Sanctuary: My Review

I like romance novels, but I've had some readers express dismay when I promote books with half-naked people on the cover, so in general, I don't review many mass-market romances on this blog. When offered the opportunity to review Sanctuary, I saw that the cover did not have anyone with a heaving bodice or washboard abs, so I thought maybe it would be a relatively clean romance. It is not.

Sanctuary is the story of Ed Russell, an Army major in his late 30s who is commander of group in Serbia. While manning a border checkpoint he meets Lea, a 19 year old former college student who is now a refugee. Lea is recovering from pneumonia and is planning to head south to find her family, who left without her. He convinces her that to do so would be suicidal and offers her the chance to stay with him, if she will be his mistress--basically trading sex for food and shelter. She agrees. She gives him use of her body, but guards her heart. Eventually he asks her to marry him and return to the US with him. She agrees, not because she loves him (she is the first to admit that due to her disfunctional family she doesn't know what love is) but because he is kind and needs her.

They return to the US where Lea learns to be an officer's wife. They end up parenting his son from his first marriage and Lea discovers her talent for art. Its a romance novel, so I doubt you think it ends in divorce court.

I started reading the book figuring that a woman must have written it--after all, its a romance novel. Several chapters into it, I turned to the back cover, to confirm my suspecians that it was a man, but no, it was a woman. Why did I think it was a man? Basically because of all the crude sexual references and potty language. Look, I know the book is set around Army life, and I know those guy's language isn't always the nicest, but there is just so much in this book that wasn't necessary to the story. Lea tells Ed's orderly (kind of all purpose servant, but a soldier) that she heard he lost a c.j. competition last week. She didn't know what kind of competition that was; turns out it has to do with masturbation. It added nothing to the story, it was just another opportunity to bring in sexual content in a crude way. In another scene, when they are back in the States, they put their coats in the CO's bedroom, which they see is decorated with Japanese erotic art featuring men with large erect.....again TMI, added nothing to the story...

We are constantly told that Ed and Lea have sex, and we get a few descriptions of the bedroom scenes but these aren't the sweet, passionate encounters one usually reads in bodice-busters. They all sound pretty "slam bam thank you ma'am", but later Lea talks about learning to enjoy sex so he couldn't have been all bad.

These two learn to love each other, but we really don't get to see why or how. Ed's character doesn't make sense in so many ways. He is said to be a born-again Christian and is dismayed when Lea won't go to church with him--but he is the one who took her as a mistress. He asked her why prostitutes did what they did, and didn't seem to see the irony.

When I started reading this book, I almost put it down after a couple of chapters as I didn't care for the crude language or his treatment of her, but I decided to keep going, and did finish the book. The basic storyline is good, but I would have preferred a lot less sexual content and better character development.

I'd like to thank the author, N.E. Julian for sending me a review copy of the book. If you check her website you can read excerpts from the book and learn about her.

To purchase from Amazon: Sanctuary

Blog Tour and Review: White Picket Fences

About the Book:

When her black sheep brother disappears, Amanda Janvier eagerly takes in her sixteen year-old niece Tally. The girl is practically an orphan: motherless, and living with a father who raises Tally wherever he lands– in a Buick, a pizza joint, a horse farm–and regularly takes off on wild schemes. Amanda envisions that she, her husband Neil, and their two teenagers can offer the girl stability and a shot at a “normal” life, even though their own storybook lives are about to crumble.

Seventeen-year-old Chase Janvier hasn’t seen his cousin in years, and other than a vague curiosity about her strange life, he doesn’t expect her arrival will affect him much–or interfere with his growing, disturbing interest in a long-ago house fire that plagues his dreams unbeknownst to anyone else.

Tally and Chase bond as they interview two Holocaust survivors for a sociology project, and become startlingly aware that the whole family is grappling with hidden secrets, with the echoes of the past, and with the realization that ignoring tragic situations won’t make them go away.

Will Tally’s presence blow apart their carefully-constructed world, knocking down the illusion of the white picket fence and reveal a hidden past that could destroy them all–or can she help them find the truth without losing each other?

About the Author:

Susan Meissner was born and raised in San Diego, California, the second of three daughters. She married a man who served in the US Air Force. They moved to rural Minnesota in 1993 after seven years in the Air Force — five of them spent in Europe — and she became aware of a gnawing desire to write a novel. She ignored it while her children were young, choosing to try writing articles for magazines but nothing ever got published.

In 1995, she was offered a job as a part-time reporter for her county newspaper. The publisher gave her her own weekly column, In 1998, she was named editor of the Mountain Lake/Butterfield Observer Advocate, the town's weekly paper, after the county newspaper purchased it. She won several awards over the years, including was having her paper named the Best Weekly Newspaper in Minnesota by the Minnesota Newspaper Association in 2002.

In 2002, she suddenly had an incredible urge to write a book; a novel so she resigned as editor of the newspape and set out to write Why the Sky is Blue. It took four months to write and ten months to be accepted by a publisher and she has been writing novels ever since

When she's not working on a new novel, she is directing the small groups ministries at The Church at Rancho Bernardo or teaching workshops on writing and dream-following, as well as spending time with family, listening to or making music, reading great books, and traveling.

My thoughts:

I enjoyed this book. As noted above, it dealt with family secrets and how even those kept with the best of intentions can cause a fence between people. It also showed how even good people can be tempted to sin--and that they are capable of saying "no". The book is classified as Christian fiction, but Jesus is never mentioned. The family goes to church, but if you didn't know what a church was, you'd figure it was a social club, based strictly on the information in this book. They pray and the main Christian theme of new life and redemption is there, but not as explictly as in most Christian fiction. I'd say this is a book that even non-Christians could enjoy.

Meissner is a gifted writer who is able to tie together WWII Poland and modern California; a ne're do well drifter and financial planner; a well-ordered family and painful secrets. I definitely recommend this one.

Thanks to Staci Carmichael at Random House for providing a review copy of this book.

Links:

Author's website

Publisher's website

Purchase on Amazon: White Picket Fences: A Novel

The Recipe Club: Book Review

The Recipe Club is the story of two friends, Valerie and Lilly. Valerie is the daughter of an agoraphobic (afraid to leave the house) and a high school science teacher/inventor. Lilly is the daughter of a psychiatrist (who happens to be making house calls to treat Val's mother) and a singer/actress. Lilly's dad seems far more fond of Val than he does of Lilly, who, like her mother, is a singer. Valerie ends up as a doctor.

Starting when they are in sixth grade in 1964, the girls exchange letters, and with the letters, recipes. Most of the story is told in those letters. We follow the girls through teenaged angst, first boyfriends, losing their virginity, college, an abortion, a lesbian relationship, marriage and motherhood. We watch them learn their parents' secrets and finally get their lives in order (or so it seems). We see them go from girlhood chums to betrayal and hatred followed by a mature relationship.

I enjoyed the book but think I would have liked it more if I liked any of the characters. However, I didn't find any of them likable. Valerie and Lilly seemed to be Exhibit "A" in the "How to parent so as to produce messed up kids" book. The recipes in the book looked good, and I'll have to try some.

I'd like to thank the folks at FSB Media for providing a review copy of this book. At their website you can read other reviews and and excerpt from the book, including a recipe.

To purchase from Amazon: The Recipe Club: A Tale of Food and Friendship

Sunday Snippets--A Catholic Carnival

Hi, and welcome to another edition of Sunday Snippets--A Catholic Carnival. We are a group of bloggers who gather once each week to share out best posts. We are all Catholic and blog at least somewhat about Catholic things; some do so exclusively, others only periodically. All are welcome to participate here.

To join in the fun, go to your blog and create a post titled Sunday Snippets--A Catholic Carnival. In that post describe and link to any posts you want to share with the rest of us. Also put in a link to this post. Then come back here, and sign Mr. Linky and give us a link to your post. Finally, go visit other people's posts, and leave comments! Some folks who don't post often have asked if they could, rather than creating a special "Sunday Snippets" post, just link their original post to Mr. Linky. That's ok, if your original post includes a link back here; since the idea is to share our posts and readers with each other. Encourage your readers to join us too.

I have a Catholic book to review, but it is a Bible study and is taking me a long time, so no real Catholic posts this week from me, but have a look at some of my book reviews while you are here, and I have a couple of giveaways.

If you want a weekly reminder to post, please subscribe to our yahoogroup.

Chocolate: A Love Story (and a giveaway)

About the Book:

With gigantic vats of churning chocolate, desserts like their famous chocolate pizza, and 12 varieties of hot chocolate served in custom mugs, Max Brenner, Chocolate by the Bald Man has turned their line of hip, colorful themed restaurants into an international sensation.. Chocolate: A Love Story is a vibrant new cookbook that includes 65 original recipes narrated in the quirky, captivating voice of Max Brenner, the restaurant's visionary founder and "bald man." Bold original illustrations inspired by Art Deco poster graphics, full-color photographs, easy-to-follow, delicious recipes, and a serving of Max's unique vision for spreading "chocolate culture" around the world make this book a must for every chocolate lover.

About the Author:

Max Brenner is a confectioner, businessman, and above all, a passionate lover of chocolate. He began his career as an apprentice throughout Europe, where he worked in the best kitchens alongside renowned pastry chefs. It was in Europe that his love for chocolate evolved into passion, leading him to open a small chocolate workshop in his homeland of Israel. Many years later, Max Brenner: Chocolate by the Bald Man is now a thriving international brand, committed to spreading Max's vision of Chocolate Culture to the world.

My Thoughts:

What's not to like about a book full of chocolate recipes? There are tried and trues like chocolate cake, chocolate mousse, sacher torte, and chocolate chip cookies (but these cookies are spiced iwth cinnamon, nutmeg and cloves and have both milk chocolate and dark chocolate chips). There are also some that are new, at least to me--like spaghetti with chocolate sauce, topped with strawberries and toasted nuts. Once all the Halloween candy is gone, I'll have to pick a couple of these recipes and give us all a chocolate fix.

However, there are things not to like about the book. The first is that several of the recipes call for raw eggs, and there are no notes telling you to use powdered egg whites or to pasturize the yolks. Secondly,I didn't care for the artwork and general tone of the book. There were few pictures of the food, and lots of 1960's pop-art style drawings. The names of the food had a '60's revolutionary sound to them: "Alternative mild chocolate mousse, Revolutionary rice pudding, Meaningless sweet spaghetti, Contentious chocolate chip cookies". I guess that style of art is one of those things you either love or hate, and I don't love it.

The recipes themselves are a bit more complicated than those found in the average church cookbook; however you can make them without committing days and every dish in the kitchen to the effort.

Giveway:

The nice folks at Hatchette sent me an extra copy, so I'm passing it on to a reader. To enter, leave me a comment with a favorite chocolate recipe. If you copy if from somewhere on the web, leave a link to the source, but I want recipes, not just links. If you copy it from a book or food package, make sure to credit your source. Make sure your comment has your email address in it. I'll give you up to three entries for three recipes. I'll give you another entry if you blog about this contest and leave me a link to your post. US only--this book is heavy, media mail is a must!

Links:

To purchase from Amazon Chocolate: A Love Story: 65 Chocolate Dessert Recipes from Max Brenner's Private Collection

Max Brenner's Homepage (has chocolate for sale)

Publisher's Page:

Thirsty: My Review

About the Book:

It is 1883, and all of Klara Bozic’s girlish dreams have come crashing down as she arrives in Thirsty, a gritty steel town carved into the slopes above the Monongahela River just outside of Pittsburgh. She has made a heartbreaking discovery. Her new husband, Drago, is as abusive as the father she left behind in Croatia.

In Kristin Bair O’Keeffe’s debut novel, Klara’s life unfolds over forty years as she struggles to find her place in a new country where her survival depends on the friends who nurture her: gutsy, funny Katherine Zupanovic, who isn’t afraid of Drago’s fist; BenJo, the only black man in Thirsty to have his own shop; and strangely enough, Old Man Rupert, the town drunk.

Thirsty follows a chain of unlikely events that keep Klara’s spirit aloft: a flock of angelic butterflies descends on Thirsty; Klara gives birth to her first child in Old Man Rupert’s pumpkin patch; and BenJo gives her a talking bird. When Klara’s daughter marries a man even more brutal than Drago, Klara is forced to act. If she doesn’t finally break the cycle of violence in her family, her granddaughters will one day walk the same road, broken and bruised. As the threads that hold her family together fray and come undone, Klara must decide whether she has the courage to carve out a peaceful spot in the world for herself and her girls.

About the Author:

Kristin Bair O’Keeffe grew up in Bethel Park, Pennsylvania. Her maternal grandfather, a Croatian immigrant, worked as a steelworker in U.S. Steel’s Clairton Works all his life. Nearly every weekend as a kid, Kristin visited her grandparents’ home in Clairton on a bluff overlooking the Monongahela River. As she played tag with her sisters, the smokestacks filled the sky with their gaseous utterances and the barges toted their haul down the river.

Kristin’s articles and essays have been published in Poets & Writers Magazine, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, The Baltimore Review, San Diego Family Magazine, The Gettysburg Review, and elsewhere. Her column—The Fiction Writing Workshop—appears monthly in the popular ezine Writers on the Rise. In 2008, her work was translated into Chinese and published in China’s most popular weekly news magazine, Oriental Outlook Weekly, and she is featured in the Bylines 2009 Writers’ Desk Calendar.

With a B.A. in English and journalism from Indiana University and an M.F.A. in creative writing from Columbia College Chicago, Kristin has always combined her love of writing with teaching. She is a passionate writing instructor with fifteen years of workshop experience at U.S. colleges and universities, including Boston College, Endicott College, Montserrat College of Art, University of New Hampshire, and Columbia College Chicago.

My Thoughts:

O'Keeffe is a gifted writer, one who knows how to use words to paint pictures and draw out emotions in people. Thirsty is a novel about pain--the pain of domestic abuse, the pain of working in a steel mill, the pain of losing loved ones, the pain of racial prejudice and the pain of alcohol. It certainly wasn't a fun light read, but the ending was hopeful.

The main characters are Catholic Croatian immigrants. Early in the book a large number of butterflies come to Thirsty, a mill town near Pittsburgh. It is locally seen as a miracle and it draws people back to the Church. However, O'Keeffe notes that the priest "threw away the collection of Latin prayers he had compiled over the years and recycled every few Sundays without the parishioners even noticing the repetition. Instead, he opened his Bible to the most poignant passages and spoke to the people from his heart in their common language--English". Since this supposedly happened in 1884, I'll have to point out that the mass was said in Latin at that time, and no priest would have changed it to English. However, even the Latin mass had a vernacular homily on the readings of the day.

I found the ending happy, but not realistic.

Links:

Author's Website

Purchase from Amazon:Thirsty: A Novel

Jackson: Giveaway Time!

About the book:

The Jackson Packing Company is in trouble. The old-line family-owned firm, once one of the largest in the country, now struggles merely to survive in the fiercely competitive meatpacking industry. When a major marketing agreement is cancelled, bankruptcy is imminent. More than two thousand people will lose their jobs, but the secretive company continues to avoid public scrutiny, the coming calamity known by only a few.

Assigned the job of unmasking the firm, Rachel Brandeis, an ambitious young reporter from the East Coast, spends weeks exhausting every possible resource. When at last she succeeds, however, that only signals the beginning of an attempt to save the company by selling it to its employees. To succeed, decades of animosity between company officials and the union representing most of the workers must be wiped away. At the center of the turmoil stand CEO Skip Peterson, obsessed with saving his family’s firm, and skeptical Union President Homer Budge, reluctant allies deserted by many of their former colleagues as they attempt the near impossible.

About the Author:

T.P. JONES lives in Berkeley, Calif., with his wife, Elisabeth. He was born in Foxborough, Mass., and received his bachelor’s degree from Trinity College. He earned an MFA from the University of Iowa and a master’s in mathematics from the University of Connecticut. Jones worked as a math teacher at a business college before retiring to focus solely on his writing. He is eagerly awaiting the publication of the next “The Loss of Certainty” installment, The Gamble. Visit www.thelossofcertainty.com to learn more.

Giveaway (NEW RULES):

Thanks to the nice folks at Phenix & Phenix, I have three copies of this book to give away. Here is how you enter:

For your first entry, just leave a comment with your email address. For a second entry, Go to the author's website. Read about the characters in this book. Leave a comment telling me which one you'd like to invite to dinner, and tell me why. Make sure you leave an email address with your comment. For a second entry, read the excerpt, and then send me an email at ruthjoec@gmail.com telling me the name of the publisher of the Tribune. For a third entry (you have to do two and three first) leave a comment with the name of your favorite city in the mid-west. Blog about this contest for an extra entry and leave me a comment with a link to your post. Good luck! Contest ends November 20. US and Canada only, P.O. Boxes are ok.

My Blog Peeves

In the last few months I've started reading a LOT more blogs--that's what happens when you learn how Google reader works and start surfing all the wonderful blogs out there. Obviously, not every blog is going to appeal to me--some will cover genres or topic that really aren't my thing, while others will just plain be poorly written. On the other hand, there are some blogs that look interesting, which I'd like to read, but which I end up skipping. Why? These are my pet blog peeves:

1. Jump posts. If you write a really long post periodically, I don't have a problem with it being a jump post (one of those where you have to "click here" to continue reading), but I don't want to have to click through to read every post.
   
   
2. Partial feeds, linked to jump posts. This is the quickest way to get booted from my to be read list. I understand that if you have ads on your blog you want me there, rather than in my reader, and so I'll tolerate partial feeds, but if I click through to your blog and find a jump post, I'm going to jump up and close the window.
   
   
3. Noisy blinking bling that makes your site slow to load.
   
   
4. Too much canned content. I know a lot of tour groups make you publish their stuff if you get books from them, but PLEASE add an original thought or two. I'd really like to know if you liked the book.
   
   

So what are your pet peeves about other people's blogs?

Can God Be Trusted?

Trusting God is one of those things that gives me trouble, which is probably why reading this book is taking me a while, even though it is barely over 200 pages. It is funny though, how God talks to you sometimes. Last night I sent emails to those who won. I got this reply (which I have permission to print, and which I've edited to remove personal details). It touched me, and I'd like to share it with you.

Thank you, RAnn. I just returned from a rosary for a friend who was killed instantly in a car accident. He was hit by a guy driving the wrong way on a one way access road with a suspended license and supposedly the driver who hit our friend is a 25 yo heroin addict. The driver who hit our friend supposedly was stopped by the police 2 hrs before the accident for driving 15 miles over the speed limit. For some reason, he was let go after he got stopped 2 hrs before the accident happened. Tomorrow is our friend's funeral. The man killed converted to Catholicism a few years ago, and was baptized. So, if that is the silver lining in the whole thing. I think I need the book that I just won so thank you!

I guess I'm not the only one who needs to be reminded that God can be trusted, and that we don't see the whole picture like He does. So, readers, say a prayer for your fellow reader and for the repose of the soul of her friend.

Blog Tour: Leaving Carolina

About the Book: Piper Wick left her hometown of Pickwick, North Carolina, twelve years ago, shook the dust off her feet, ditched her drawl and her family name, and made a new life for herself as a high-powered public relations consultant in LA. She’s even “engaged to be engaged” to the picture-perfect U.S. Congressman Grant Spangler.

Now all of Piper’s hard-won happiness is threatened by a reclusive uncle’s bout of conscience. In the wake of a health scare, Uncle Obadiah Pickwick has decided to change his will, leaving money to make amends for four generations’ worth of family misdeeds. But that will reveal all the Pickwicks’ secrets, including Piper’s.

Though Piper arrives in Pickwick primed for battle, she is unprepared for Uncle Obe’s rugged, blue-eyed gardener. So just who is Axel Smith? Why does he think making amends is more than just making restitution? And why, oh why, can’t she stay on task? With the Lord’s help, Piper is about to discover that although good PR might smooth things over, only the truth will set her free.

My Thoughts: I had mixed feelings about this book. On the one hand I could relate to the heroine; a girl who never fit in when she was in high school. On the other hand, I found the premise as noted above to be unrealistic. The romance elements were fun, and in some ways this book is not much more than fluffy chick-lit, but sometimes it seems to take itself too seriously. The faith elements, while not overwhelming just didn't strike a cord with me and almost seemed forced into the story. This isn't a bad book, and if you like romantic Christian chick-lit, you'll probably like this; however I didn't find it to be a great book.

A complimentary copy of this book was provided to me as part of WaterBrook Multnomah's Fall Blog Tour.

Publisher's Webpage

Amazon Link: Leaving Carolina: A Novel (Southern Discomfort)