ARCBA Blog Tour and Review: Dave the Donkey by Andrew McDonough

31 March - 4 April  2014

Australian Christian Readers Blog Alliance

is introducing

Dave the Donkey

by

Andrew McDonough

About the Book

Jerusalem. A lone rider approaches. The cheering crowd swarm to greet him. The King has come, mounted upon his mighty steed Dave the Donkey! Join Dave, his Grandpa and Jesus in this epic Easter tale of power, courage, death and resurrection. If you like Black Beauty you will love Dave the Donkey.

About the Author

Andrew McDonough is the creator of the popular Lost Sheep resources. He has written and illustrated 21 children's stories that are used in schools and churches around the world. Based in South Australia, Andrew belongs to the WestCare community, an inner city mission working amongst the homeless, supporting people struggling with addictions and advocating for refugees. He regularly visits schools & churches to tell stories, conduct workshops, preach and lead all-age worship services. He and the Lost Sheep team have a passion to provide high quality Biblical storytelling resources to children’s workers, pastors and parents. Andrew’s stories including Cecil the Lost Sheep, Jesus and the Children, Echidnas on Everest and his latest book, Tina the Tree

https://www.lostsheep.com.au/

My Review

This is an enjoyable retelling of the Easter story from the point of view of two donkeys, Dave and his grandpa, Cecil, with colourful pictures which will appeal to small children, and vocabulary that is simple enough for slightly older readers to read with some assistance.

There is also a note to parents at the back, offering a way of sharing the story and suggesting some questions to ask. I especially like this, as it’s a way of sharing the gospel message to the adult or older child reading the book, and shows how the story of Easter is one worth celebrating all year round.

Dave the Donkey is part of the Lost Sheep series of books.

Thanks to ARCBA and Andrew McDonough for providing a free book for review. You can find out more about Andrew McDonough and the Lost Sheep books at www.lostsheep.com.au.

Review: Rooms by James Rubart

Lives up to the reviews

Micah Taylor’s strange Uncle Archie has built him a house. But not just any house. It's a multi-million dollar mansion on Cannon Beach, on the Oregon coast. It’s literally the house of his dreams. It's also a house that tells a story—the story of Micah's life— and possibly hides a secret as well. How else could the uncle he's never met know everything about him? The catch is that the house is in the one place Micah vowed never to return, but he does.

Once in Cannon Beach, it doesn’t take long before strange things start happening. Micah’s car has an extra 16000miles on the clock. He met someone at a party, but the man doesn't remember meeting Micah. Then things get stranger when rooms start appearing in his house …

I was impressed by Rooms. It is longer than most novels I read, yet the intriguing plot and good pace meant it was easy to read and didn’t drag. There was great scene setting, and Rubart has the ability to convey a lot of information with a commendable economy of words:

“Archie was his great uncle whom he knew less than a paragraph about”

Rooms has been compared to novels such as The Shack. I haven’t read The Shack, so I can’t comment on that, but Rooms reminded me of Illusion by Frank Peretti, with shades of Sliding Doors or The Butterfly Effect in the way that seemingly small decisions can have a big impact on our lives. In terms of theme, Rooms is challenging us to choose God over the things of this world in a similar way to If I Gained the World (by Linda Nicholls), and it achieves this well.

I suspect that many of us are hiding wounds in the same way as Micah is, and these hidden wounds and secrets are affecting the choices and decisions we make on a daily basis. Most of us won't have the external push to solve those problems as Micah does in Rooms, nor, perhaps, the courage to say "have at it" to God the way Micah does, but it’s something to think about. Recommended.

Thanks to Zondervan and NetGalley for providing a free ebook for review. Find out more about James Rubart at his website.

ARCBA Review: Picking up the Pieces by Paula Vince

6 - 10 May

 

Australian Christian Readers Blog Alliance

is introducing

Picking up the pieces

(Even Before Publishing 2010)

By
Paula Vince

Available at Amazon

&
Light The Dark

About the Author

Award winning Australian author, PAULA VINCE, loves to evoke tears and laughter through writing fiction. She has a passion to provide inspiring stories that highlight her own beautiful country.

Website is http://www.paulavince.com/
 

About the Book:

“One terrible decision leads to another and the Parker and Quinlan families find out what it means to be in total despair.

In a moment of recklessness, Blake Quinlan does something he never should. The bitter consequences of his impulse will reverberate through the rest of his life unless he learns to deal with his past.

Without warning, Claire Parker’s life shatters. One horrific event leads to a choice that she can never forget. She must find a source of strength and forgiveness to help her recover or she will never again be the happy person she once was.

Moving forward, there is still a ray of hope. A triumphant story about forgiveness, new beginnings and the power of love.”
 

My Review

Clare Parker sees Blake Quinlan on a bus on the way to a Christian camp, which takes her back seven years to when she last saw Blake, and how his actions shattered her life... The book then moves back seven years, showing us how Clare and Blake met, what happened, and how they both pick up the pieces of their lives after Blake rapes Clare. The second half of the book brings us back to the present, with Clare and Blake meeting on the bus and what happens next, with the story told from both the point of view of both Clare and Blake.

From Clare's point of view, I thought the book was a sensitive portrayal of recovery from a life-changing event for which she feels guilty and ashamed. It felt realistic - Clare's recovery is long and painful, which contrasts with some other books I've read with a similar plot (one I read had the heroine mortally afraid of men one day and falling in love the next, which seemed a little unlikely, to say the least). Clare's recovery is made harder by the well-meaning actions of her family members, both Christian and non-Christian. Sadly, this was entirely believable, and made compelling reading.

But the plot from Blake's point of view was, if possible, even more compelling. Bla ke is not the cardboard cut-out violent, woman-hating rapist. He is a shy, sensitive boy/man (he's 18) with a violent father. On a date with Clare (arranged by his mother), Blake gets so drunk that he commits an unthinkable act for which he hates himself, feeling guilty and ashamed, but knowing there is nothing he can do to change his past action or make it better. So, he too is left picking up the pieces of his life, and facing the scorn of his family and the violence of his father.

This book is well worth reading, for its sensitive handling of a difficult subject, and for the underlying themes of redemption and forgiveness in unthinkable circumstances.

Review: H2O by Austin W Boyd and Brannon Hollingsworth

My initial feeling about H2O was uncertainty - it is narrated by Kate Pepper, a 102-pound size 2 aerospace marketing executive and sushi chef who slices off part of her palm while catering a work-related dinner party hosted by her gorgeous but controlling boyfriend, Xavier. I'm not big on blood and I don't like controlling men in fiction or in real life, so this was not a promising start.

But underneath the doubtful beginning there is the start of a puzzle, a mystery, about Kate's reactions to the everyday miracle of water. Kate blacks out in the shower following her hand injury, and this turns out to be just one of many blackouts, always precipitated by water. It isn't long before she starts seeing things during her blackouts, and it becomes unclear what is real and what isn't. She starts searching for answers on the internet, and connects with someone with the known as WRKRJC, who attempts to help Kate make sense of her visions.

Some aspects of the novel felt little odd, like having WiFi explained. I thought that wireless internet technology was virtually omnipresent in the English-speaking world. Others (like the character names Thomas Cook and John Connor, better known respectively as a global travel company and the hero of the Terminator movies) made me wonder if there was something I was missing. And the special coffee roast from the mountains of New Zealand? I don’t think so. Most of our mountains are ski-fields, not exactly conducive to growing a warm-weather crop like coffee.

But despite this, I found the book intriguing, thought-provoking and well worth reading. H2O is rich in symbolism (to the point of almost being allegorical) with excellent use of language. It’s different to most of the Christian fiction on the market today and defies a straightforward genre description, being part literary, part speculative and part romance. I really enjoyed it, and am glad I persevered with it. Recommended.

Thanks to Living Ink Books (imprint of AMG Publishers) and NetGalley for providing a free ebook for review.

Review: The Silent by Rebecca Kenney

“Someone has made threats against my school—against my teachers and my classmates. No one knows who it is, but we have to find out before it’s too late. Before the Silent comes out of hiding.”

The Silentis a short but compelling Young Adult read, centred around Mourning High School, in the small two of Mourning, Vermont, a ‘spiritual Dead Zone’. High school Senior Nikki Altemann is asked to keep her eyes and ears open for anything out of the ordinary after an email is sent to several teachers at her school, threatening to kill the sheeple – those people who act like sheep, with no will of their own. The police fear the threat is from a ‘Silent’, a person who escapes notice by acting normal, when inside they are far from it.

Most of the story is told in the first person, by Nikki, in the form of extracts from her diary. But there are also third person point of view, from characters like the school principal (Principal Rudie) and the detective in charge of the case (Kate Daulton). As the primary narrator, Nikki has plenty of teenage humour and flashes of wisdom beyond her years: “In that moment, I think I got a better picture of what it was like for Christ to live on earth before His death. I have always pictured Him as being sad and solemn most of the time, and now I understand why. It’s because He saw and heard and carried more of other people’s pain than anybody else ever could.” There were also a few examples of how life has changed since I was at High School – students with individual email accounts, and a suggestion that if you don’t have a Bible, you can read it online.

While Mourning is a town with a small population of Christians, those that exist are pleasingly well-adjusted. They don't have all the answers, but do their best to give Godly advice (although one of the minor Christian characters specialises in those Christian platitudes that teenagers and non-Christians loathe with good reason).

Although few teens will ever have to go through all the situations Nikki faced in The Silent, many of them will face some of those events, and even though Nikki's own life is far from perfect, she provides teens with a solid example of life in the real world. While not all will care to read a story of this intensity, many teens will find it relevant and illuminating. I enjoy suspense, and this novel had plenty of it, tightly packed into a well-written short novel. I really enjoyed it, and would like to see more of Nikki (there were several plot points that were not wrapped up, and could well lead into a series).

Now, it may be that The Silentis actually not this good. But bear in mind that the last YA books I read were the Twilight series, and I found Bella to be a most unappealing and self-centred heroine. If you loved Twilight, then I suggest this is not the book for you. But if you loathed the whining Bella as much as I did, then I think you will like and admire Nikki, who grows as a person and as a Christian as she undertakes her clandestine assignment.

Thanks to JourneyForth Books and NetGalley for providing a free ebook for review.

Review: Judgement Day by Wanda Dyson

Judgment Day opens with a quotation from John Connor, leader of the human resistance in the Terminator movies: “It was never about avoiding judgment day. It was all about surviving it”. I’ve always loved sci-fi books and movies, so this had to be a good start! (Don’t worry – this is not a sci-fi book. It is Christian fiction, although the Christian element is quite understated and not at all preachy).

Suzanne Kidwell is the presenter of a TV crime show, Judgement Day. She believes she won’t “get anywhere in life unless she was willing to be a little ruthless, a little mercenary, and [have] a whole lot of ambition”, but it seems that no everyone agrees with her, as her producer is giving her trouble about not sufficiently checking her sources, and her boyfriend, surgeon Dr Guy Mandeville, is pressuring her to give up her career and get married. However, this little problem is soon sorted when Guy is killed while driving Suzanne’s car – the car loses control and explodes, and Guy’s distraught mother has Suzanne removed from the funeral service.

Suzanne’s life then goes from bad to worse when she wakes up one morning to the sound of the police banging on her door – and a dead body beside her. Needless to say, she is charged with murder, and the police consider the investigation closed. To prove her innocence, her attorney refers her to the private detective agency run by close friends Marcus Crisp and Alexandria Rachelle Fisher-Hawthorne (Alex). Oops. Suzanne and Marcus were engaged in college, the relationship did not end well, and Alex is initially hostile towards Suzanne and reluctant to take the case because of this history. But there are indications that Suzanne the victim of a conspiracy, and this persuades them to take the case (assisted, strangely, by a sizeable advance from Willard Mandeville, Guy’s father). What follows is a high-octane thriller as Marcus and Alex work with Suzanne to solve the mystery before anyone else gets hurt.

While Judgment Dayis a thriller rather than a romance, there is a strong thread of romantic tension between Marcus and Alex running through the novel. They have been friends since college, business partners for six years, and somewhere in that they have each developed romantic feelings for the other, but neither want to take the risk of revealing or acting on this. I thought it was extremely clever how Dyson managed to convey this tension without spelling it out in words, and without wanting to give away any spoilers, the ending was more than satisfying! Overall, a very enjoyable novel, and I would certainly be interested in reading more about Marcus, Alex and their PI work.

Thanks to Waterbrook Multnomah and Blogging for Books for providing a free ebook for review.

By the way, WaterbrookMultnomah give away free books at random to those readers who rank reviews of their books.  You can rank my review using the buttons below, or read and rank more reviews on their website, http://waterbrookmultnomah.com/bloggingforbooks/book-lovers.  This will also help me - the more people rate my reviews, the bigger the selection of books I get to choose from.

Review: The Shard Fence by Keith Marsden

A shard fence is made of smashed glass bottles, jars and containers, with “the biggest, sharpest, deadliest pieces pressed into the wet concrete at the top of the wall, so that when it dried, a glass shard fence capped the wall and kept out all intruders”.  It is a sign of affluence in a country where so many people are desperately poor.

Brandon travels from affluent Oregon to a poor Brazillian favela to teach music at the Igreja da Esperança, the Church of Hope, in Belo Horizonte, Brazil – a city I have never heard of, yet with a population of 3 million people, almost much as New Zealand.  He quickly finds that it is going to be more challenging than he had anticipated.  A young man is killed as he arrives, and Brandon must decide whether he will stand with the people of the mission or 'be one who runs away'.  He is challenged to stay by Aline Reis, whose beauty has probably inspired Brandon to visit Brazil more than any divine calling.

Aline is a woman of strong faith in the face of the huge obstacles facing the church and congregation.  She must draw on her Christian faith to meet the needs of hurting people, and to stand firm in the face of evil.  Brandon, who is in Brazil for reasons of his own, must decide where he stands, too.  He quickly comes to learn that being ‘fortunate’ is not all about money, but is about things more eternal.  The Shard Fence had a clear Christian message, and a strong challenge around conquering our fear and living for God in what might seem to be impossible circumstances.  In that The Shard Fence, was excellent.

On the down side, the book had some elementary editing errors (misspelled words, misplaced punctuation, plot inconsistencies).  I also felt that there was not enough emphasis on the developing relationship between Aline and Brandon, although that could have been because I am a female reader who likes the romance side of the plot, rather than a male reader who might well find that the romance distracted from the ‘main’ plot!  I have heard it said that female readers prefer more ‘show’ than ‘tell’ in their fiction, whereas men feel the opposite.  From that point of view, this was definitely a novel targeted more towards the male reader.  It was an excellent story, but the romantic in me would have liked more development in that area.

Thanks to Keith Marsden and Club Lighthouse Publishing for providing a free ebook for review.

Review: The Pirate Queen by Patricia Hickman

Saphora is a wife, mother and grandmother, married to Bender whose “life was summed up by the activity of ambitions rather than the depth of his character”.  Her plan to leave the philandering plastic surgeon is disrupted when he announces (literally as she is leaving) that he has been diagnosed with brain cancer.  They move to their holiday home in Oriental on the Outer Banks of South Carolina, where the children and grandchildren come to visit.  Their grandson, Eddie, stays with them, and through him they meet Jamie and her son, Tobias, also summer residents in the small town.  Through a series of events, large and small, Saphora begins to rediscover their relationship as she cares for Bender. 

The Pirate Queen focuses on the minutiae of detail in everyday life.  While there are a couple of ‘big drama’ moments, the beauty of the writing is in the details and the everyday interactions.  The story is not preachy (although Saphora does show a curiosity about or a desire for God that her husband does not share - she refers to him as someone whose “interest in religion was piqued only when he breathed a prayer” on the last hole of a round of golf).  Yet it is Bender that develops the relationship with Rev John Mims, and who begins to read the Bible and ask questions. 

As seems to be the trend for this genre, The Pirate Queenwas all written from Saphora’s point of view.  It would have been nice to have a little variation, as although we clearly see Saphora’s responses to different situations, by the end of the novel I felt that my view of some situations might have been clouded by her preconceptions.  As Bender was sometimes portrayed as the villain of the piece, it would have been good to have his point of view too.

The novel was not perfect.  Character’s names often annoy me, and Bender (apparently his mother’s maiden name) is a name that has unappealing connotations that took me out of the story until I learned to read over it.  At one point Saphora finds Bender’s journal and begins to read it, but this is put down, forgotten and not referred to again, which I found strange.  I also object to the analogy of Saphora’s son as being ‘as emotional as a woman’.  That phrase implies that emotions are somehow inferior to being unemotional, which is something I cannot agree with. 

Overall, The Pirate Queen is an intriguing story with nuggets of wisdom interspersed throughout, in both the quotations at the beginning of each chapter, and in the story itself.  The quotations are both pithy and relevant, and could be the subject of a whole discussion on their own.  I suspect this is one of those books that can be read on many levels, with subsequent re-readings revealing different aspects of the story and the characters.  Like many modern novels, this has a Reading Group guide at the end.  The questions, like the book, will inspire a lot of discussion (and probably yet more questions…).  I did enjoy The Pirate Queen, and will certainly look out for more titles by Patricia Hickman.

As I commented on how much I liked the quotations, I thought I would share a few of my favourites:

Normal day, let me be aware of the treasure you are… let me not pass you by in quest of some rare and perfect tomorrow. ( Mary Jean Irion)

You may encounter many defeats, but you must not be defeated.  In fact, it may be necessary to encounter the defeats, so you can know who you are, what you can rise from, how you can still come out of it. (Maya Angelou)

Do you really want to look back on your life and see how wonderful it could have been had you not been afraid to live it? ( Caroline Myss)

Where was it written that a woman had to silently submit to a life that did not acknowledge her for her worth? ( Saphora)

She had heard it said that it was easier to live through someone else that to become complete yourself. (Saphora)

By the way, WaterbrookMultnomah give away free books at random to those readers who rank reviews of their books.  You can rank my review using the buttons below, or read and rank more reviews on their website, http://waterbrookmultnomah.com/bloggingforbooks/book-lovers.  This will also help me - the more people rate my reviews, the bigger the selection of books I get to choose from.

Review: Orphaned Hearts by Shawna K Williams

David Langley is pastor of a small-town church in the middle of the Great Depression, and he has a problem.  A six-year-old boy is about to arrive on the train, but the family who promised to adopt him have changed their mind at the last minute.  As a former orphan himself, David does not want to send the boy back to the orphanage, which leaves him with the problem of what to do with Caleb.  To complicate matters, Caleb lost an arm in an accident, a disability which means it harder to find potential adoptive parents.  This is a problem that David, horribly scarred in the fire that took his family, understands only too well.

Sadie Miller, the town spinster, has spent the last few years caring for her ailing father and hoping that Brother Langley will notice her.  Now her father is dead and, at thirty-three, she feels she is too old for the husband and family she always dreamt of.  When David brings Caleb to her, she agrees to take him in immediately and soon falls in love with the small damaged child.  But there is no chance that the orphanage will approve a single woman as an adoptive parent, no matter how well she might be able to provide for the child, and Sadie and David will have to fight just to get the orphanage to approve her as a temporary foster parent.

I really enjoyed Orphaned Hearts.  The writing was strong, the characters were likeable and realistic, the plot was excellent, the romance was sweet and while the novel has an underlying Christian theme, it was not overtly ‘preachy’.  It also is the first novel I have read set during the Great Depression of the 1930's that has managed to not be depressing!  The only problem was that it is really a novella rather than a full-length novel (43,000 words compared to 90,000 for a standard novel), and I would have liked it to be longer.  Having said that, there was just enough plot for the length of the book, and to make it longer would have been adding words, not story.  In fairness, I should point out that Shawna and I have been ‘conversing’ in online discussions for over a year as the modern equivalent of pen-pals.  However, that does not affect my opinion – it just means that I should have read her books long before now!

Shawna has a new book coming out in a couple of weeks.  The Good Fight is the third in the series that began with No Other and In All Things.  She is currently writing a sequel to Orphaned Hearts, which is due to be published in December 2012.  I will look forward to reading it. 

Orphaned Hearts is published by Desert Breeze Publishing, a relatively new specialist ebook publisher of romance in all its guises.  Desert Breeze will soon be offering ten of their most popular titles as traditional books.  Meanwhile, their ebooks are available from http://www.amazon.com/, http://www.desertbreezepublishing.com/ and www.smashwords.com.  Thanks to Shawna Williams and Desert Breeze Publishing for providing a free ebook to review.