Book Reviews | Self-Publishing Review

The God Within by Martine Racine

Author Martine Racine is a Jungian psychoanalyst and ordained minister. In The God Within, she describes how the divine lives in all of us.

Racine posits that our center of power, creativity, and morality doesn’t come from extrinsic sources. Rather, they reside in our being and are tapped into when we feel from our hearts. All of the destruction in the world, according to Racine, comes from the unhealthy imbalance of putting too much emphasis on the mind. The mind is a tool that should be used only through the guidance of heart because our heart is what is […]

BlueInk Review2020-02-21T05:41:08+02:00April 29th, 2012|Categories: Book Reviews|

Review: Murder Takes Time by Giacomo Giammatteo

What would you do if you thought one of your two best friends from childhood was wanted for murder and you were the cop in charge of the investigation? Would you be able to put your feelings aside and do your job? In Giacomo Giammatteo’s debut novel, Murder Takes Time, he explores the power of friendship and honor.

Right from the start, the reader is thrown into the bloody world of mobsters. The opening pages depict a horrific killing. The murder scene is not for the faint-hearted. At first I was uncomfortable. But fear not, this is not a novel […]

Review: Cephrael’s Hand by Melissa McPhail

Fans of epic high fantasy are a resilient bunch, having decided long ago to reply to detractors of the genre with, “You read in your world, I’ll read in mine.”

Cephrael’s Hand is Book One in a series called A Pattern of Shadow & Light and is the first novel by Melissa McPhail. Our story is set in the mythical realm of Alorin, three centuries after a massive war which almost wiped out an entire race called the Adepts. A three-continent map of Alorin is included, as are a Glossary of Terms and Dramatis Personae.

I consulted the front matter […]

Lela Michael2014-05-19T21:40:20+02:00April 25th, 2012|Categories: Book Reviews|Tags: Fantasy Book Reviews|

Review: Embraced by Darkness: Sacrifices by Tarah L. Wolff

As far as romantic epics go, the story of Sacrifices, book one in the Embraced by Darkness series by Tarah L. Wolff, is as good as Rhapsody. I started reading this novel with the hope that it would prove even better, and in some ways it succeeded, but in many, many other ways, it failed . . .

The story of Sacrifices unfolds as it follows the lives of four female characters: Osondrous, Jezaline, Karalay, and Constance. They all have some gift that makes them special. The first three women are leaders of the Human species, known […]

John Hennessy2014-05-19T21:43:00+02:00April 17th, 2012|Categories: Book Reviews|Tags: Romance Book Reviews|

Review: The Player Piano by G. Charles Cook

What a pleasure this book is to read, thrilling without being a thriller, mysterious without being a mystery, of another time without being nostalgic.

We are introduced in this novel to many characters, large, small, and interesting alike, including “The Wooten Bunch” of Water Wells, Alabama, consisting of six students. Most of the focus is on four particular boys in this bunch as they transition from sixth grade in 1954 through the end of high school in 1961. While The Player Piano at times a coming-of-age story, it’s more than that. This is a tale of the very survival of […]

Lela Michael2014-05-19T21:44:22+02:00April 13th, 2012|Categories: Book Reviews|Tags: Literary Fiction Book Reviews|

Review: Railway Confessions by Carolyn Moncel

Much of this collection, a trio of short stories and extra material to boot, features characters with previous appearances in the short fiction of Carolyn Moncel. Following the three stories there is an Epilogue, a Mini-Interview of the author, some handy Book Club questions, an excerpt from Carolyn’s forthcoming novel Geneva Nights, and blurbs for Carolyn’s two previous publications Encounters in Paris and 5 Ways to Leave a Lover.

The setting for the three stories in Railway Confessions is a train ride from Paris to Geneva, during which three pairs of strangers share intimate details of their lives […]

Lela Michael2014-05-19T21:45:42+02:00April 11th, 2012|Categories: Book Reviews|Tags: Short Stories Book Reviews|

Review: Clips & Consequences by Beth Myrle Rice

Imagine being invited to lunch by your ex-husband and his wife to discuss what to do with the hard-to-manage teenager you all have in common. Imagine that, instead of actually going to lunch, they simply stay in the car, turn to you as you sit in the back seat, and accuse you of providing drugs to said teenager. “They were looking for a confession,” writes Beth Myrle Rice of that day in 1995 when the incident happened to her.

Ironically, Clips & Consequences is in part what is known, by definition, as a confessional memoir. In other words, the book […]

Lela Michael2014-05-19T21:46:53+02:00April 5th, 2012|Categories: Book Reviews|Tags: Memoir Book Reviews, Non-Fiction Book Reviews|

Review: Promised Valley Rebellion by Ron Fritsch

To enter the world in Promised Valley Rebellion is to experience a culture that is both familiar, with the emotions, fears, temptations and desires all humans possess, yet faraway and misty and almost like the Middle Ages, but not even exactly like that either. It’s definitely in another time – one that divides its days by the moon and seasons.

It’s a place without skyscrapers, but with a civilization that recognizes classes where people are born into groups known as valley people, hill people and river people. There are hierarchies, with gods over all, kings as rulers of people, tellers […]

wanda carruthers2014-05-19T21:48:17+02:00April 3rd, 2012|Categories: Book Reviews|Tags: Men's Fiction Book Reviews|