Book Review

Stray by Joni Johnson

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FTC: I received a free copy of this book from the author in exchange for my honest review. I received no other compensation and the opinions expressed in this review are one hundred percent true and my own.

Stray by Joni Johnson was a good book, but I did notice several things in this book that bothered me. This biggest thing that bugged me was that she spelled Vance’s last name two different ways and she does that throughout the entire book. On one page it will be spelled as Larson, and on the next page, it will be spelled, Larsen.   I also did find a few places where a word was misspelled as well. Even saying all of that I really did like this book and I was sad when I was finished with the book because I fell in love with Lila and Vance. This book is in a genre that I don’t usually read because I usually can’t get interested in them but this book was different. I really enjoyed this author writing and her characters. If you love YA books or are looking for something fun to read this summer, I would for sure recommend this book to you. This book would also be perfect for teenagers, and it is one that I think most teens would relate too.

About The Book

Lila Baxter, 17, is abandoned at a gas station in a small town when her father, who was taking her to live with her grandmother, had a lapse in sobriety. Lila is left alone, unsure of where she is, with no money, and no cell phone. Gas station cashier Vance Larson, 18, offers to help the unwanted girl. And how does Lila repay him? By unwittingly unhinging Vance’s whole life. Fixing the trouble, she’s caused is next to impossible. And will any of it matter when her father returns?

About The Author

I was born and raised in Las Vegas, Nevada to two wonderful parents along with ten other amazing people.  I attended three years of college in Utah before deciding to serve a mission for my church which took me to Florida.  After my return eighteen months later, I married my wonderful and intelligent husband.  And now ump-teen years later my husband and I have four bright and beautiful children, we have converted our public school lives to homeschool lives, and have uprooted from Vegas for my husband’s (mind-boggling, confusing, and I don’t understand computers a bit) work to Idaho.  And there you have it; my life in synopsis.  Sorry, I don’t know the ending yet, but that will come much, much later.

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Monthly Book Reviews – July 2017

I am so glad that June is over and we are finally halfway done with this year.  I had never understood when people said that they can’t wait for a year to end because it had been such a rough year.  I now know what they mean because I am so over this year and if I get sick one more time this year I am going to lose it.  Anyway, that is enough complaining let’s get into the reviews that I have coming up this month.

July 5th–Stray by Joni Johnson

July 8th–His Guilt by Shelley Shepard Gray

July 12th–My Daughters Legacy by Mindy Starns Clark & Leslie Gould

July 13th– Off The Grid by Randy Denmon

July 19th–The Devils Cold Dish by Eleanor Kuhns

July 20th–Healing Love by Jennifer Slattery

July 24th–A Letter From Lancaster County by Kate Lloyd

July 25th–Here and Gone by Haylen Beck

July 27th–Boardwalk Summer by Kimberly Fisk

Those are all of the book reviews that I have for July.  As always if I find a book that I want to read I may add it to this list.  I hope everyone has a great weekend and I will see you all back next week.

Digiprove sealCopyright secured by Digiprove © 2017 Margaret Margaret

Practicing Normal by Cara Sue Achterberg

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FTC: I received a free copy of this book from Providence Book Promotions in exchange for my honest review. I received no other compensation and the opinions expressed in this review are one hundred percent true and my own.

Practicing Normal by Cara Sue Achterberg was a great book at first, but after I was about halfway through the book, I was super annoyed with most of the characters in the book.  I say that because I have very little patience for people when they act like Kate does.  I also couldn’t stand her husband Everett because he is just a straight up jerk and I also don’t like people or characters like him either.  I felt awful for JT & Jenna because going up in a situation like they did isn’t a good thing.  As you can tell the author did a great job of making you think that the characters are real people and I was able to get so wrapped up in the story that even though I was annoyed I didn’t want to stop reading it because I had to know how it all worked out.  I would love to read more books by this author in the future, and I think pretty much everyone would enjoy this book.

About The Book

Book Details
Genre: Women’s Fiction
Published by: The Story Plant
Publication Date: June 6th, 2017
Number of Pages: 336
ISBN: 1611882443 (ISBN13: 9781611882445)

The houses in Pine Estates are beautiful McMansions filled with high-achieving parents, children on the fast track to top colleges, all of the comforts of modern living, and the best security systems money can buy. Welcome to normal upper-middle-class suburbia.

The Turners know in their hearts that they’re anything but normal. Jenna is a high-schooler dressed in black who is fascinated with breaking into her neighbors’ homes, security systems be damned. Everett genuinely believes he loves his wife . . . he just loves having a continuing stream of mistresses more. JT is a genius kid with Asperger’s who moves from one obsession to the next. And Kate tries to manage her family, manage her mother (who lives down the street), and avoid wondering why her life is passing her by.

And now everything is changing for them. Jenna suddenly finds herself in a boy-next-door romance she never could have predicted. Everett’s secrets are beginning to unravel on him. JT is getting his first taste of success at navigating the world. And Kate is facing truths about her husband, her mother, and her father that she might have preferred not to face.

Life on Pine Road has never been more challenging for the Turners. That’s what happens when you’re practicing normal.

Combining her trademark combination of wit, insight, and tremendous empathy for her characters, Cara Sue Achterberg has written a novel that is at once familiar and startlingly fresh.

About The Author

Cara Sue Achterberg is a writer and blogger who lives in New Freedom, PA with her family and an embarrassing number of animals. Her first novel, I’m Not Her, was a national bestseller, as was her second, Girls’ Weekend. Cara’s nonfiction book, Live Intentionally, is a guide to the organic life filled with ideas, recipes, and inspiration for liv- ing a more intentional life. Cara is a prolific blogger, occasional cowgirl, and busy mom whose essays and articles have been published in numerous anthologies, magazines, and websites. Links to her blogs, news about upcoming publications, and pictures of her foster dogs can be found at CaraWrites.com.

CaraWrites.com | Cara Sue Achterberg on Twitter | Cara Sue Achterberg on Facebook

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Digiprove sealCopyright secured by Digiprove © 2017 Margaret Margaret

Never Forget by Richard Davis

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FTC: I received a free copy of this book from the author in exchange for my honest review. I received no other compensation and the opinions expressed in this review are one hundred percent true and my own.

Never Forget by Richard Davis was a good book.  This is the second book in the series, but in my opinion, you don’t need to read the books to know what is happening.  I did understand the backstory of the main character which I always like but you don’t need the information while reading this book.  I was as drawn into this story as I was when I read False Prophet but I still did enjoy this book.  I also loved that I got to see Saul again because I love following along with characters because that makes them feel even more like real people.  Parts of this book remind me of the Jack Reacher books which I love, but I also am tired of the series because he should be dead by now.

Anyway, let’s get back to my thoughts on this book.  I really do enjoy this author writing, and I love that he includes some British slang in his books.  When that happened, it always made me smile because I am so used to hearing the words on YouTube and they always make me happy.  If you love mystery books, I would for sure recommend this book to you.

About The Book

Saul Marshall is on the run.

As a wave of seemingly random assassinations engulfs California, Marshall finds himself drawn into a situation spiraling out of control.

He soon discovers some of the webs’ most secure protocols have been compromised by a rogue team of former Chinese agents. When Marshall realizes what they plan, the stakes are raised…

And that’s before the Secretary of State gets involved. Can Marshall unravel the deceit and tricks before it’s too late? Can he stop the carnage, or will he become part of it? One thing is for certain: either way his enemies will never forget.

Perfect for fans of Lee Child, Michael Connelly or J.B. Turner, this is a compulsive and page-turning thriller that won’t let you go.

About The Author

Richard Davis was born in 1990 and grew up in north London. In 2011 he graduated from UCL and Cambridge University. His fascination with America stems from a series of childhood holidays there, which saw him tour both the east and west coasts. After returning to the States a number of times since, and, developing an intense interest in American-style thrillers, he made the decision to write one himself.

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Three On A Match: Eleven Stories by Gino B. Bardi

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FTC: I received a free copy of this book from the author in exchange for my honest review. I received no other compensation and the opinions expressed in this review are one hundred percent true and my own.

Three On A Match: Eleven Stories by Gino B. Bardi was an okay book.  I enjoyed that this book was filled with short stories because it makes reading them easy.  I was able to read one or two stories and then take a break or do other things without forgetting what was going on in the story.  There were quite a few of the stories that left me scratching my head and wondering what the entire story was about but it was never in a bad way.  For example the first story the little boy wants a bird and long story short he ends up buying the bird, but I didn’t get the point of the story.  It was well written, and I loved that they are short stories so I could get through them quickly and move on to another story.  If you love short stories than I would recommend this book to you and it would also be a fun read for the summertime.

About The Book

Three on a Match is a collection of tales ranging from funny to touching, from thought provoking to outrageous, and heart-warming to heart-wrenching. They share one common trait: each examine relationships from a unique, sometimes quirky, angle. Some are laugh-out-loud hilarious, some twist and turn and then end up just the way you thought they would. Others deliver an “I didn’t see THAT coming!” conclusion. Nothing is exempt from scrutiny. Some highlights:
In A Very Special Bird, a young child obtains a coveted pet parakeet in a daring ethically-challenged maneuver—then must face his mother, eye-to-eye.
In Twins, two unrelated strangers meet in an airport and discover they have identical birthdays. One is an unemployed newlywed, the other is a radiantly beautiful actress. They have nothing in common but time to kill before their flight. What starts out as an innocent hookup gets serious with the speed of a jetliner taking off.
In Blue Belle, we meet a hardworking rural man of limited means, who can’t resist a bargain on a used luxury car. Soon, it becomes more than just transportation…but cars don’t last forever…
The protagonist of No Good Deed finds a large, injured seabird on a Florida roadway, and makes choices that he immediately regrets, and can’t undo. He quickly plunges into a one-sided relationship he must ride out until the end, for good or bad.
Three on a Match tells the story of a middle-aged man, with a predictable marriage and a life-sapping everyday existence, who forms an unlikely alliance with two homeless men, who sleep in a tent, hunt, fish, drink beer and fire automatic weapons for kicks. An evening of beer and camaraderie produces some life-changing decisions.
This is a quick, easy read which will leave you smiling, thinking, and hungry for more. Gino Bardi is the author of three-time award-winning The Cow in the Doorway and he claims that all of this actually happened, but no one believes him.

About The Author

Gino B. Bardi was born in New York City in 1950 and lived on the South Shore of Long Island until he attended Cornell University in 1968, during the tumultuous era of Vietnam War protests. Armed with a degree in English/Creative Writing, he diligently sought work in his field and soon wound up doing everything but. For the next forty-four years, he cranked out advertising copy, magazine articles, loan pitches and short stories while running a commercial printing company in Upstate New York. Along the way, he married his college girlfriend, became a father to three lovely daughters and decided that winter was an unnecessary evil. In 2008 he sold the printing business, retired, and now writes humorous fiction in his home on the Gulf Coast of Florida. Two signs hang above his desk: “Bad decisions make good stories,” and Mel Brooks’ advice that “You only need to exaggerate a LITTLE BIT.”

The Cow in the Doorway is his first full-length novel and won the statewide Royal Palm Literary Award for best unpublished New Adult novel for 2015.

Three on a Match is part one of a short story anthology. All the stories have some basis in fact…but only ‘some,’ and range from laugh-out-loud funny to moving and thought provoking. Eleven stories in part one explore relationships- with people, people, and animals, appliances, nothing is safe.

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Operation Scorpion by John Beyer

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FTC: I received a free copy of this book from the author in exchange for my honest review. I received no other compensation and the opinions expressed in this review are one hundred percent true and my own.

Operation Scorpion by John Beyer was an okay book.  It wasn’t one of my favorites that I have read lately, but it still was a book I think most people would enjoy it.  I say this because since this book is in my favorite genre to read and I am pretty picky when I read books like this one.  I did enjoy this author writing and his characters.  I was able to look at the characters like they are real people which I always enjoy because it gets me emotionally invested in the characters and what happens to them.  I wouldn’t mind reading more books by this author, and I would also love to read more books that involve these characters as well.  I was also able to read this book in a few days as well.  If you love mystery books, I would for sure recommend this author to you.

About The Book

PI Frank Sanders is “blown away” by the woman who strolls into his office one morning. Not only is she drop-dead-gorgeous, she’s also rich and willing to pay whatever it takes for him to find her missing father, world-famous geologist Dr. Stephen Jaspers who went rock hunting in the desert and hasn’t been heard from since. A retired Riverside California Police Department detective, Frank is used to searching for people. He takes the case, assuming it’s a simple missing person. But what he uncovers is more than he bargained for, leading him to suspect that he’s about to be blown away—literally, this time—along with everyone else in Southern California.

About The Author

John R. Beyer spent years in law enforcement in Southern California as a street cop, a training officer and a member of the elite SWAT team. After leaving the force, he continued in public service entering the field of education. During his tenure, he served as classroom teacher, school administrator and district administrator. While in both worlds he earned a Doctorate in School Administration and a Doctorate in Clinical Psychology.

During all those years, he never gave up the passion for writing – both fiction and nonfiction. He has been published in numerous magazines, newspapers and the like for decades on a variety of topics.
He is the author of three highly praised internationally known novels – Hunted (2013), Soft Target (2014) and Operation Scorpion (2017). All deal with law enforcement (both local and federal level) intrigues – murder, mayhem, terrorism, and humor can be found in all three novels.

His latest short stories for the past year can be found in Foliate Oak Literary Magazine (2016) and GNU Journal (2017).

He has had countless interviews on radio and blog spots – Marilyn’s Musings, CJEvolution, Twisted Webb Radio, Webbweaver Books, Book Readers Heaven, and WOCA – The Source, to name but a few.
John is on the constant move of stretching fiction to the limits in his writing and to strive to tell the tales which need to be told.

For further information concerning Black Opal Books please visit: http://www.blackopalbooks.com

You can also follow my non-fiction pieces by visiting: http://www.jandlresearchandexploration.blogspot.com

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Digiprove sealCopyright secured by Digiprove © 2017 Margaret Margaret