Book Review: Singularity by Steven James

Singularity

By Steven James

ISBN: 9780800734268

$14.99 paperback

$9.99 ebook

From the Publisher: Jevin Banks is searching for a killer--and answers to terrifying questions he never even thought to ask.

When his friend is murdered, illusionist Jevin Banks is determined to find out what really happened. Drawn deep into a web of conspiracy and top-secret research on human consciousness, Jevin won't stop digging until the truth is revealed. Soon he uncovers a dark secret that could change the very fabric--and future--of human life on the planet.

Based on frightening scientific realities and bristling with mystery, suspense, and intrigue, Singularity is the riveting sequel to Placebo.

My Review:

I’m a huge fan of the Patrick Bowers series and was a bit worried that Jevin Banks would be a clone to my fav FBI coffee snob. In some ways, a little bit; and mostly, not so much. Banks is still one of those males who can be a bit clueless, needing the help of the women in his life to figure out—yep, women; he still has a cocky sidekick for protection. He’s not a professional crime fighter, which makes him different. As an illusionist, there’s a little bit of Patrick Jane from the Mentalist TV show involved…intriguing. As a multi-millionaire, he has the ability to do things, to make things happen, that most others cannot.

I also admit to having Placebo in my TBR pile and decided not to read that one first. Although James refers to events in the other book, Singularity felt like it stood alone. Gruesome but never over-the-top to thriller fans, with non-judgmental faith elements mixed in, the story was about who gets to play God with the aging process. How far can we go with our science and experiments to trump death?

 

Told from multiple viewpoints, some of which are surprise one-time throw-aways toward the end of the book to ramp up tension, the story was riveting. The opening action sequence was a little OCO, but it did help to set the characters. I enjoyed learning some background staging for magic tricks and the world of Las Vegas felt very real and very sad. Entertaining cast of characters. I look forward to more.

“Available November 2013 at your favorite bookseller from Revell, a division of Baker Publishing Group.”

Book Review: When Love Calls by Lorna Seilstad

When Love Calls

 

By Lorna Seilstad

Historical romance

Revel, a division of Baker Publishing Group

May 2013

ISBN 9780800721817

Paper: 14.99

 

From the publisher:

Hannah Gregory is a good many things, but that list does not include following rules. So when she must apply for a job as a switchboard operator to support her two sisters, she knows it won’t be easy. Hello Girls must conduct themselves according to strict and often bewildering rules, which include absolutely no consorting with gentlemen while in training. 

With historical details that bring to life the exciting first decade of the twentieth century, Lorna Seilstad weaves a charming tale of companionship that blossoms into sweet romance.

 

My review:

I enjoy Lorna’s stories. So far they’ve made the end of the nineteenth and early twentieth-century era come alive in America’s heartland—Iowa.

 

In this new book, When Love Calls, from the Gregory Sisters series, Seilstad explores the world of switchboard operators on the telephone exchange. I was especially interested since I had written about a similar character. Readers who enjoy history, particularly the plight of working women in the early twentieth century, will find much to appreciate about the depth of detail the author uses to effectively create dilemma for her wonderfully multi-layered characters.

 

Romances don’t leave much to the imagination, but the journey to the church aisle is often entertaining. From the moment attorney Lincoln Cole shows up at the recently orphaned Gregory girls’ farm to foreclose, the reader knows Hannah is in for a fight for her heart. Having given up law school in order to find work, independent and feisty Hannah sees an advertisement for switchboard operators, or Hello Girls, for the Iowa exchange, and applies for a highly-coveted training position. Not even the dire warning that less than half of them will graduate and only a handful will succeed on the switchboard, Hannah excels in the course, making friends and enemies along the way. Too practical to realize a farm neighbor has been harboring a secret crush, Hannah worries but ignores his warnings about the unrest caused by local union activities for laborer’s rights.

 

Lincoln Cole, son of a senator, is pushed toward his late father’s political aspirations. Those plans include associating with the right type of people and marriage with the right kind of society woman, not a common switchboard operator who associates with criminals. Lincoln realizes there is more to life when he meets Hannah and her younger sisters, a teenage potential hoyden, and the youngest, a dreamy schoolgirl who’s willing to help him plot Hannah’s romantic downfall.

 

When Love Calls hit nice highs and lows for all characters during this time of change, of unrest and uncertainty. Told from multiple viewpoints, the story shows what family devotion, faith, love, and respect should look like.

 

Available May 2013 at your favorite book seller from Revell, a division of Baker Publishing Group.

YA Genre book review: Pretty Girls Don't Always Get It All

Review The Jerk Magnet, by Melody Carlson

A Kingston High Book

YA

Revell

c. Jan 2012

ISBN: 9780800719623

$12.99

Pretty girls don’t always get the good guys, high school junior Chelsea Martin learns.

A geeky frump, especially since her mom died, Chelsea suffers from awful teeth, hair and skin, and hides from her image. Worse than zits, her dad blindsides her with a double whammy: he’s getting married again and they’re moving. Chelsea barely knows her new drop-dead gorgeous stepmom2B and grudgingly accepts her advice for new clothes, skin and hair treatment and confidence-building exercises. Realizing she has the chance to start all over in a new city, Chelsea decides to go for it and by the time she’s made friends with the new neighbor girl Janelle and others in her church youth group, school begins.

Since she understands what it feels like to be the one never chosen, a complete makeover from the outside in helps Chelsea deal with prejudice from a direction she never considered. While most of the guys hover over the new hot-babe Chelsea, the girls keep her at arm’s length. Janelle comes clean when they have a heart2heart. Chelsea’s attracting jerk guys who want more than clueless Chelsea can provide. The two of them cook up a scheme to give their friends a lesson they can’t learn in class, but Chelsea’s new-found faith in Jesus may be the only true friend she has left if they bomb.

This is a such a sweet book. I wouldn’t hesitate to give it to the girlchildren in my life. There are lots of tips about what really counts in life, how to read hormonal guys and to consider a person’s true motives. Empathy and sympathy go hand in hand in good relationships. Melody Carlson has a huge, lengthy career, and her high school fashion and talk feels natural to me, although I know the bits and pieces of high school life she shares are more what I wish than reality. With teachers in my family, I dislike the portrayal of predator teachers, but I know they’re out there and the students’ instincts and actions are correctly portrayed in this piece of fiction. The pacing of the story kept me turning pages, the premise achieved without feeling like every loose end is tied up in a pink bow and delivered with sweets.

Available January 2012 at your favorite bookseller from Revell, a division of Baker Publishing Group.

Book Review: The Blessed by Ann Gabhart

The Blessed

By Ann Gabhart

Revell, a division of Baker

c. 2011

ISBN 9780800734541

Historical Romance

From the publisher:

“Let the child go, Lacey. Right now! We’ve come into this community to leave things of the world behind and do as they say” said Preacher Palmer. “But she needs me.” She spoke barely above a whisper. “She needs discipline. And so do you...” he said.

It is a time of spiritual revival in the mid-1840s when the Shakers worship services received many spiritual messages from Mother Ann and other Shaker leaders. Harmony Hill was a place offering a different way of life from the world. This village was a place where the people were dedicated to community, hard work, practicing their worship, and engaging in long hours of worship each week.

My review:

The Blessed adds to the author’s collection of novels dealing heavily with a Shaker theme. This is the first novel I’ve read by Gabhart, and the first that features Shaker characters.

I appreciated the author’s brief history of the society before reading the book. The Blessed takes place in the mid nineteenth century in a small rural community at the home of the local Baptist preacher and his ailing wife. As a teenager, Lacey Bishop was sent to be the hired girl for Miss Mona. During this time, a newborn baby is left on the preacher’s doorstep, taken in and raised by Miss Mona and Lacey. When Miss Mona passes on, Lacey is forced into a marriage of convenience on her part, but not the pastor’s, in order to maintain propriety and stay in the preacher’s house and continue to care for the growing child. After a visit from two gentlemen from the nearby Shaker community who come proselytizing, the pastor leaves his church and moves his household to join with the Shakers. Once there, Lacey is oddly attracted to a young man, Brother Isaac. But Isaac is another refugee from the outside world, who has been in mourning and rejected after the death of his wife, a prominent judge’s daughter. Isaac was befriended by a Shaker brother who’d come to town on business, and decided to accompany the brother to his home, where he eventually meets Lacey.

The style of writing is introspective, mournful, dour, yet ribboned with snatches of joy and hope as Lacey attempts to keep memories of her happy childhood alive for her young charge. Brother Amos, the man who befriends Isaac, is a delight. But in all honesty, Isaac’s story of guilt and widowhood was a tough start to the book, and I was confused about the preacher’s household setup. The marriage of convenience took place so early in the book that I wondered what would happen to free Lacey even while she met her true love interest. Life in the Shaker community reminded me a lot of other nonfiction books I’ve read about closed societies. People are people no matter how they worship or how they live, and this early Shaker society held little attraction for me.

Gabhart’s fans will surely enjoy this story as an addition to the collection. I'm not sure the story exactly fits in the “romance” category, category, however, so if you expect any sparks to fly or relationship ups and downs between the protagonists throughout the book, you won’t find that with The Blessed.

“Available July 2011 at your favorite bookseller from Revell, a division of Baker Publishing Group.”

New from Dan Walsh - The Deepest Waters

The Deepest Waters

By Dan Walsh

ISBN: 978-0-8007-1980-7

April 2011

$14.99

Revell

Ship wrecks, dysfunctional families, theft, and slavery come together in Dan Walsh's third novel, The Deepest Waters. The story takes place over the course of four days in 1857. A couple on their honeymoon travel by sea from San Francisco to New York City to meet his family and encounter tragedy. Walsh bases his book on a true event. A paddlewheel steamship went down off the eastern US coast, and some of the reported human interest stories, such as a bride packing along her wedding gifts, add poignancy to this work of fiction.

The reality of being adrift both on land on sea was well-described; the characters each drawn lovingly. The California Gold Rush is downplayed to the point that Walsh doesn't reveal the reason a single woman, Laura, apparently doing nothing, was far from her family home until well into the novel, or the business John had been engaged in until nearly the end. Walsh succeeds in portraying a devastating shipwreck and strong characters who survive because of their hope and faith, not necessarily that the other lives through the ordeal, but that no matter what happens, God will take care of them.

How to tell this story, to keep up the drama of the sinking ship, the angst of parting so soon as the wedding, rescue, being set adrift at sea, family issues, multiple cases of shipboard dynamics, even the undercurrents of slavery, is a challenge. The beginning of John and Laura's relationship might have been considered too slow but I would have preferred that to the flashbacks and constant interruption in place and time and narrator. There is a lot of activity going on from at least three scenarios during the same time period over four days, which may appeal to some readers but I like to read quickly, so I had to backtrack several times.

Although there is plenty of excitement, there are also many convenient happy coincidences. The cover is beautiful; the book easily readable for distracted moms and business people who snatch moments for a good story at lunch and toddler naptimes. However, Walsh's style and description is engaging and maturing, and that's what we reader fans like to see in authors we follow.

Available April 2011 at your favorite bookseller from Revell, a division of Baker Publishing Group.

Don't Look Back

Don't Look Back

By Lynette Eason

c. 2010

Women of Justice Book Two

Revell

Reviewed by Lisa J Lickel for Title Trakk

Jan 11, 2011

ISBN 978-0-8007-3370-4

$14.99

From the publisher: One man lives to see her dead – the other is fighting to keep her alive.

Lynette Eason's novel about a forensic anthropologist has a very similar feel to my favorite television crime shows. The story is scary and a bit creepy—everything I like in a thriller. The missing element is the little details that male thriller writers like to stick in, like the model of the weapon and other little cop factlets. However, Eason's extensive research and attention to detail regarding skeletons and torture was plenty enough to keep me turning pages.

And that's the story line. Jamie Cash was victim number three of a mass murderer; only Jamie got away. Fifteen years later, just when Jamie's starting to get her life under control, the murderer decides to remind her how disappointed he was that she got away. His psychological taunting is eerie. Eason's hero, the lovelorn FBI Special Agent Dakota Richards, has plenty of secrets of his own to keep. These two lonely souls take a chance at love and fight for a relationship.

When the murderer starts taking serious shots at Jamie's family and Dakota, Jamie takes control of her fears. But will she keep that control when her worst nightmares come true? I didn't have to guess twice about the identity of the murderer, but I appreciated the intricacy of Eason's details.

Don't Look Back is a thrill-ride read. A couple typos were unusual for Revell, but they were in the beginning and didn't detract from the rest of the story. Readers who find Hannibal Lector stories or Ted Dekker a little intense, but enjoy the likes of Steven James, will find Eason's romantic suspense a little, but not much, kinder on the late night all-alone-in-the-dark senses.