Category: Book Review

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Featured New Release Of The Week: Buckman by Erin Lockwood

This week, on my beloved University of Georgia Bulldogs’ off week, we’re looking at a book about college football told from the perspective of a female lead who is not a football fan. This week, we’re looking at Buckman by Erin Lockwood.

This was a visceral look at one woman’s rejection of all things relating to fame… even as she falls in love with one of the most famous athletes in college football. April Moxley is the daughter of the drummer of legendary rock stars Libra, and after spending her teens touring with her dad after her mother’s untimely death, she now structures her life to stay as far away from anything remotely relating to fame as possible.

Until she stumbles into star quarterback Tallan Buckman on the field after the last home game of the season… literally. Now, Tallan is doing everything he can to woo this woman who keeps rejecting him at every turn… and April is conflicted.

This was a truly remarkable book about football from an author who clearly loves the sport, told from the perspective of someone who clearly wants nothing to do with it. It ranks up there with books such as Bleachers by John Grisham or movies such as Friday Night Lights, Remember the Titans, or Varsity Blues. Yes, it is truly that good.

So go pick this one up today, while most of the SEC is on an off week.

As always, the Goodreads/ Amazon review:
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Featured New Release of the Week: Marked By Love by Tim Stevens

This week, we return to nonfiction and in particular Christian nonfiction. This week, we’re looking at Marked By Love by Tim Stevens.

This was a 200+ page narrative built around the idea that Christians are supposed to be “marked by love” and exploring what this might look like if it were more readily apparent in the life of the modern American Christian. Stevens pulls no punches, and at times it seems that he is trying to step on as many toes as possible in an effort to show that no matter how loving you may think you are, there are always areas to work to improve on in this regard.

And by and large, Stevens does an amazing job of showing his primary point in many different ways. He actually uses some of the same examples that Jonathan Merritt did in his book Learning to Speak God from Scratch two months ago, including the Good Samaritan and the adulterous woman of John 8. And in one of those points that might (and probably should) hit close to home for many, he says “What is going to be a stronger statement to a waitress – taking her away from her work to ask her about her soul and her relationship with Jesus, or treating her with grace and dignity, learning a bit about her story, and leaving a large tip? How many people just want something from her all day every day, including you with your Christian-ese questions, rather than trying to add value to her day and life?”

Overall this is an amazing book that everyone – not just Christians – should read and learn from. But it does have a few problems. It does indeed get a little too preachy at times as it relates to “being saved”, and it is a little too WASPy at times, effectively noting that members of the LGBT community are the “other”… even while decrying others being non-loving in noting the same. And it is for these two reasons alone that it went from a 5 star book to a 4 star book for me. Everything other than these two points was phenomenal, truly. And I very much agree that Stevens’ message is desperately needed for the American discourse in its current form. Just be prepared to roll your eyes a little and continue reading through these particular parts.

Very highly recommended!

As always, the Goodreads/ Amazon review:
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Featured New Release of the Week: Gold by Steven Savile

This week, we feature a book that produced a longer wait between books than even George R. R. Martin is infamous for. This week, we feature a book that I have waited more than SIX YEARS for, and other fans have waited over SEVEN YEARS for. This week, we feature Gold by Steven Savile.

Roughly six years ago, I was introduced to a “Secret World” Facebook book club by an author friend of mine who it turns out I gave the first review of his first book. In this new world, I met several authors and fellow readers alike, and have developed strong friendships with some of them, which is how I met Savile. At the time, one of the main books he was talking about was called SILVER, a story of a diverse team of spies, assassins, and soldiers came together outside the bounds of MI-6, similar to the crew in Mission: Impossible – but even more deadly and with even higher stakes.

SILVER, to this day, remains one of the best thrillers I have ever read and completely changed how I greet news of a new Papal election. It is HIGHLY recommended reading – but not the actual subject of this post.

But after reading SILVER, I wanted Savile to release GOLD post haste. I wanted to see how this story ended, dangit! And I would ask him about it quite frequently at first, petering out over the years until it got to the point where I never mentioned it.

Two weeks ago, Savile made a surprise announcement: GOLD was coming in just two weeks! SEVEN YEARS after the publication of SILVER, the Ogmios team was finally going to conclude their adventure. I was quite shocked to be offered an ARC, but hey, I never turn down those kind of opportunities – particularly not when it is THIS ARC, one of the ones I had hoped to be able to read for so long and was FINALLY getting a chance to.

And y’all, this book has lived up to the anticipation. As good as SILVER was – and it was truly phenomenal – this one may be even better. It has one particular scene in two parts that is the most horrifyingly beautiful scene I have ever read, bar none. It picks up with the fallout from SILVER, and the threats made in SILVER plague our heroes throughout this book as they fight to end this threat once and for all and save as many lives as possible – even as the odds are stacked ever more against them.

I don’t say this often, but this is truly one of those “drop whatever you’re reading and read this book” level books – it is *that* good.

As always, the Goodreads/ Amazon and YouTube reviews after the jump.
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Featured New Release Of The Week: Buyer’s Remorse by DJ Jamison

This week, we’re checking in on the real estate market in Fields, Kansas, specifically as it relates to commercial real estate suitable for a new deli. This week, we feature Buyer’s Remorse by DJ Jamison.

This book is the second in Jamison’s “Real Estate Relations” series and features leads who were secondary characters in the first book, Full Disclosure. In Full Disclosure, we meet Lee when he has to flee into an even more secretive form of witness protection after he is nearly killed thanks to a mole inside the US Marshall’s Service. He flees to Fields, Kansas with his guard, Reid, and they go undercover as boyfriends. Complicating this is that Reid begins to develop feelings for his new real estate agent, Camden… who happens to be best friends with fellow real estate agent Miguel.

In the beginning of Buyer’s Remorse, three years have passed since the events of Full Disclosure, and Lee is coming back to Fields of his own volition in an attempt to finally leave his past fully in his past. He brings his mom and sister along with him, and together the three of them intend to start a new deli. Complicating matters are Lee’s feelings for Miguel… and the fact that they find a dead body in the first building Miguel shows Lee.

This is an excellent second chance romance, one that really does a good job of exploring just how far a person will go to get forgiveness and move on from their mistakes. The mystery is better built, with even more perilous stakes for the couple than the first book – it seems that Miguel and Lee are constantly in danger of arrest, while Reid and Camden never really felt like they were in danger until the moment they were. The romance also struck me as more realistic in this book.

One thing I will note, in case it isn’t obvious: Yes, Lee and Miguel (and Reid and Camden) are both men, and yes, this is a romance book that largely adheres to the trappings of its genre. Meaning that yes, there is M/M sex in this book. If that is something that you can’t handle for whatever reason, just skip this book.

That said, this book is a very solid romance, and Jamison really set the stage to go in at least a couple of different directions with the next book in the series – one of which would be very intriguing indeed. Do yourself a favor and pick it up.

As always, the Amazon/ Goodreads and Youtube reviews are after the jump.
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Featured New Release Of The Week: Infinite Blue by Darren and Simon Groth

This week, we find ourselves reading a great new adult romance with a tinge of science fiction. This week, we feature Infinite Blue by Darren and Simon Groth.

This book starts with an imperiled teenager – he is caught in a riptide, can’t get out, and is getting too tired to continue. A world class swimmer happens to be nearby and saves him… and they begin dating.

We next cut to a scene some months later, when the couple has been together for a few months already. And here, so early in this book, we get our first whispers of some science fiction elements – even while the story ostensibly remains about the couple and their work. (His art, her swimming). Soon enough in this less than 200 page book, our swimmer encounters a life changing tragedy and must find her way out of it – including whether or not she can remain with her boyfriend.

This is a great, quick read that shows the depth of love no matter the age of the adults involved and as such is quite a heavy read, even though quick. And that ending… left me breathless. Absolutely pick this book up, I for one am very much looking forward to future projects from the Groth Brothers.

And as always, the Goodreads/ Amazon and Youtube reviews below the jump.
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Featured Release of the Week: Sleepyhead by Henry Nicholls

This week, we turn to a science book that proved to be utterly fascinating. This week, we turn to Sleepyhead by British science journalist Henry Nicholls.

As we find out at the very beginning of this book, Nicholls has a very personal reason for looking into the science of sleep and sleep disorders – he himself is narcoleptic. And his own narcolepsy becomes the narrative that ties the entire book together.

In this extremely well researched book – the last 24% of the book is nothing but bibliography and index -, we get a personal and scientific look at narcolepsy, its origins, discovery, scientific basis, and personal effects. We also get an examination of several other sleep disorders, including sleep apnea, phase disorder, and the feeling of being awake yet unable to move. We learn what scientists consider to be the causes of each, their effects, and how to attempt to manage them.

We also learn about the scientific reasoning for some of the general “better sleep” tips most of us have heard at some point – be careful with artificial lighting, caffeine, nicotine, and alcohol. Indeed, the second chapter is all about the effect light has on the circadian rhythm and the chemical processes that control it. That said, DO NOT go into this book expecting a quick tip or two about how to get better sleep – you’ll get that, but it will be as a part of the scientific explanation behind that piece of advice.

Overall, this is truly a fascinating, approachable look at the science of something many of us barely actually consider – how exactly sleep works, why it is necessary, and how to try to get the best sleep possible. Very highly recommended.

As always, the Goodreads/ Amazon review followed by the newer feature, the YouTube review!
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Featured New Release of the Week: The Waiting Room by Emily Bleeker

This week, we look at Emily Bleeker’s The Waiting Room. I’ve known Emily for a few years now, first getting curious about her when I saw her debut book WRECKAGE all over the place. Since then, we’ve become Facebook friends and brought each other into a few groups that we were each in.

In The Waiting Room, we encounter three characters – Veronica Shelton – our primary protagonist-, another woman, and a man. All three will come to intersect in this explosive examination of womens’ mental health and in particular the damage losing a child can wreak on the female psyche. Veronica is dealing with the death of her husband months earlier, just weeks after she gave birth to their daughter. And she has post partum depression so severe that she can’t even touch her daughter, so her mother has moved in to help take care of the baby. This part of the book is perhaps the darkest, most difficult section – but also a very real examination of this issue, at least as real as this man can imagine it would be. And it is this grounding that gives this tale its early gravitas, much like the titular wreck in Bleeker’s debut novel Wreckage just a couple of years ago.

But as we have come to expect with any Bleeker book – this being her fourth -, things are not always as they seem, and that begins becoming apparent about halfway into the book, when Veronica discovers that not only has someone been in her house taking pictures of her baby, but now her baby is missing – and her mother refuses to help her find her baby. This is about the point that the book summary stops, so I’ll reveal nothing further about the story other than to note that the story gains is true heft and power in the back half of the book. The front half, dealing with post partum depression, is deep in itself, but the front part of the book is more the edge of a continental shelf in the ocean, and the back half is the abyssal plain – far deeper and at times even more fascinating.

One particular line stood out in the book, and out of context it gives away nothing, so I’ll share it here because I like it so much: “Sometimes you run away from the flames, and other times you stay and help put out the fire.” In the end, that line effectively comes to summarize the entire book without really giving anything away about the back half.

Yet again, Bleeker has hit another home run, an absolute 5 star read no matter your scale. Very highly recommended, and I’m genuinely glad I was among the first to preorder.

And as always, the Goodreads/ Amazon:
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Featured New Release of the Week: Coldfall Wood by Steven Savile

This week, we look at the latest release from another long time friend, Coldfall Wood by Steven Savile.

This book is the sequel to Savile’s late 2017 release, Glass Town, and picks up just some time after the end of that book, immediately dealing with the repercussions of that book – which will reverberate throughout this one. That said, this book can be read first – as I did – as everything that is crucially important from Glass Town is explained again in this book.

The front half of Coldfall Wood is basically setup and transition from Glass Town into the meat of the story of Coldfall Wood. We get a lot of detail about the origins of several new characters, and finally around the halfway point these new characters start to actually work on their mission. And what a mission it is – to destroy modern London and return her to her more natural state. The book actually does an excellent job of showing that everyone is the hero in their own story, that there are few indeed truly bad people. It also has some fairly blatant pro-environmental themes, though those are deftly pit against the idea of “well, we need to change things… but we also can’t just kill the people that are currently here or increase their suffering”.

Fans of fantasy books or Anglophiles generally should truly love this book, as it tends to be an excellent fantasy tale solidly centered on London and British myths of the Horned God, the once and future king, the Wild Hunt, and the surrounding myths.

And now, the “but”. I personally struggled mightily with this book, and both Savile and I thought I might. I’m not a fan of fantasy. As in, almost at all. Particularly the sword and sorcery level that this book gets into. I’m fine with real world stories with fantasy themes where the fantasy is almost a macguffin and/ or just hinted at to establish an overall mythology for a given series, but I just can’t handle the sword and sorcery level fantasy. I never have been able to get into it in text form, going back to some of my earliest reading experiences. So this book was extremely difficult for me – I was barely halfway into this book that Goodreads lists as 336 pages after 7 hours of reading. To put that in perspective, I normally read books twice that long in less time – and indeed did so just this past weekend with another author friend who I’ve known nearly as long as Savile and met in the same place I met him.

So this book just wasn’t for me, but it was extremely well written and a compelling story generally – one I personally would love to see in movie format, as I think it could do well in that medium. (And again, I have a history of being able to enjoy fantasy stories there – I’ve never been able to read more than a paragraph of Lord of the Rings, yet I *love* those movies.) Because of this, I gave Coldfall Wood 4 stars.

As always, here is my Goodreads/ Amazon review:
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Featured New Release of the Week: Learning to Speak God from Scratch by Jonathan Merritt

This week, we return to a book we featured in #HypeTrain last month – Jonathan Merritt’s Learning to Speak God from Scratch.

This time though, I want to take a bit of a different tack on my writing regarding this book. You see, I was recently reminded of a quote from Jonathan’s dad, former Southern Baptist Convention President Dr. James Merritt, that I had heard about a year ish before I found how awesome Jonathan himself was when I read his 2012 book A Faith of Our Own. This particular line actually speaks to the discussion Jonathan has in Learning to Speak God From Scratch, and is:

The Church can influence the nation more through supplication than the Congress can through legislation.

Now, Jonathan doesn’t discuss the word “supplication” in this book. But this is where it gets interesting… because he *does* discuss “prayer“, and Merriam-Webster defines “supplication” as “to make a humble entreaty; especially : to pray to God“. So “supplication” is just fancy Christian speak for… prayer.

Another term Dr. Merritt likes to use in his sermons is “justification“. Again, Jonathan never has a chapter devoted to that particular word. But “justification” means “the act, process, or state of being justified by God“, and Jonathan *does* devote chapters to words like “God“, “Sin“, “Lost“, and “Confession“.

Still another term you’ll often hear Jonathan’s dad use is “sanctification“. And yet again, Jonathan never uses that word as the basis of a chapter in this book. But it means “the state of growing in divine grace as a result of Christian commitment after baptism or conversion“, and Jonathan devotes chapters to words like “Grace“, “Mystery“, “Brokenness“, and “Neighbor“.

Indeed, the entire point of this experiment in learning to speak God from scratch is to take the everyday Christian terms like “lost” and “creed” and “pride” and use them to unpack their truths and help us understand better both these words themselves and the more theologically-oriented “cation” words. And in so doing, Jonathan has created quite possibly one of the defining works in seeking to bridge the conversation gap between Christians and non-Christians.
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Featured New Release of the Week: The Same Blood by M. Azmitia

This week we’re branching out further than I knew when I picked up this book from NetGalley due to its release date and the fact that it sounded interesting. Today, we look at The Same Blood by M. Azmitia, releasing on August 1, 2018.

I went into this book expecting a novel about a girl who is struggling with the death of her twin sister and subsequent revelations about herself. And I was highly surprised to find not a novel, but a long form narrative poem – a type of literature I hadn’t read since college, when I had to read Beowulf for a world lit class. In 2001.

Even with the unexpected writing device though, this book offers a strong tail of a young teen’s struggles – perhaps made more effective due to its writing and printing style, though I still believe that a stronger tale could have been told in a more traditional novel form. Overall, its examination of mental health, guilt, addiction, longing for home, and the struggles of Puerto Ricans generally and specifically after Hurricane Irma destroyed large swaths of the island last year are strong and worthy of considerable thought – which seems to be the overall goal of the author.

My only complaint this week is of a more technical issue – apparently the publisher only made a certain file type available via NetGalley, and that forced me to get creative to actually be able to read and review this book. Instead of reading it on my Kindle Oasis, as normal, I had to download the Overdrive app to my laptop and read this book on my dual monitor setup there. The book itself was perfectly fine for what it was, and a very recommended read – if for no other reason than a bit of diversity in story format.

And the Goodreads/ Amazon review:
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