Friday Fifteen: Kara Isaac

Today I'd like to welcome debut author Kara Isaac to Iola's Christian Reads. Kara has recently released her first novel, Close to You (which I reviewed here), and she's here today to share her favourite 15 authors. Welcome, Kara!

1. C.S. Lewis

Who can get past the Chronicles of Narnia? Brilliant storytelling that appeals from small children up to the oldest adult.

2. Becky Wade

Becky Wade’s My Stubborn Heart that released a few years ago now was the book that helped me believe there was a place for my voice in Christian fiction.

3. Enid Blyton

What an imagination! From the Famous Five and Secret Seven, through to the boarding school girls of Mallory Towers and St. Claires then the wonderful magical worlds at the top of the Faraway Tree or on the other side of a ride on the Wishing Chair, she fed my reading for years.

Agreed! I wanted to go to Mallory Towers.

4. and 5. Carolyn Keene and Franklin W. Dixon

In my tweens and early teens I devoured every Nancy Drew and Hardy Boys book I could get my hands on! At the time sixteen and seventeen seemed sooo old ;-)

6. Brock and Bodie Thoene

To date, their Zion Covenant series, set during WWII remains my favourite series of all time. Even though it’s been almost twenty years since I first read it. And John Murphy was my first fictional crush ;-)

7. Susan Meissner

Every year, I wait for January to come and the next Susan Meissner story to be published. Her The Fall of Marigolds was my favourite book for 2014 and I still think about it!

8. Jen Hatmaker

I’m very late on the Jen Hatmaker fan-train. I only really discovered her last year and need to work my way through the backlog of her titles but For The Love had me alternating between hysterically laughing and pondering. You know it’s a great book when you’re sending photos of pieces of text to your sisters!

I've just looked up her books—they look excellent!

9. Carla Laureano

I love how Carla’s main characters never have a sense of the predictable about them. She crafts nuanced and complex people and isn’t afraid to go places where it’s rare for Christian fiction to go.

This doesn't surprise me—I could see similarities between Carla's writing and Close to You.

10. Katie Ganshert

Katie has such stunning writing and is so well deserving of all the awards and praise that she’s garnered. She just keeps getting better with every book.

11. Francine Rivers

Her Mark of the Lion series made ancient Rome so real and vivid. Capitvating!

And Marcus . . . 

12. Julie Cantrell

I just finished her latest release, The Feathered Bone. While I loved both of her previous books this one had me absorbed like nothing existed. The lyrical writing, the rawness of the protagonist, the hope weaved through the devastating circumstances. But be prepared for your heart to be shredded by the end and your eyes to be puffy!

13. Kate Morton

Kate’s The Shifting Fog was the first book that got my hooked on dual-time stories and it still remains one of my favourites ever!

14. Jenny Simmons

I love her memoir style of writing. She writes with an authenticity and vulnerability but also a great sense of humour.

15. Donald Miller

I haven’t read his most recent releases but I remember buying three copies of Blue Like Jazz so that I could pass them around friends and never risk losing my own copy!

That's some endorsement!

Kara, thank you for adding to my to-read pile. :)

About Kara Isaac

Kara Isaac lives in Wellington, New Zealand. Her debut romantic comedy, Close To You, is about a disillusioned academic-turned-tour-guide and an entrepreneur who knows nothing about Tolkien who fall in love on a Tolkien themed tour of New Zealand and just released from Howard Books. When she's not working her day job as a public servant, chasing around a ninja preschooler and his feisty toddler sister, she spends her time writing horribly bad first drafts and wishing you could get Double Stuf Oreos in New Zealand. She loves to connect on her website, on Facebook at Kara Isaac - Writer and Twitter @KaraIsaac

You can read the beginning of Close to You below:

ARCBA Review: The Pounamu Prophecy by Cindy Williams

7 - 11 March

Australian Christian Readers Blog Alliance

is introducing

The Pounamu Prophecy

(Rhiza Press, 1 October 2015)

by
Cindy Williams

About the Book:

Since she watched her village burn to the ground, Mere’s life has been anything but dull. Now as an older woman she has come to stay with Helene and James to finish writing her life story – a tale of injustice, revenge and reconciliation.

But Helene and James have their own problems. After five years together, their marriage has become dull, predictable, boring … and it starts to unravel. 

Weaving fiction with the traumatic history of the Ngati Whatua tribe of Auckland, The Pounamu Prophecy sweeps from the sultry heat of Australia to the verdant shores of New Zealand.

About the Author

Cindy Williams lives in Sydney with her husband and teenage son.

As a child growing up in a culturally rich part of New Zealand she enjoyed writing, not copious screeds, but short intense pieces that brought tears to her eyes and made people think. She marvelled at the power of words to inspire far beyond the intentions of the author.

Then she became a dietitian – all science and seriously researched facts. She completed a Master of Public Health and a Graduate Diploma in Communication and spent many years encouraging and inspiring people to live a healthy life.

She writes a nutrition blog – www.nutritionchic.com – and is working on her second novel, set in first century Israel. She teaches scripture in schools, and swim and cycles. She is also studying for a Diploma of Theology and trying to improve her abysmal French! 

My Review

James and Helene are both too busy chasing their respective careers (as graphic designer and doctor, respectively) to have time for each other, and after five years, the spark has gone out of their marriage. Mere comes to stay, looking for a quiet place where she can write her memoirs without interruption. Helene especially values Mere’s quiet advice, shared from a place of having come to terms with knowledge, suffering and forgiveness.

The Pounamu Prophecy is a split timeline story. In the present, it’s the story of Brisbane couple James and Helene, their disintegrating marriage, Mere, their visitor from New Zealand visitor, and the way Mere subtly encourages them to think with a different mindset. In the past, it’s Mere’s story, the story of a Ngati Whatua child growing up in Okahu Bay, Auckland, in the midst of the Maori land protests, and her reactions to the age-old grievances.

I live in New Zealand. I remember the Bastion Point protests, although I was only a child and too young to understand what they were about—or how far back the grievances went. I’ve driven past Okahu Bay more times than I can remember, and visited Kelly Tarlton’s Underwater World (now Kelly Tarlton’s SeaLife Aquarium), which is built in the old sewage tanks mentioned in The Pounamu Prophecy.

I enjoyed that combination of familiarity and new information, and I thought The Pounamu Prophecy was an outstanding novel. I liked the characters (well, I liked Mere better than Helene or James, who both needed a good talking to). I liked the way the two stories were integrated.

I especially liked the sensitive way the novel brings out the Maori culture and the injustices of the time—a combination of greed and perhaps patriarchal thinking. The injustice is plain: it seems the New Zealand Government of the time had a lot in common with the biblical Laban. Overall, The Pounamu Prophecy is an excellent story of rising above difficult situations, and learning to forgive what some might think can’t be forgiven.

Recommended.

Review: The Trespasser by Karen Cossey

One of my freelance editing clients!

As some of you know, I’m a part-time freelance fiction editor, and I edited The Tresspassers which makes this a slightly biased review.

It’s set in England, near Plymouth, where Logan trespasses on an exclusive country retreat to climb a cliff … and is caught by the imaginative Meeka, who is escaping from the Mines of Certain Doom and Death, and her father, Captain Blackbeard. Logan is pleased to make a new friend, especially one as interesting and adventurous as Meeka, but they soon find themselves getting a little more adventure than they had bargained for. Well, the West Country has long been known as pirate country. There are secrets hidden in those caves …

The Trespassers is a fast-paced adventure story with a healthy dose of comedy (illustrated by Meeka’s extensive vocabulary and penchant for made-up words). There is plenty of conflict, with a good balance between the external adventure conflict and Logan’s internal journey, and an underlying theme of family belonging. It’s not specifically Christian fiction, but it’s definitely written from a Christian world view and would make a great read-aloud story for school-aged children, or a read-alone story for middle grade readers.