A Review~ A Time to Rise~by Nadine Brandes

ABOUT A TIME TO RISE
What more can you sacrifice than your life?

Parvin Blackwater is dead.

At least that's what the Council and the world thinks. But her sacrifice tore down part of the Wall long enough to stir up hope and rebellion in the people. Now she will rise again. Strong, free, and fearless.

Parvin and Solomon must uncover the mysterious clues that Jude left behind in order to destroy the projected Wall once and for all. Meanwhile, the Council schemes to new levels of technology in its attempts to keep the people contained. Can a one-handed Radical and a scarred ex-Enforcer really bring shalom to the world?

File Size: 2827 KB
Print Length: 399 pages
Simultaneous Device Usage: Unlimited
Publisher: Enclave (October 14, 2016)
Publication Date: October 14, 2016
Sold by: Amazon Digital Services LLC
Language: English
ASIN: B01IJVQ06E

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Nadine learned to write her alphabet with a fountain pen. In Kindergarten. Cool, huh? Maybe that’s what started her love for writing. She started journaling at age nine and thus began her habit of communicating via pen and paper more than spoken words. She never decided to become a writer. Her brain simply classified it as a necessity to life.

Nadine is a stay-at-home author and writes stories about authentic faith, bold living, and worlds soaked in imagination. She lives in Idaho with her husband and works as a freelance editor. When she's not writing, editing, or taste-testing a new chai, she is out pursuing adventures. A Time to Die is her first novel. Visit Nadine at www.nadinebrandes.com



MY REVIEW
    A Time to Rise by Nadine Brandes is such an incredible book. It is book three and the last in the Out of Time series. I wish this series would never end. I have enjoyed each and every one of these stories. I so looked forward to hearing what Parvin, her family and friends were up to.
  These books were not fluff and silly adventures that some books give you, but the Out of Time and this book A Time to Rise were amazingly mature and had hard issues to resolve.
  The characters are so very likable and the villains are so devious and horrible.
  In the last book Parvin died or so we thought. It was something when she came back and the things she had to go through to bring peace to the people.  That’s all she wants is for the people to have peace and for them to go where they want and not be shut out by the wall.
  In the end you will be astonished at who finally helps Parvin and Solomon. A Time to Rise is one exciting, suspenseful, intriguing book. I can’t say enough about how wonderful this series is and how beautifully the story ended. Magnificent isn’t a strong enough word for how much I love this book. Highly recommended.

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Thank you to the  Author/Publicist  for providing this book for review. I was not required to write a positive review. The opinions I have expressed are my own. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission's 16 CFR, Part 255

When Calls the Heart-Hearts in Question A Review

ABOUT HEARTS IN QUESTION

An air of discord settles over Hope Valley when Jack’s spirited mother, Charlotte, pays an unexpected visit… and stays with Elizabeth. While Charlotte "helpfully", critiques Elizabeth's skills as a housekeeper, pie-maker and teacher, Rosemary has become a bit of a taskmaster herself for those helping with her imminent wedding to Lee. Meanwhile Gowen comes under suspicion for "irregularities", in the bank’s bookkeeping, and as he and Nora prepare to leave town, Bill and Jack must contend with a violent storm, rising flood waters and the collapse of the Silverton mine!

Actors: Daniel Lissing, Erin Krakow
Directors: Neill Fearnley
Format: NTSC, Widescreen
Language: English
Region: Region 1 (U.S. and Canada only. Read more about DVD formats.)
Number of discs: 1
Rated:
 Unrated
 Not Rated
Studio: Shout! Factory
DVD Release Date: October 4, 2016
Run Time: 84 minutes


MY REVIEW
  When Calls The Heart-Hearts in Question is another amazing DVD in this Hallmark series. So many things happen on one  show. It doesn’t just have one story line, but several and I love that.
  Jack’s mother comes and tells Elizabeth how to cook food, wash clothes and do the things that Jack likes.
  Rosemary and Lee are putting together there wedding. Everything has to be more than perfect for Rosemary, but she learns some valuable lessons.
  Will Gowen’s bad practices catch up with him? Nora and Gowen leave town and you can imagine why.
 All of this si going on and a very violent storm brings floods, collapse of the Silverton mine. So much action and adventure. The ending is just magical, but some have to go through horrible heartaches.
  Really a thrilling show that will make you want to watch it again and again. Highly recommend this fantastic series.

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“Disclosure of Material Connection: I received one of the products  mentioned above for free in the hope that I would mention it on my blog. Regardless, I only recommend products or services I use personally and believe will be good for my readers. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255: “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.”

Baby, Baby by Diane Stortz A Review

ABOUT BABY, BABY
A sweet, colorful board book that appeals to a baby's interest in looking at other babies
Babies enjoy books, looking at other babies, and their own flowering abilities. This short rhyming poem combines all three in a sweet and happy way, while introducing babies to God's love for them. The simple words are paired with colorful images of babies engaging in familiar activities, allowing the book to be used as an introductory concept book as well. And it ends with a reminder that Baby is always loved by God.

Board book: 20 pages
Publisher: Worth'; Brdbk edition (September 6, 2016)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0824919882
ISBN-13: 978-0824919887
Product Dimensions: 6.5 x 0.6 x 6.4 inches
Shipping Weight: 11.2 ounces

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Diane Stortz is an author, editor, mother, and grandmother. Her professional achievements include creating Sunday school curriculum and working as an acquiring editor and editorial director at Standard Publishing. Diane has published more than a dozen books, including two titles for women, but her heart belongs to children's books. Diane says that more than anything else, she hopes to make God's wonders known to the next generation.

MY REVIEW
  Baby, Baby by Diane Stortz is just an amazing book. It has short poems that rhyme. The pages tell what a baby can do, how God loves them and has a delightful mirror in the back. We know all babies love to look at themselves.
  Each page has the most precious, colorful pictures on them. Any baby would smile and enjoy looking at these sweet babies.
  One reason I like this book is because it talks about God and how He loves babies.
  Highly recommended. Excellent book for mothers, grandmothers or friends to give to their favorite babies.

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“Disclosure of Material Connection: I received one of the products  mentioned above for free in the hope that I would mention it on my blog. Regardless, I only recommend products or services I use personally and believe will be good for my readers. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255: “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.”

Second Opinion by Hannah Alexander A Review

When widower Dr. Grant Sheldon moves with his teenaged twins to Dogwood Springs, Missouri, they are still reeling from the death of his wife--their mother. He's hoping the idyllic setting of this small town will help ease the transition. He discovers too quickly that even this isolated place of beauty isn't free of all the problems he left behind in the city.

Experienced ER nurse, Lauren McCaffrey, arrives in Dogwood Springs hoping for a fresh start in her career--and her family's humiliating pressure for her to find a husband.

When the community's tranquility is threatened by a mysterious epidemic and an antagonist with a lust for money and hatred for authority, Grant and Lauren find themselves and their new friends racing the clock in a desperate search for answers.

Second Opinion combines emergency medicine and small-town America in a story of loves discovery and a faith that lasts.

File Size: 1362 KB
Print Length: 345 pages
Simultaneous Device Usage: Unlimited
Publisher: Hannah Alexander Books (December 3, 2015)
Publication Date: December 3, 2015
Sold by: Amazon Digital Services LLC
Language: English
ASIN: B018YCCVYS

Their novels have won multiple national and international awards, including the Christy Award, three Holt Medallion Awards, two Reader’s Choice Awards, and Library Journal’s Top Five Christian Novels of the Year. They have been nominated by Romantic Times Magazine for the Lifetime Achievement Award.

Hannah Alexander is the pen name for the writing collaboration of Cheryl and Mel Hodde. They chose the name "Hannah Alexander" to incorporate their two names into one. To them, Hannah means hope in the Lord and Alexander means servant of mankind

Mel and Cheryl live in the Missouri Ozarks, where they like to set the majority of their books


MY REVIEW
  Second Opinion, book one in The Healing Touch by Hannah Alexander is a fantastic book that I love. I’ve read many books by Hannah Alexander and love them all.
  Dr. Grant Sheldon and Nurse Lauren McCaffrey are two very impressive characters. You just feel like they are real people and that they can be trusted.
  Grant lost his wife two years ago and he hasn’t talked to God since then. He has teenaged twins who are so very opposite of each other, but love each other dearly.
  Lauren has a fantastic parents and siblings, who are all married. Lauren feels like she is in a trap, everyone fixing her up with eligible men. So she decides to move to a different town to get on with her own life and leave the matchmaking behind.
  Put all of that together with a mysterious epidemic  going around. people dying, drug lords and you have a novel worth reading.
  Highly recommended. Love this book.

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I own this book and was not required to write a review.

The Deer Effect by Susan Wingate A Review

WINNER OF FOUR BOOK AWARDS IN 2015! WINNER in the 2015 USA Best Books Award for religious fiction (finalist), 2015 eLIT Book Awards for religious fiction (winner), WINNER in the 2015 Pacific Book Awards for Christian fiction (winner) and a finalist award-winner in the 2015 Next Generation Indie Book Awards for inspirational fiction.

A Fantasy Thriller for fans who enjoy reading books by James Patterson, Sue Monk Kidd, Frank Peretti and Alice Sebold.

Once in a while a story comes along that resonates with the very essence of what we call "humanity," and speaks to readers of every age. The Deer Effect is that story - a phenomenal #1 Amazon bestseller lauded for its artistic touch, its tender tapping at emotion, and its mesmerizing ability to speak to the hearts of readers around the world.

"ONE BRITTLE LEAF FOUND ALONG our usual path proved the days had gone wintry. Papery thin as onion skin--blanched from frosty temperatures and yellowing like the pages of an old Bible, the leaf’s long slender shafts, crooked and dry, painted my world. The blue sky dragged me out that Sunday in December—December 5, 2010, if you must know—when the temperature rose to only forty-two Fahrenheit. What was I thinking?

Hold on. Wait a second. Let me back up just a tad. For your information, I'm dead. Although I speak of myself, make no mistakes. I died this day..."

So the story begins about Hannah Demsey who is found dead near the body of a fawn on the side of the road. Rod, Hannah's husband, sets out on a journey to find the killer. With his faith waning, all truths change when Rod comes face-to-face with the only person who can tell him how his wife really died.

THE DEER EFFECT is a story of loss, redemption and forgiveness.

File Size: 538 KB
Print Length: 346 pages
Publisher: Eye of the Needle Press (November 5, 2014)
Publication Date: November 5, 2014
Sold by: Amazon Digital Services LLC
Language: English
ASIN: B00MRPKZ2O

Susan Wingate is the author of the young adult romantic fantasy and paranormal books found in Troubled in Paradise and The Deer Effect.

If you want to read clean, award-winning, fiction steeped in suspense and sometimes set in mythical lands, or books with mystery and thriller elements, you will enjoy reading Susan Wingate’s books. The twists and turns of her stories and her likable, touching characters are always unique. Some of her work even harkens back to the fantasy series The Chronicles of Narnia written by C.S. Lewis and also to the superhero Spider-Man series–books with unforgettable heroes and fantastical worlds readers can escape to. Susan's work has been compared with Mitch Albom's The Five People You Meet in Heaven to James Patterson's Lake House. Her mystery novels are riveting stories like JD Robb and Sue Grafton and her fantasy novels ring of The Golden Compass and A Wrinkle in Time.

MY REVIEW
  The Deer Effect by Susan Wingate isn’t worth reading. Since I got it free I don’t feel bad. I thought it would be really a great read since it won four awards. Just goes to show you that you can’t believe everything you read and we all are very different in what we like.
  This book is told from a dead person’s point of view. It almost seems sacrilege to me. The dead woman talks about her dog more than her husband. She misses her dog so much. She goes along spreading fairy dust and thinking of a big bowl of popcorn and it appears.  She, Hannah also came back as a child spirit, which I believe it completely wrong.
  It really seems like a childish kind of book to me except for Rob, the husband’s feeling of loss and hurt. He was deeply sorry for what he said to Hannah right before she was killed.
If the whole book would have continued in the way Rob felt and left all of the silly, girlish coming back out it would have been so much better.
  Another thing I didn't like Hannah died at the same time as a deer so it jumped around the skies with her.
  I do not recommend this book at all. Just to silly for me. Life and death isn’t a joke or to be taken lightly.

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This is my book and I wasn’t required to review it.

Review~Saving My Assassin by Virginia Prodan

 ABOUT SAVING MY ASSASSIN
"I should be dead. Buried in an unmarked grave in Romania. Obviously, I am not. God had other plans.”

At just under five feet tall, Virginia Prodan was no match for the towering 6' 10" gun-wielding assassin the Romanian government sent to her office to take her life. It was not the first time her life had been threatened—nor would it be the last.

As a young attorney under Nicolae Ceausescu’s brutal communist regime, Virginia had spent her entire life searching for the truth. When she finally found it in the pages of the most forbidden book in all of Romania, Virginia accepted the divine call to defend fellow followers of Christ against unjust persecution in an otherwise ungodly land.

For this act of treason, she was kidnapped, beaten, tortured, placed under house arrest, and came within seconds of being executed under the orders of Ceausescu himself. How Virginia not only managed to elude her enemies time and again, but how she also helped expose the appalling secret that would ultimately lead to the demise of Ceausescu’s evil empire is one of the most extraordinary stories ever told.

A must-read for all generations, Saving My Assassin is the unforgettable account of one woman’s search for truth, her defiance in the face of evil, and a surprise encounter that proves without a shadow of a doubt that nothing is impossible with God.

File Size: 2505 KB
Print Length: 331 pages
Page Numbers Source ISBN: 1496411838
Publisher: Tyndale House Publishers, Inc. (June 7, 2016)
Publication Date: June 7, 2016
Sold by: Amazon Digital Services LLC
Language: English
ASIN: B0198U69XO

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Virginia Prodan is an international human rights attorney, an Allied Attorney with the Alliance Defending Freedom, and a sought-after speaker.

As a young attorney under Nicolae Ceausescu's brutal communist regime, Virginia had spent her entire life searching for the truth. When she finally found it in the pages of the most forbidden book in all of Romania,Virginia accepted the divine call to defend fellow followers of Christ against unjust persecution in an otherwise ungodly land.

For this act of treason, she was kidnapped, beaten, tortured, placed under house arrest, and came within seconds of being executed under the orders of Ceausescu himself. How Virginia not only managed to defeat her enemies time and again, but helped expose the appalling secret that would lead to the demise of Ceausescu's evil empire is one of the most extraordinary stories ever told.

Virginia Prodan's compelling story of courage in the face of intimidation and even death on behalf of others is a testament to her unwavering faith in a God who delivers.
Exiled from Romania since 1988, Virginia currently resides in Dallas, TX. She has two daughters, Anca and Andreea, and a son, Emanuel.

Visit Virginia's Author website: http://www.virginiaprodanbooks.com ;
or on twitter @virginiaprodan
Facebook: facebook.com/virginia.prodan.1
LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/pub/virginia-prodan/1b/458/24


MY REVIEW
  Saving my Assassin by Virginia Prodan is a powerful novel of her life. Virginia was born and raised in Romania during the rein of Ceausescu which was a communist rein. Where religion was not outlawed, but they had so many strict rules that you couldn’t take talk about Jesus or have any Bibles or movies of the Bible in your home to show to other people. You would be arrested and you would then disappear.
  Virginia became a lawyer and defended these people with bringing up the law and usually always winning. She became much hated with the leaders and police. She was kidnapped, beaten, tortured, placed under house arrest, and came within seconds of being executed under the orders of Ceausescu himself.
  Virginia had many friends in the US embassy and the Voice of America radio show. Many times they helped her through trials and difficulties. Of course they and the churched prayed for her.
 One part of this book is amazing how a very evil man was sent to kill her and she told him about Jesus. That man just left, but wait until you read what happened to him.
  Just an amazing book. That is highly recommended. I know this is something you want to read. A book to keep and read again.

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I received my free copy from Net Galley for my review. I was not required to write a positive review. The opinions I have expressed are my own. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission's 16 CFR, Part 255

The Alliance by Jolina Petersheim A Review

ABOUT THE ALLIANCE

When Leora Ebersole sees the small plane crash in her Old Order Mennonite community, she has no idea it's a foreshadowing of things to come. Soon after the young pilot, Moses Hughes, regains consciousness, they realize his instruments were destroyed by the same power outage that killed the electricity at the community store, where Englischers are stranded with dead cell phones and cars that won't start.

Moses offers a sobering theory, but no one can know how drastically life is about to change. With the only self-sustaining food supply in the region, the Pacifist community is forced to forge an alliance with the handful of stranded Englischers in an effort to protect not only the food but their very lives.

In the weeks that follow, Leora, Moses, and the community will be tested as never before, requiring them to make decisions they never thought possible. Whom will they help and whom will they turn away? When the community receives news of a new threat, everyone must decide how far they're willing to go to protect their beliefs and way of life.

File Size: 15811 KB
Print Length: 384 pages
Publisher: Tyndale House Publishers, Inc. (June 1, 2016)
Publication Date: June 1, 2016
Sold by: Amazon Digital Services LLC
Language: English
ASIN: B0198V4LL0

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Jolina Petersheim is the bestselling author of The Midwife and The Outcast, which Library Journal called "outstanding . . . fresh and inspirational" in a starred review and named one of the best books of 2013. Her writing has been featured in venues as varied as radio programs, nonfiction books, and numerous online and print publications such as Reader's Digest, Writer's Digest, and Today's Christian Woman. Jolina and her husband share the same unique Amish and Mennonite heritage that originated in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, but now live on a solar-powered farm in the Driftless Region of Wisconsin with their young daughters. Follow Jolina and her blog at jolinapetersheim.com.


MY REVIEW
  I usually don’t like to read Mennonite or Amish books, because it’s usually the same old thing, but The Alliance seemed different to me. Also I’ve read several books this year about a huge power outage that takes the whole world {must be the year for that} and how it affects everyone and how food would run out along with not having any cars/trucks that would work because of how cars are made now.
   The Alliance tells how the Mennonite don’t believe in wars and fighting back and how some Englischers got stuck in their community and how they worked together to protect each other.
  Leora and Moses are so different, but so alike in many ways.
One thing I didn’t see as natural is the romance in the middle of a crisis. A lot of people would disagree with me, but I don’t see it happening.
  This is the first book I’ve read by Jolina Petersheim and it won’t be the last. She writes a good story, but some of it was hard for me to believe. So much of it just seemed like the characters were pretending.
  I will however recommend it and most people will enjoy it.


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I received my free copy from Net Galley for my review. I was not required to write a positive review. The opinions I have expressed are my own. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission's 16 CFR, Part 255