Review: GHOST COACH

GHOST COACH by Duane Lindsay
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Available at Amazon
I received an ARC of this book. What follows in an honest review.

This the second of a series. It can be read with no knowledge of the first one as I have done.

What if you were a con man and wanted to pull of the ultimate con. How long would you wait to pull the trigger on it.

That is the premise of Ghost Coach. Can the best con man (Leroy) ever pull off the best con ever, even though it is his daughter (Dani) wanting to do it more. Together, along with the people they bring in, they are the best team to do the job.

I never thought about what would go into a con like this. All of the details that have to be done so that they can hook the person. Yet this team made all the work look easy. Even though at almost every step, something got in their way. There are many twists and turns in the story. There are sad moments and happy moments as well as ones that make you wonder if these con men (and woman) are really the good guys.

I would recommend this book to any who like a light hearted story about how people really want to swindle themselves.

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Review: An Alarm to the Unconverted

An Alarm to the Unconverted by Joseph Alleine
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Someone told me that I should read some of the classics of Christan Literature. I thought, OK, let's give it a try. Over a year ago I decided to search online for classic Christian Literature and came up with a site called 'Classics On The Wing' (http://www.onthewing.org/Classics.html). I grabbed the first one on the list (at that time) and started to read the book.

I do not often give a book less than 3 starts. I can always learn something and nobody is that bad a writer that they do not deserve less than three stars. However, this is one of those cases. If you follow me on Goodreads you will see that I started this book over a year ago. At about the 1 year anniversary I decided that I needed to find a way to finish it as it sat for the longest time at 50%. Though no one can find Mark Twain ever saying it, a quote that is credited to him was something I had to do to finish this book: "Eat a Live Frog Every Morning, and Nothing Worse Will Happen to You the Rest of the Day". Who ever said it, never read this book. I basically had to force myself to read 5% every day so that I could finish the book.

I am sure that it is the time that this was written but the author has a one track mind. You are a sinner, you are going to hell, repent and show that you are Christian by your acts. Chapter one told us this in about 30 ways. Chapter two was more of the same. I remember reading this and thinking I did not know there was that many ways to be told I was going to hell. I am not discounting the message, but if I was a non-Christian reading this book, I would not have been influenced by it in the least. If you tell me 100 times I am a sinner in the tones that this author used, well, I most likely would have told you that you will see me there as well.

I had someone say, 'well that is just the way that Puritan authors were. That may be so. He wrote the book in 1652.

I cannot recommend this book to anyone of today's times. It is a heavy theological subject or how depraved we are as sinners, but does not offer help to those who would be converted, just more condemnation.

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Review: The 14 stations of The Cross

The 14 stations of The Cross by Mimi L. Thompson
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Available on Amazon

I received an ARC copy of this book. What follows is an honest review.

When I first saw the advertisement for this book it caught my interest. The Stations of the Cross was a tradition from when I was growing up in the Catholic Church. As a child, I was told to walk around these sculptured pictures on the walls of the church I went to. Each one of them reflected a time in the events of the death of Jesus. It is hard to get a grade schooler to think of anything like that for more than 10 minutes, and we were supposed to do at least that much at each station. It soon became just look at them and act like I was paying attention while thinking about my favorite books or TV shows. By my teens, when I would have a better understanding of them, it was just a tradition to me. Now I am in my 60's and can see the significance of the stations but as I am no longer a Catholic, I have no place to practice them. Only a few of the high order protestant churches practice them, not that I have attended. So, reading this was an interesting exercise I was to embark on.

The book advertisements said it was to be a devotional. I am not sure who it was a devotional for. To explain, I heard someone ask a preacher why he wanted to put his sermons on a Christian radio station. His reply was he wanted to reach the lost and lead them to Jesus. The person than asked him why he was not going to secular stations because only Christians listen to Christian radio stations. So, to the author, who did you hope to reach with this devotional. If it was the Christians, I am not sure many will read it because of the vulgarity of speech from so many of the people including Jesus himself. If you are trying to reach the lost with this language, and I do understand that you would want to do that, the fact it is a devotional will turn them off.

The book is basically the view of 14 events on the path to the crucification. Each story is told from one person's point of view so we have 14 points of view. In this respect, it was well done. It is hard to flesh out that many people and not get lost in the process. These people are real people, who had doubts and fears and were touched by Jesus in so many ways. We even get to look at Jesus point of view as why He was doing this. It is a good set of stories, and it should be marketed a different way in my thoughts.

Spoiler, Jesus does die in the end. Yes, I know, I may have ruined the story for you. Even though the stations end with Jesus being taken down from the cross this story does not. It follows through to the resurrection and the second coming of Jesus. I point this out because I would not want Christian friends to get the idea that I support the theology behind the book. In the end, all go to heaven, sinners and saints. I will not argue if his theology or mine is correct. I kind of guessed we were going there by about the middle of the book, and there it was at the end. I will not mark it down on the stars, theology is not what a review should be about, how it is written is what should be looked at.

Because of the language and the violence I would only suggest this book to older teens and above. While well written be aware that there is some language in it that as a Christian some may be offended by. I am not, that is the type of people who Jesus hung with. I am putting it here to let people know it is there. If it was a movie it would most likely get a soft R or hard PG because of the violence and language.


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Review: Werewolf M.D.: A Paranormal Shifter Doctor Romance

Werewolf M.D.: A Paranormal Shifter Doctor Romance by Taylor Haiden My rating: 4 of 5 stars Available at Amazon

I was provided an ARC copy of this book. What follows is an honest review.When you get to read ARCs you get a lot of different styles of books, and even some mixed ones at that. This is one of those mixed ones. One part horror/fantasy. One part romance. I think you get the idea. While this is not my style of book, I will still give it a review based on the writing. Isabella is a nurse trainee from a small Kansas town in a backwoods town in Louisiana to do her nurse residency. Dr. Roman is a doctor from there who, with the skill he seems to have could be practicing in the big city, but wants to stay right where he is at. All the woman seem to fall in love with him, including Isabella. He is what you call a player. Everyone tells Isabella that Doctor Roman is not goodnews. You might think she would listen and pay attention. Might not be much of a story if she did. She just has to know how he is healing these patients who are incurable. Without giving too much of a spoiler, you might look at the name of the book for an idea. The book is written well. There are no obvious plot holes. characters seem to be well written with a good ballance of self preservation and desire to be in a loving relationship. While the book was enojoyable, there were several intimate scenes. If you do not mind that or can read around things you may enjoy the book. Because I cannot half stars and it has one of the things I hate, I had to drop a star. I do not mind setting up for a sequel. It mind cliffhangers. Other than that, it was an enjoyablet story of a type I do not normally read. View all my reviews