Novelista

  Title: Koru: The Trainer I Used to Know By: Katelynn Balcom   Genre: Young Adult/Fantasy-Romance   Review Rating: 3 ½ Stars out of 5     When I first started reading, I thought the book reminded me a little of The Princess Bride .   The similarities are in the book structure and roughly in the beginning plot.   Koru: The Trainer I Used to Know is structured as a story within a story—the main character is telling the story to an in-story audience.   The plot is a universal one of boy meets girl, boy does something stupid, and then boy spends the rest of the story trying to win back the heart of the girl.   Overall, it is well executed.   I feel that it could have had more depth in spots.   Also, the subplots could have used a bit more meat as well.   The characters shine in the story.   Gabriel, our POV character, narrates the story well.   We understand his motivation—as a whole.   This happens to be a place...

I offer to review books .  Usually, I will post my review here and on Goodreads as well as post links to buy the book that I got to read.  However, every once and a while, I read a book that won’t get a good review.  This is that book. This book is the author’s first book, so I will not mention the title nor the author’s name.  I have emailed the author about my poor review before posting, and actually have agreed to review the sequel.  With that said, let’s talk about the book and its issues. The premise of the book is that the main character, whose name I can’t remember (problem), becomes a masked hero to save her city from a destructive alien.  The concept is great.  The execution has major issues.  I am going to put my editor’s hat on to critique the issues in this book. The first issue is the prologue.  It could have been a chapter on its own.  I personally feel that the book should have opened on its main character.  The openi...

Title: Poetry and Ponderings: A Journey of Abuse and Healing Through Poetry Author: Diamante Lavendar Genre: Poetry Description: In this rare collection of nonfiction Christian poetry and prose based on real life experiences, Diamante Lavendar, a victim of abuse, shows the reader the raw emotions of pain, hate, and denial that occur before a victim of abuse can find a way to heal from the pains of assault. Knowing herself the very difficult journey of being a victim, Diamante was abused as a child, and turned to alcohol and drugs to numb the pain. Many years later, she started to heal under God’s watchful eyes and was able to find love in her life again. She shares these truly inspiring, religious poems in the hopes that it may help other victims heal their hurts, as she did while writing the poetry collection. How I came to review this book: I posted one of Ms. Lavendar’s poems for Poetry Wednesday .  She emailed me to review her chapbo...