secret, and it works for awhile, but unfortunately he's found out. Surprisingly he learns that his family has known the whole time that he was a gate mage and they had been protecting him so that he can eventually make gates for them. But Danny must now go it on his own and he must also learn about his gates. I didn't love this book. I read it because it was a Whitney nominee, but the story was way to fantastical for my taste. I didn't love the language or the sexual references in this on either.
You can check out my review of Uneasy Fortunes here.
Olivia is a waitress in Seattle. She lives in an apartment on her own. Her mother is dead and her father left when she was young. One rainy day, she goes to work just like she always does and just like always, it seemed as though she was invisible. Even the guys sitting in her section didn't want her to wait on them, but instead asked for the other waitress on duty right then. And then, to top things off they and the other waitress were making fun of her. That was pretty much the last straw for Olivia. She heads home in the middle of her shift and collapses in her bed. When she wakes up from yet another nightmare about her mother's death, she realizes that she has a headache, she heads for the medicine cabinet and that's when she realizes that she has a full bottle of Valium in there. Seemingly without her own approval her hand picks up the whole pile of them and shoves them into her mouth. As she lies in her bed, just waiting to die, focusing on the crack in her ceiling, Olivia dreams that she hears a voice calling her name. But things are fuzzy and white. The next thing she knows it's several days later and Olivia wakes up in a hospital, tethered to more machines than she can count. She learns that a neighbor, Jude, had seen her putting the Valium in her mouth from his window in the apartments next to hers, he rushed to her apartment and got her to the hospital just in time. But something doesn't make sense to Olivia, she locked her apartment door as a rule when she comes in, did she this time, or didn't she? Then there's the mysterious Jude, Olivia must find a way to understand his secrets before they drive her crazy! This was an interesting book to me. I liked Olivia, I liked Jude, but I wasn't sure that all of the story worked for me. I liked that the story was clean. Especially at the beginning the story seems dark, but I love the way that Olivia was able to overcome her depression and move on from her mom's death, even learning to forgive both her mom and herself.
Jeremiah and his cousin Baruch are teenagers in Jerusalem, they both know that Jerusalem is getting more and more wicked. As they work translating and copying scriptures in the Temple Archives this becomes more and more apparent to both of them. And when Baruch's goat is missing and they find it with a group of Temple guards that try to kill both boys it becomes apparent to Jeremiah's parents that they must get out of the wicked Jerusalem or something very bad will happen. Even with moving their family to Anathoth, that doesn't mean that young Jeremiah will be protected from the evil running rampant in Jerusalem. Jeremiah goes back to visit with Baruch for a festival and they see something they shouldn't, the murder of a young girl for sport, and the murderers have seen them as well. Baruch must be hidden from them, because their after him as well. But hiding won't work as well for Jeremiah, because he knows that the Lord has a work for him to do, even at a young age. But will Jeremiah be able to soften the hearts of the wicked people of Jerusalem? I liked the thought of this book, I did enjoy the ending and how Jeremiah was able to escape, I'd never really wondered what had ended up happening to him before. This book made me do that, but the rest of the story really felt...I'm not quite sure. Not really connected, or something. Not really sure how to describe it. I didn't really feel a connection to the characters either, so I wasn't really sad when any of them died, and it sure seemed as though a lot of people died in this one. I did like the connection shown between Lehi and Jeremiah, I thought that worked well.
Thanks go to all of you wonderful followers of my blog! You are all amazing. The winners of Jason F Wright's The Wedding Letters are...
Tobi
Rhonda
and
Stephanie.
The winners have been notified!
Maggie May is a senior in high school, she's been in the foster care system since her aunt and cousin were killed when she was 5 years old. She's getting pretty sick of bouncing between houses. She can't seem to stay in one place very long, she's had abusive foster parents as well as good ones, but the issue is that she keeps getting picked up by the police for indecent exposure. Maggie's uncertain why, but for some reason ever since she was 16 years old on nights with full moons she turns into a cat, which ends up tearing her clothes. Then she runs around as a cat and when she turns back into a girl, she has no clothes, thus the indecent exposure charges. Her case worker has just one more home for her to try in the very small town of Silver City, New Mexico with an older lady named Mrs. Carpenter. Maggie knows that Mrs. Carpenter will be different from the start, but she's still unsure whether or not to tell her her deep dark secret. Can Mrs. Carpenter be trusted to know about Maggie's shifting, or will it just bring her and Maggie untold danger? This was a fun book, I enjoyed the Skinwalker legend that was in the book, I enjoyed the characters. I found myself feeling bad about the things that had happened and were happening to Maggie, especially the brutality of going to high school. I hope that there are other books to be written about Maggie, so that I can discover what happens to her after the end of this book!
