REVIEW: Winter Shadows by Casey Bond

The Book
Source: free copy courtesy of author
Publish Date: October 29, 2013
Publisher: Tate Publishing & Enterprises
ASIN/ISBN: 9781627467575
Format: ebook (pdf)
Pages: 183
Date Read: September 15, 2013

Description
There is nowhere to hide from evil. It's everywhere.

Winter Shadows is a coming-of-age story following Claire, a young lady who is struggling to find her place in the world after losing her mother to cancer. After a corrupt American government declares a pandemic and forces its residents into quarantine encampments, Claire and her father, along with other members of her church and community, go into hiding in a cave system in rural West Virginia. While coping with the losses of her mother, home, friends, sense of safety and normalcy, Claire begins to pick up the pieces of her past, finding a new normal despite the darkness that surrounds her.
While adjusting to a new environment, and the group of people she finds herself surrounded by, Claire is faced with several important decisions that will influence the path her life will take. Who can she trust? Who should she love? How can she survive? Forced to choose between Ethan's steadfast, mature love for her and the love of mysterious and dangerous Colin who appears, Claire learns the difference between infatuation and love. Claire finds herself by learning to bind together with those around her in order to survive. She becomes self reliant and strong.
Despite of her newfound confidence in herself, and the isolation in which she resides, evil is able to find its way to her. While fighting against it, she reestablishes her faith in God and opens her heart to the possibility of love.

My Review

The Cover
I love the cover. It's just so cool. The pictures reflecting in the shades is a nice concept.

The Characters
There are a lot of characters. Claire, Ethan and Colin being the major ones.
I like Claire. She's a strong heroine. She's so easy to like. Although, at the beginning, her constant complaining was so annoying.

Ethan is nice. I don't feel much concerning him

I wasn't excited about Colin coming into the story but he is an interesting character.

The character development was good and easy to follow.

The Story
The plot is strong. I was into the book from the first page.
There is a lot of suspense and you just want to know what happens next.
The characters and the situation they are currently in was a source of strength for their small community.
There's a lot of Christianity referenced in the book. In fact, Claire is a pastor's child

Generally
I'm not really a fan of dystopian but I've been reading the good ones lately. This is one of the good ones.
Apart from a few writing errors, I loved it.

Find The Author
Tate Publishing
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BN.com
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Recommended To
The book is targeted at young readers but I think older readers would enjoy it. If you don't mind the references to Christianity.

Rating
4 stars

REVIEW: Love, Carry My Bags by C. R. Everett

Received a free copy courtesy of the author

Finished: August 10, 2013
Rating: 4.5 stars

“Love isn’t always going to be foo-foo drinks garnished with mini umbrellas and skewered fruit,” I said, hoping to remove any rose tinting from their vision. “Sometimes it’s hot cocoa when you come in from the snow, nothing fancy, but makes you warm inside. That’s how it should be.”

“When you miss someone a lot, you stop living.” I picked up Mouser, snuggling his soft fur to my face. “When you miss someone a little, you never take them for granted and you appreciate every little thing.” I thought about my girls and my home, the journey along the way. “If you don’t miss them at all, you lose all that.”

The Book*
Camryn Johnson’s world is turned upside down when long lost love, Reese Dahlgren, re-enters her life at a pivotal point in her already challenging marriage. She faces an excruciating predicament: choose between a broken home for her daughter or a broken life for herself.
After her parents' divorce, Camryn first meets high school basketball star, Reese, at the Harvard Milk Day Festival bed races. Reese hides baggage of his own… until Camryn melts his heart and learns secrets entrusted only to her. Still, the weight is too much to bear. Unable to cope, Reese unwittingly backs Camryn into a corner during his air force enlistment—love him from afar, or leave him.
Enter aerospace engineering student, Glenn Conroy. Persistent and savvy, he woos Camryn during her junior year of college and wins her heart. Or does he?
When Reese re-enters her life, further disrupting her tenuous marriage, Camryn turns to best friend, Megan, for advice, but refuses to believe Megan’s suggestion that she’s caught in a “simple” love triangle.
Camryn unveils hidden mysteries and secrets as she embarks on a life-changing journey of revelation and forgiveness, transcending doormat qualities inherited from her mother, and in the process finds what life's struggles are really all about.

My Opinion
The beginning was a bit too slow for me. It was also a bit confusing as I had to re-read some parts to know if the author was still talking about the same time or we had moved to a different day.

Apart from the slow start, I loved the book. It was beautiful, emotional and real. It was good to see a book that doesn't follow the usual high school sweethearts get married and live happily ever after.

This is a good and realistic book. Sometimes, Camryn was stupid and her actions annoyed be, sometimes I felt sad for her. Sometimes I was happy with her. She's a very relatable character. how she grew as a person and learnt from mistakes -hers and others.

This was a great read and is really good for a debut. All the characters including the minor ones were important to Camryn's growth. There are some lessons to be learnt from this book.

It touches on religion sometimes. Not too much but enough for me to tag it as a Christian book. Sort of. Camryn is a preacher's kid. Her mom is an extremist and she struggles with her faith. Or lack of it.

All in all, apart from the slow and confusing start it was a great all round read.

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*summary from goodreads

REVIEW: Faith, Hope and Murder by Elise M Stone

I received this book free courtesy of the author

Finished on: 6th August, 2013

Rating: 3.5 stars

The Book
This is the first book in the series and is a debut novel by the author.

We follow Faith Andersen, web designer, who is unsure about God and is now suddenly unemployed.
Faith has promised to help Ursula, a German immigrant, prove that her fiancee (Michael) is innocent and not responsible for the murder of Carlos Fuentes who before his death sold Mexicans dreams of a better life in America.

Enter Pastor John Menard, divorcee and father of one, who wants to update his church's website for a little bit of romance.

My Opinion
This is a nice, well written book with a great plot. The characters are distinct. We see most of the story from Faith's POV. John and Hope's POV come up sometimes but it's never confusing.

The story line is easy to follow. The pace is good and steady. Not too fast. Not too slow. There's no rush. Everything is well thought out.

I liked that it's not preachy, yet there's the underlying theme of faith/belief in God.

All in all, Stone put together a well written piece with everything you’d see in a regular mystery.

Recommended for readers who are squeamish but enjoy a good mystery. And who don't mind a bit of religion

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