When God Made You -- book review

I love a good children’s book, and I especially love one that has great illustrations. This book hits both of those things. When God Made You by Matthew Paul Turner is such a beautifully written book for children. There is a ton of rhyme in the book which makes it fun for kids. I read this book several times to my daughter, who is just under a year and a half, and she enjoyed listening as I read because of the fun rhyme to the words. She may not have understood a lot of what I was saying, but she still liked the book. More importantly though, this book has a beautiful message and one that I believe is important for children to learn early on. The message of the book is God created each person for a special purpose and he knows every part of them and they are loved by Him just as they are. Kids need to know this deep inside of them (well, adults do too.)

I also want to point out that the illustrations, by David Catrow, in this book are absolutely wonderful. It is full of bright colors and great drawings. The pictures tell a story of their own. The story of the pictures goes right along with the words of the book, they flow beautifully together. I enjoyed looking at these illustrations just as much as reading the book.

I would recommend this book to anyone who has kids. I think this book would also make a great gift. I’m sure that I will read this book to my daughter many more times in the coming years.

     

I received this book for free from Blogging for Books for this review. 

Light of the Last -- book review

Lightof the Last is the third and final book in the War of the Realm series. I have read the two previous books in the series; Cloakof the Light and Rise of the Fallen. Both of the previous books were good reads; this book follows right along with them. Although, I must say, if you were to read this book without reading the previous two, you would miss out on a lot of what is happening and some parts may be a bit confusing.

This book is truly the coming together of the first book, which focused on the main character Drew Carter, and the second book, which focused on the main character Validus. Light of the Last goes back and forth between the two and brings everything together. The three part story is wrapped up in the end, but (spoiler alert) there is just a bit of an open ending.

Once again Chuck Black does a good job of crafting a fictional story around the topic of spiritual warfare. Speaking of warfare, this book is action packed. With that said there were parts that seemed like a bit of a stretch. Now of course this is a fiction book, and Black does himself say that he takes some liberties in the area of spiritual warfare. I believe I pointed it this out in my reviews of the other two books in the series, but I’ll say it again. I appreciate that Black includes Reader’s Guide at the end of the book that states Scripture references that he uses to back up his writing. So, for anyone worried about the Biblical context of the book, there is the foundation of that.

I received this book for free from Blogging for Books for this review.

An Adventure in Light & Darkness - Book Review

Cloak of the Light by Chuck Black is a gripping story that centers on a young man, by the name of Drew Carter. At first Drew just seems like a kid, then teen, who has had several unfortunate events happen to him during his life. Then one of these unfortunate events changes his life forever in a drastic way. Drew is suddenly forced to live in world where he can see not only the normal world we live in, but what seems to be another world that no one else seems to see. This change to Drew’s world forces him to change his life as well. Along the way there are also other characters that are an essential part of the story, Sydney and Ben. They are Drew’s two closest friends who are there with him through the journey that he is forced to travel between light and darkness.

ChuckBlack has done a great job putting a fresh spin on the topic of spiritual battle. In a note at the end of the book, he himself says that creative liberties have been taken in approaching this topic. He also does note that there are many things that are unclear to us about spiritual battle simple because the Bible doesn’t give us every little detail about it. He does however take the truths that we know of the subject from the Bible and stay within those guidelines. There is also a great Readers Guide at the back of the book. This would be particularly helpful for someone who does not the Bible well or is a younger reader.

The down side to this book is that the start is a bit slow. If you stick with it though, until about a fourth of the way through the book, the pace picks up really quickly. From there the story moves along quickly, then it gets a bit bogged down and can start to seem a little redundant. Keep reading though, the story finishes strong and leave you hanging a little. Just enough unanswered questions to make you want to continue on with the War of the Realm series. Cloak of the Light is the first book in the series, by the way. 

I would think that this book would appeal to both adolescent boy and girls. There is a little bit of suspense, sci-fi, love story, intriguing story, and Biblical truth for everyone. As an adult I enjoyed it as well, and will probably read the other books in the series.

I received this book for free from Blogging for Books for this review.

Prairie Hummm......Book Review

Where to begin with this review? I have mixed feelings about this book, so overall I guess it was just ok. This isn’t the normal type of book (a historical romance) that I would normally choose to read. I wanted to read a fiction book though since the last few that I have read have been nonfiction. After looking through my choices, Prairie Song by Mona Hodgson was my winner.

To begin, the back cover made it sound like an interesting story. Good way to start. The cover artwork is nicely done, another good starting point.

Now on to the story; as I began reading the characters were inviting. The story revolves around several characters, which helps to move the story along and add more depth and interest. The main character is Anna Goben a young woman with a rough life, who dreams of something better for her family and has convinced them that they need to join a wagon train and head out on a fresh start. Anna is a likable character in the story. In fact one thing that I really enjoyed was the depth of each person in the story and how they all seemed to have their own little side story happening. This is what makes a character seem like a real person, not just words on a page.

Then the story kept going, and going, and dragging on. Mid way through the book it starts to bog down a bit and seem repetitive in way, like about 50 pages or so of the book could have been condensed down. And pretty much at this point in the story you can figure out what is going to happen. This makes it pretty predictable. A fact that I feel is hard to avoid with a romance story. You just kind of assume the guy is going to get the girl, they will fall in love, and live happily ever after. Prairie Song wasn’t quite able to get past the predictability of the romance.

Then suddenly over the last few chapters I was drawn back in to the story and hooked again. This is the point when I wanted to just keep reading so that I could get to the end (in a good way.) So, overall it started well, dragged in the middle, and ended on a high note.       

I received this book for free from WaterBrook Multnomah Publishing Group for this reviewing purpose.