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Tag: September 2019 (Page 1 of 2)

Book Review: One Final Breath

September 17, 2019 / / 0 Comments

One Final Breath – Lynn H. Blackburn – Dive Team Investigations #3 – Revell – Published 3 September 2019

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Synopsis

Investigator Gabe Chavez and Dive Team Captain Anissa Bell have a complicated history. But when Anissa’s fractured past collides with Gabe’s investigation of a shooting, they must work together to catch the murderer before someone else dies.

My thoughts

I love Lynn Blackburn’s writing and she has outdone herself with the Dive Team Investigation series. One Final Breath is the third book in the series and I’m going to go out on a limb and say it is the best of the series. Simmering romantic tension between the two lead characters, three investigations with ongoing twists and a strong camaraderie between the Dive team and their respective significant others, makes for a thrilling and fantastic read.

Anissa Bell is the Dive Team Captain, so she is familiar with death and murder. But when she and her friends respond to shots fired in the Lake and must rescue a young girl and the young man she was with, it all hits too close to home and brings up some unwanted memories. Together, Anissa and her team, including Investigator Gabe Chavez, must pull together the threads of the case, even when there is little to go on. But when a seemingly innocent event indicates someone is attempting to hurt Anissa, the case gets personal.

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Book Review: You Belong With Me

September 9, 2019 / / 0 Comments

You Belong With Me – Tari Faris – Restoring Heritage #1 – Revell – Published 3 September 2019

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Synopsis

Small-town realtor Hannah Thornton has many talents–unfortunately, selling houses isn’t one of them. When a developer sets his sights on the historic homes in Heritage, Hannah turns to her best friend Luke for help. Will Luke risk his future and confront his past to help her succeed?

My thoughts

Two romances in one, a story about second chances at a love once thought missed and a compassionate reflection of learning to accept your path in life even when faced with challenges and disappointments. You Belong With Me is the first book in a new series by Tari Faris that explores love, family and belonging, set against the charming backdrop of a small town.

Hannah loves her home town of Heritage. Sure, a lot of businesses have closed down and the building have seen better days, but she believes with the right attention it could be so much more. When an opportunity arises to enter a competition to win prize money for the town’s redevelopment, Hannah jumps at it and volunteers her best friend Luke to help out. But with the return of her best friend, the engagement of her brother to a women who is all wrong for him, simmering unfinished tension between her and Luke and a series of disasters, Hannah despairs of ever being able to make Heritage the town she knows it could be.

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Book Review: Suggest Reading

September 5, 2019 / / 0 Comments

Suggested Reading – Dave Connis – Katherine Tegen Books – 17 September 2019

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Synopsis

Clara Evans is horrified when she discovers her principal’s “prohibited media” hit list. The iconic books on the list have been pulled from the library and aren’t allowed anywhere on the school’s premises. Students caught with the contraband will be sternly punished.

Many of these stories have changed Clara’s life, so she’s not going to sit back and watch while her draconian principal abuses his power. She’s going to strike back.

So Clara starts an underground library in her locker, doing a shady trade in titles like Speak and The Chocolate War. But when one of the books she loves most is connected to a tragedy she never saw coming, Clara’s forced to face her role in it.

Will she be able to make peace with her conflicting feelings, or is fighting for this noble cause too tough for her to bear?

My thoughts

As a librarian, I don’t need to be told about the benefits of reading – I see them every day. Suggested Reading is an ode to everything librarians stand up for. The right to read for pleasure, the right to choose your reading material, the right to free and unchallenged access to reading material that stretches and challenges the reader. I highly enjoying this book, as will all lovers of books, libraries and reading.

When Clara, a regular library volunteer, starter of a tiny library community scheme and avid reader, discovers that her school has banned 50 books and plans to remove them from the school library’s shelves, she unwittingly starts a rebellion when she creates a library in her school locker. What starts as a mini rebellion soon has far reaching consequences and Clara must decide if her stance against the banned books policy is worth the cost.

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Book Review: The Gryphon Heist

September 3, 2019 / / 0 Comments

The Gryphon Heist – James R. Hannibal – Talia Inger #1 – Revell – Published 3 September 2019

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Synopsis

Talia Inger is a rookie CIA case officer assigned not to the Moscow desk as she had hoped but to the forgotten backwaters of Eastern Europe–a department only known as “Other.” When she is tasked with helping a young, charming Moldovan executive secure his designs for a revolutionary defense technology, she figures she’ll be back in DC within a few days. But that’s before she knows where the designs are stored–and who’s after them. With her shady civilian partner, Adam Tyler, Talia takes a deep dive into a world where only criminal minds and unlikely strategies will keep the Gryphon, a high-altitude data vault, hovering in the mesosphere.

Even Tyler is more than he seems, and Talia begins to wonder: Is he helping her? Or using her access to CIA resources to pull off an epic heist for his own dark purposes?

My thoughts

You can tell Gryphon Heist is set to be a tense thriller from the very first page. From the finishing touches of CIA training to undercover ops, double crosses, big reveals and enough high-action, crazy scenes to classify for a big-budget Hollywood film, Gryphon Heist is sure to please action and thriller fans.

Natalia Inger is just about to complete her CIA training when she fails the last practical. So, when her mentor offers her one last chance to join the Agency, Talia accepts, even if it means she is placed in Eastern European Other division – the placement furthermost from her ideal goal of Moscow. Her first assignment appears to be a glorified rent-a-cop situation until word comes of a high-stakes heist to steal world destructive technology. Talia and a carefully selected team will have to steal it first to secure her country’s safety.

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New Book Releases September 2019 – Young Adult Fiction

September 1, 2019 / / 0 Comments

New Book Releases for September 2019 – Young Adult Fiction

Here’s my list of top picks for September 2019 new releases. What’s on your reading list? Click on covers for more details.

 

Young Adult Fiction

Spin – Colleen Nelson – Dundurn – Published 3 September 2019

Fifteen-year-old Delilah “Dizzy” Doucette lives with her dad and brother above their vintage record store, The Vinyl Trap. She’s learning how to spin records from her brother’s best friend, and she’s getting pretty good. But behind her bohemian life, Dizzy and her family have a secret: her mom is the mega-famous singer Georgia Waters. When this secret is revealed to the world, Dizzy’s life spins out of control. She must decide what is most important to her — the family she has or the family she wants.

Young adult fiction: Contemporary.

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New Book Releases September 2019 – Christian Fiction

September 1, 2019 / / 0 Comments

New Book Releases for September 2019

Here is my list of top picks for September 2019. Click on the covers for more details.

 

Christian Fiction

Fatal Strike – DiAnn Mills – Tyndale House Publishers – Published 3 September 2019

There’s a killer on the loose in Galveston, targeting law enforcement officials and using a fatal injection of snake venom to take them down. Authorities have reasons to believe the Veneno gang is behind the hits, and FBI Agents Leah Riesel and Jon Colbert team up to track down those responsible.

Christian fiction: Suspense.

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Book Review: Lost and Found

August 30, 2019 / / 0 Comments

Lost and Found – Orson Scott Card – Blackstone – Published 10 September 2019

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Synopsis

“Are you really a thief?”

That’s the question that has haunted fourteen-year-old Ezekiel Blast all his life. But he’s not a thief, he just has a talent for finding things. Not a superpower–a micropower. Because what good is finding lost bicycles and hair scrunchies, especially when you return them to their owners and everyone thinks you must have stolen them in the first place? If only there were some way to use Ezekiel’s micropower for good, to turn a curse into a blessing. His friend Beth thinks there must be, and so does a police detective investigating the disappearance of a little girl. When tragedy strikes, it’s up to Ezekiel to use his talent to find what matters most.

My thoughts

Orson Scott Card has a fantastic writing style that provides such a compelling and put-together story. Lost and Found had me hooked – I didn’t want to put it down and I just had to know what would happen next, all while loving every moment of this fun and unique story.

Ezekiel can find lost things. He’s not sure why he has this usual talent and it has certainly made his life hard, especially when everyone – from his classmates to the police- think he is a thief when he returns the lost items to their owners. His new friend Beth, a girl with her own reasons for staying away from other people, tries to convince him that his talent has the power to help people and encourages him to experiment with it. Then Ezekiel is approached by a police detective who thinks Ezekiel may be the key to solving a little girl’s kidnapping.

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Book Review: Frankly in Love

August 29, 2019 / / 0 Comments

Frankly in Love – David Yoon – G.P. Putnam’s Sons – Published 10 September 2019

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Synopsis

High school senior Frank Li is a Limbo–his term for Korean-American kids who find themselves caught between their parents’ traditional expectations and their own Southern California upbringing. His parents have one rule when it comes to romance–“Date Korean”–which proves complicated when Frank falls for Brit Means, who is smart, beautiful–and white. Fellow Limbo Joy Song is in a similar predicament, and so they make a pact: they’ll pretend to date each other in order to gain their freedom. Frank thinks it’s the perfect plan, but in the end, Frank and Joy’s fake-dating maneuver leaves him wondering if he ever really understood love–or himself–at all.

My thoughts

Dramatic writing and a strong and humorous narrator drive this coming-of-age story about acceptance and belonging, falling in love and growing up.

Frank has two names. His American name and his Korean name. He has two sides – perpetually separated. When his parents strongly encourage a relationship with a fellow Korean-American family friend, Joy, and Frank finds himself falling in love with a definitely-not-parental-approved White girl, he and Joy concoct a plan to secretly date to give each other the freedom to be who (and date whomever) they want to be.

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Book Review: Six Goodbyes We Never Said

August 21, 2019 / / 0 Comments

Six Goodbyes We Never Said – Candace Ganger – Wednesday Books – Published 24 September 2019

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Synopsis

Naima Rodriguez doesn’t want your patronizing sympathy as she grieves her father, her hero—a fallen Marine. She’ll hate you forever if you ask her to open up and remember him “as he was,” though that’s all her loving family wants her to do in order to manage her complex OCD and GAD. She’d rather everyone back the-eff off while she separates her Lucky Charms marshmallows into six, always six, Ziploc bags, while she avoids friends and people and living the life her father so desperately wanted for her. 

Dew respectfully requests a little more time to process the sudden loss of his parents. It’s causing an avalanche of secret anxieties, so he counts on his trusty voice recorder to convey the things he can’t otherwise say aloud. He could really use a friend to navigate a life swimming with pain and loss and all the lovely moments in between. And then he meets Naima and everything’s changed—just not in the way he, or she, expects.

My thoughts

Six Goodbyes We Never Said is an honest reflection of the complications and messiness of grief, an upfront and realistic portrayal of mental health and an ode to friendship and family, which can sometimes be as weird and tangled as it can be necessary and life saving. This book unfurls the journey of grief in a compelling and frank way, at times moving while other times delightfully amusing. It’s the perfect book for reflective readers or those who need something or someone to relate to when the world around them doesn’t reflect back what they see in the mirror.

Naima and Dew are what mainstream society would wrongly label as outsiders. Those who are different or who behave differently from society’s perception of acceptable or normalised behaviour. Both are struggling, not only under the heavy burden of grief so complex they can hardly speak of it, but with social anxiety (Dew) and the rituals and counting patterns (Naima) that has become a part of their every day existences. In each other they find someone who is facing the same complex emotional roller coaster.

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Book Review: The Girl The Sea Gave Back

August 15, 2019 / / 0 Comments

The Girl the Sea Gave Back – Adrienne Young – Sky in the Deep – Wednesday Books – Published 3 September 2019

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Synopsis

For as long as she can remember, Tova has lived among the Svell, the people who found her washed ashore as a child and use her for her gift as a Truthtongue. Her own home and clan are long-faded memories, but the sacred symbols and staves inked over every inch of her skin mark her as one who can cast the rune stones and see into the future. She has found a fragile place among those who fear her, but when two clans to the east bury their age-old blood feud and join together as one, her world is dangerously close to collapse.

For the first time in generations, the leaders of the Svell are divided. Should they maintain peace or go to war with the allied clans to protect their newfound power? And when their chieftain looks to Tova to cast the stones, she sets into motion a series of events that will not only change the landscape of the mainland forever but will give her something she believed she could never have again—a home.

My thoughts

The Girl The Sea Gave Back is a thrilling and sweeping fantasy, with magic, fates, wars, betrayal and destiny, all linked together through two young people who wield the power to change their people’s futures.

I did not realise this was the second book in a series when I started reading it. I had not previously read the first book, Sky In The Deep, which is set ten years prior to The Girl The Sea Gave Back. Fortunately, The Girl The Sea Gave Back is a complete story in its own right, and while there are apparently some character and setting crossovers, both books can be read as standalones.

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