Book Review: A Woman Lost by T.B. Markinson

Seeing as its August recommendation month here, I decided to show some love for the fellow authors I follow.  Trust me, I buy ALL of your ebooks and store them on my tablet.  Trouble is, I’m still building the habit of reading on my tablet so it just sits there.  For this month, I’m venturing to read those books.  If you just followed me and you have a book, or you just saw this and wanted to share a book that you wrote with me, tweet, email, facebook message me, even search me up on Goodreads and tell me.  I’d love to showcase it here.  This month is about giving back to all of you.  There is just so much talent here that I can’t help but support it all.

First up is the ever wonderful T.B. Markinson’s debut novel A Woman Lost.  She has two blogs currently.  One is 50 Year Project and the other is Making Your Mark. I first met her on 50 Year Project and it where she showcases her travelling adventures all around the world, her reading and movie watching challenges.  Its a great personal journey to read.  Making Your Mark is the more recent blog featuring her world as a self-published author.  Both are very awesome and you should definitely stop by to check it out.

Lets start this review with a little synopsis:

A Woman Lost is about Elizabeth “Lizzie” Petrie who is intelligent and beautiful, has a trust fund as she pursues the career of her dreams and also has an attractive and sweet girlfriend Susan.  When her brother Peter calls her out of the blue to announce and invite her to his wedding and to meet his future wife, Maddie, she is forced to face her family that neglects and dislikes her, especially her mother who is unaccepting of her sexual orientation.  All her mother sees is Les-Bi-An. In this situation, she loses track of how her life should be and gets scared as Susan asks her to commit.  This fear, in turn makes her start avoiding the situation and questioning what she wants in her future.  Will Lizzie be able to conquer her fears and decide what she really wants?

I’m not a person thats crazy about chick literature.  I used to back in my high school days when I read Nicholas Sparks.  BUT, if  you use A Woman Lost to initiate that whole world of romance, its definitely a good start.  Its hard to believe this is a debut novel because it was really well written.  The story was enjoyable and had some pretty sexy and passionate sex scenes to top things off. I haven’t read an ebook (that was actually a novel) this fast but the story made me want to just keep going to find out what happens to a clueless and self-absorbed Lizzie.

What is great about the story is that even though it was a romance, it was also something of a self-discovery and a whole mural of other problems that influence relationships like family and our past for example. It makes it so much more realistic.  Thats one of the issues I usually have with romance novels.  This definitely didn’t go too far from being realistic.

Also, the characters in the story were great.  Even though, the main focus was on Lizzie and her partner Susan and her brother’s fiancee Maddie.  These characters lead the romantic story on really well.  However, my favorite has to be her behind the scenes best friend Ethan.  Those conversations made it a bit more humorous in a way and was always fun to read.

It was a really enjoyable and engaging romantic read.  I loved every minute of it.  It wasn’t too long either.  I highly recommend that you check this out and show a fellow blogger some love 🙂 If you aren’t into romance, maybe you know someone that does!

Book Review: The Better Man Project by Evan Sanders

*I’m going to change my structure of the Book reviews now.  I’m going to just post this link in the review section of Goodreads.  Again, if you’d like to add me to your Goodreads, I’d love to see what you are reading.*

A fellow blogger Evan@ The Better Man Project (click on the link there to see his latest pos) published his new motivational/inspirational book, The Better Man Project. If you haven’t checked out his blog, its a nice little space to visit with lots of motivational and uplifting words and posts.  I always like to stop by and I always leave with a little bit more.

I don’t usually read books in this genre but seeing as I adore reading Evan’s blog, I decided to buy it since he also made this available on e-book at a very affordable price of $4.99 USD.  I’m still adapting to reading e-books..so this one took me a 3 weeks to read. Hopefully the next book review will be in a shorter time frame 🙂

This book is about his ongoing journey to becoming a better man.  Explain what he values and the importance of it, its motivating and inspiring others to not be afraid to dream big and to chase your dreams.  I`m going to quote the book for writing the synopsis with one of his sentences in his book:

I always promised to make my writing as honest as possible, encompassing both the light and the darkness while setting out with the aim to inspire others to lead powerful and inspiring lives.-Evan Sanders

He talks about what he has gone through and the little things that happen in his life to lead him to change his perspective on things and uses it to show us how to view others and see issues in a more positive light.

There really isn’t much of a summary to the book but that.  Its not a fictional story but an account of what one person has gone through. I think his project is quite honorable and worthy of mention.  The path to become a better person, the path to have the courage to follow our passion is a huge step and one that maybe before I read this, I had already understood those perspectives.  However, sometimes we need to read it again for the reminder to keep things in positive light.

It was quite an inspirational read, mostly because there were many situations where I connected and related to.  It helped me see some issues I was having in another perspective.  I think the end goal of this book was right on.  It definitely was an enjoyable read 🙂

If Evan reads this, I wish him the best of luck with this book, and fellow readers out there (I know there’s a few of you), remember to check it out and give him some support!

Book Review: Sunshine in Darkness by Beth Winokur

A few weeks ago, a fellow blogger and Goodreads friend and author Beth sent me an invite over in Goodreads to pick up her free ebook from Amazon, Sunshine in Darkness.  I thought why not since I always love to explore new novels and also check out the ebook reading experience.

Goodreads review:  This is probably one of the first demon possession book that I have read. I didn’t really know what to expect at first but that doesn’t matter because it has a way of helping attach us to Sunshine/Rose right of the beginning from where she tries to reclaim her body. Her struggles and the feeling of desperation to reclaim her life just makes us root for her. And when she gets back her body, her life turns around and as she tries to cope with everything around her, I couldn’t help but to read on and on. Its gripping and the attachment to her made me want to know more and more what happens around the corner as things start spiraling out of control. I loved it! It was fun and suspenseful! 🙂

Lets start with a little plot.  We start off with the character of Sunshine who is just a soul floating about because ever since she was young, her body had been possessed by an evil demon.  This demon has ruined her life and has made her mom’s life miserable as well.  However, she still keeps finding the opportunity to reclaim her body and take her life into her own hands.  One day, that opportunity is offered to her and she takes it.  Slowly, she needs to grasp the aspects of basic living that she hasn’t had in the past seventeen years and at the same time, learn to the control her emotions.  This leads her to hurt someone and eventually her mom put her into a mental institution to help straighten her out.  As Sunshine’s life crumbles, she realizes that these evil demons are everywhere.  As things get from bad to worse, she has to find a way to escape from their grasps but also, pretend that she is normal.

I don’t think there’s any spoilers in there.  My Goodreads review really covers it all.  This book was great because it was a gripping story.  I think of the best parts of the book is that right from the start, it gets the readers to fully attach themselves to our main character Sunshine.  We understand how she feels as a floating soul just observing a demon ruin her actual life.  It makes us feel her sad she is that she can’t control any part of it but she tries to get it all back.  There’s a lot of emotions and sometimes, the way the author puts it makes us feel and experience everything and makes us want to read on. It makes the readers want to hope for the eventual hopeful days even when things start crumbling down around Sunshine.

I love easy reads.  This one is extremely easy.  It was my first experience reading a complete ebook and I can tell you that the story and the writing was so good that I didn’t bother me one bit where I was reading it.

If you get a chance and you’re into this sort of thing, go for it.  Its a simple but complex story at the same time, but does a really good job and holding onto your emotions and taking you for a gripping ride through demon possession and learning to live life. I’ll definitely recommend it.  There isn’t much scary moments but more suspenseful and intense ones.  A thrill to read! One of the best young adult novels I’ve read so far 🙂

Weekly Writing Challenge: Mind the Gap…Paperbacks vs E-books

This week’s Mind the Gap: How do you prefer to read, with an eReader like a Kindle or Nook, or with an old school paperback in hand?

To check out this weekly writing challenge, please follow the link HERE and join or check out other entries!

My answer: Paperback — nothing beats opening up a brand new book or rummaging through a bookstore.

This covers its all: Young adult, fantasy, fiction, mystery, mangas…

Call me old-fashioned but I have to go with paperback. I’ve considered buying an ebook reader before I got my tablet.  At least it would beat having a crazy growing collection of books, that have not infested my bookcase to the point where I don’t know where to put any other ones.  I even tried to test run that by reading the sixth and seventh Harry Potter novels on the computer.  I did finish it but it took eternities.  My eyes would ache after scrolling through 10 pages max.  It takes away from the excitement of the text in front of me.  That’s a feeling that I don’t particularly enjoy.  Of course, you could argue that ereaders don’t have a glare and maintain the nice gentleness on the eyes because of that feature.  That would make it more bearable than a computer (or even a tablet).

What doesn’t cut it for me is the experience of reading.  That idea of going to the bookstore and browsing through a physical book in your hand. The feeling of the spine and the texture of the pages in your hands.  When you bring it home, it can sit on the desk as a constant reminder to pick it up and read it to enter into another world that sucks us away from reality.  As the book hits the peak and excitement grows, you can flip the pages. When you reach the end, you can close the book quietly (or loudly if you’d like) and hold it in your hands and reflect on everything you’ve read, the adventures, fun or not fun.

When you return it to the book shelf, you can look over days, months or years later and think about re-reading it again.  It’ll bring back the good and bad memories of what you did read.  And then if it was good, you can send it over to a faraway good friend, or lend it to a relative.

The satisfaction of reading a physical book is almost irreplaceable.

How about you-paperback or ereader?