Book Reviews | Self-Publishing Review

Review: Timpanogos by Glen R. Stott ★ ★ ★ ★

Timpanogos by Glen R. Stott is the romantic saga of Randal Anderson, beginning as a young boy in the spring of 1958 as he begins to discover the world of dating and the new boundaries and responsibilities of a young adult.

Raised a Mormon, Randal’s religious life gives him great joy and purpose while creating sparks of friction with his new-found interest – respectful though it may be – in girls. When he meets his first true love in a young Catholic lady named Allyson Crawford, the differences in their backgrounds raise serious questions for Randal as their simple dates […]

Review: Just Pru by Anne Pfeffer ★★★★★

Just Pru, by Anne Pfeffer, is a laugh out loud, heartwarming story about a twenty-five-year-old woman named Prudence Anderson.

Prudence hates her name, and prefers being called Pru. One night, while sitting in her apartment in Los Angeles watching television, a fire erupts in her building and she has to be evacuated. Her apartment is destroyed. She and her cat, Chuck, are suddenly homeless. Pru has two options. Stay with Ellen, a woman who lives in the same building, or go back home to her parents who are controlling. Pru doesn’t know Ellen, but she really doesn’t want to […]

T B Markinson2019-03-05T12:51:54+02:00February 15th, 2015|Categories: Book Reviews|Tags: Contemporary Fiction Book Reviews, Humor, New Adult Book Reviews|

Review: Swim a Crooked Line by Al X. Griz ★★★★

Swim a Crooked Line by Al X. Griz follows several people’s lives in Nebraska: a farmer and his family including Chad who’s enlisted in the army in Afghanistan, and Rico, a linebacker for the Cornhuskers. Each character is richly imagined and contends with major societal issues. Swim a Crooked Line is a quiet novel about big ideas.

Griz is making a valiant attempt at writing the Great American Novel, in the sense that the novel is an epic that is very, very American. The book has Midwestern farming, corporate chain stores destroying Middle America, college football, and other uniquely American […]

Henry Baum2015-02-10T03:41:18+02:00February 9th, 2015|Categories: Book Reviews|Tags: Literary Fiction Book Reviews, Men's Fiction Book Reviews|

Review: Energy Dependence Day by Christian F. Burton ★ ★ ★ ★

Energy Dependence Day by Christian Burton is a political thriller about a terrorist attack in the U.S. generated in Saudi Arabia. It follows the lives of many characters, including a detective and the terrorist himself, with a step by step analysis of how an attack is put together. It manages to be both page turning and informative. Most of all, it’s believable.

The premise could sound like a fairly black and white story: good vs. evil where the terrorists are bad and the Americans are good. Fortunately, Burton doesn’t go down this road. This is a sympathetic portrayal of each […]

Henry Baum2019-01-22T05:56:31+02:00February 8th, 2015|Categories: Book Reviews|Tags: International Fiction Book Reviews, Thriller Book Reviews|

Review: Peer Through Time by David T. Pennington ★★★★

In 2079, technology has advanced enough that machines and mankind are becoming more and more indistinguishable from and indispensable to each other. It’s in Northern California where Carmela Akronfleck – a physicist working on the secrets of time travel – succeeds in surpassing one final gauntlet of science, and transports herself to the year 1936.

Taking refuge with a woman named Lasha, they eventually begin to share their secrets: they can both hear voices. When her cybernetic implants malfunction, Carmela receives a message through time of a string of murders, and her sister begins following the final footsteps of deceased […]

James Grimsby2015-02-06T09:05:13+02:00February 6th, 2015|Categories: Book Reviews|Tags: Fantasy Book Reviews, Science Fiction Book Reviews|

Review: Tesla (Book 1) by Mark Lingane ★ ★ ★ ★

Tesla Sebastian is a young man living a thousand years in the future, in the remains of a destroyed world hit by a nuclear apocalypse way back when. Orphaned by disease, and trapped with a horrible aunt as his guardian, he is not able to continue his passions for a long-gone mechanical, steam-powered age he had been experiencing with a caring teacher. But when he finds an envelope hidden in a jewelbox he must fight for his life in a violent and raging adventure – this changes everything.

Steampunk goes head to head with Cyberpunk in a post-apocalyptic setting in TESLA […]

Naka Jackson2022-04-28T07:33:38+02:00February 5th, 2015|Categories: Book Reviews|Tags: Apocalyptic Fiction Book Reviews|

Review: This Book Belongs To by Daley James Francis ★★★★

A nine-year-old girl. A magical sketchbook. A huge imagination. A lot of trouble.

When men in hardhats arrive at Amy Carr’s house, she’s old enough to understand that this isn’t a social call. They are there to knock down her house. In the ruins, Amy unearths an old sketchbook. Soon she learns that this isn’t an ordinary sketchbook.

The creatures she draws in this magical sketchbook come alive. The premise behind this book is fun and just as creative as Amy’s imagination in the story. Most middle grade readers are still focused inward and aren’t very aware of the outside […]

T B Markinson2016-07-29T05:15:55+02:00February 3rd, 2015|Categories: Book Reviews, Lead Story|Tags: Children's Book Reviews, Young Adult Book Reviews|

Review: Workman’s Complication by Rich Leder ★★★★★

Workman's Complication Workman’s Complication by Rich Leder is the immensely entertaining first book in his series McCall & Company, following the exploits of down-on-her-luck private investigator/struggling actress Kate McCall. In the first installment, McCall tries to balance starring in an Off-Broadway vampire musical, investigating her father’s death at the Monument Insurance building, inheriting his PI business, and trying to solve her first case: a workman’s comp case where a construction worker broke his back and might be taking a benevolent old businessman for all his money.