Book Reviews

The latest indie book reviews from Self-Publishing Review

Review: Vaporized by Victor Levine ★ ★ ★ ★

VaporizedVaporized by Victor Levine follows the exploits of up-and-coming/down-and-out musician Jon Cells who’s looking for his big break in the New York music scene of the early eighties. In the meantime, he’s working at a perfume factory, which is under investigation by the FBI for possible drug connections. John Cell gets caught in between the rivalry between two familes, the Iranian Monsouris and Italian Pecorinos, when all that he wants to do is make music.

What makes Vaporized shine over other rock and roll novels is its authenticity. Jon Cells himself was an actual musician and the record he’s working […]

2019-01-22T15:50:18+02:00February 20th, 2015|Categories: Book Reviews|Tags: , |

Review: Packing Parachutes by Robert H. Sarkissian ★ ★ ★

Packing ParachutesHumor is hard. Pathos is much easier. Show a character being chased by a monster, and if you’re good at your craft, readers will sweat and squirm. Show poor orphaned children dying of hunger, and you may draw tears from your readers even if you aren’t that good. But make a joke, and who knows? A sense of humor is like taste in food. What appeals to one person might repulse another. How do you feel about fried chicken livers? See what I mean? So I always admire an author who writes humor, especially the kind of humor that you’ll […]

2015-03-18T04:17:12+02:00February 17th, 2015|Categories: Book Reviews|Tags: , |

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

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 […]

2015-02-16T08:05:00+02:00February 16th, 2015|Categories: Book Reviews|Tags: , |

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

Just PruJust 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 […]

2019-03-05T12:51:54+02:00February 15th, 2015|Categories: Book Reviews|Tags: , , |

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

Swim a Crooked LineSwim 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 […]

2015-02-10T03:41:18+02:00February 9th, 2015|Categories: Book Reviews|Tags: , |

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

Energy Dependence DayEnergy 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 […]

2019-01-22T05:56:31+02:00February 8th, 2015|Categories: Book Reviews|Tags: , |

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

Peer Through Time by David T. PenningtonIn 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 […]

2015-02-06T09:05:13+02:00February 6th, 2015|Categories: Book Reviews|Tags: , |

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 […]

2022-04-28T07:33:38+02:00February 5th, 2015|Categories: Book Reviews|Tags: |
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