Format: ARC

Review: Arriving At Amen – Reminding Me Why I Love Being Catholic

Posted May 4, 2015 in Faith, Reading, Review / 4 Comments

Review: Arriving At Amen – Reminding Me Why I Love Being CatholicArriving At Amen by Leah Libresco
Publisher: Ave Maria Press (2015)
eARC (192 pages)
Via: NetGalley
Rating:
Reading Challenges: Read 2015

Synopsis

A former atheist makes sense of Catholicism and learns to pray by relying on the rosary and the rumba, avoiding sin and the sunk cost fallacy, and finding communion along Cartesian coordinates.

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Review: Moonlands – Things Aren’t Always What They Seem

Posted April 9, 2015 in Reading, Review / 0 Comments

Review: Moonlands – Things Aren’t Always What They SeemMoonlands by Steven Savile
Series: Moonlands #1
Publisher: CreateSpace (2015)
eARC (484 pages)
Via: NetGalley
Rating:
Reading Challenges: Read 2015

Synopsis

Ashley Hawthorne thinks of herself as the Cuckoo Girl. No matter where she is it feels like she doesn’t quite belong.
Everything changes when her eccentric aunt, Elspeth Grimm, leaves her the key to a safety deposit box in a bank that was destroyed during the Blitz. That box contains the first part of her true inheritance: an umbrella, a battered old notebook, a pair of aviator’s goggles and a locket. Each of these gifts is a unique part of who she really is.
Elspeth is a Grimm, a descendent of the brothers who purged this world of monsters by trapping them within the Concord. She is the Oracle. A keeper of all the knowledge we have amassed about the creatures of the Fae and other worlds. And someone intent on destroying the Concord has murdered her!
When Ashley looks through the goggles that night she sees curious creatures on the roof of the house across the street watching her. To the naked eye they look like crows but they are not. It is the first glimpse of the other place—the place where she will finally belong.
The journal is crammed full of things, but there’s no actual writing in it. Ash decides she’s going to use the book as a journal, and begins the first entry:
My name is Ashley Hawthorne. The ink fades so she writes it again. My name is Ashley Hawthorne. Again the ink fades. She tries again and again until the ink scratches out an entirely different first line: That is not who you are!

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Review: Akarnae

Posted February 27, 2015 in Reading, Review / 0 Comments

Review: AkarnaeAkarnae by Lynette Noni
Series: The Medoran Chronicles #1
Publisher: Pantera Press (2015)
eARC (397 pages)
Via: NetGalley
Rating:
Also by this author: Raelia
Also in this series: Raelia
Reading Challenges: Read 2015

Synopsis

Dreading her first day at a new school, Alex is stunned when she walks through a doorway and finds herself stranded in Medora, a fantasy world full of impossibilities. Desperate to return home, she learns that only a man named Professor Marselle can help her… but he’s missing.
While waiting for him to reappear, Alex attends Akarnae Academy, Medora’s boarding school for teenagers with extraordinary gifts. She soon starts to enjoy her bizarre new world and the friends who embrace her as one of their own, but strange things are happening at Akarnae, and Alex can’t ignore her fear that something unexpected… something sinister… is looming.
An unwilling pawn in a deadly game, Alex’s shoulders bear the crushing weight of an entire race’s survival. Only she can save the Medorans, but what if doing so prevents her from ever returning home?
Will Alex risk her entire world–and maybe even her
life–to save Medora?

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Review: Dauntless

Posted February 26, 2015 in Reading, Review / 0 Comments

Review: DauntlessDauntless by Dina Sleiman
Series: Valiant Hearts #1
Publisher: Bethany House (2015)
eARC (368 pages)
Via: NetGalley
Rating:
Reading Challenges: 2015 Alphabet Soup, Read 2015

Synopsis

Though once a baron’s daughter, Lady Merry Ellison is willing to go to any lengths to protect the orphaned children of her former village. Dubbed “The Ghosts of Farthingale Forest,” her band of followers soon become enemies of the throne when they hijack ill-gotten gold meant for the king.
Timothy Grey, ninth child of the Baron of Greyham, longs to perform some feat so legendary that he will rise from obscurity and earn a title of his own. When the Ghosts of Farthingale Forest are spotted in Wyndeshire, where he serves as assistant to the local earl, he might have found his chance. But when he comes face-to-face with the leader of the thieves, will he choose fame or love?

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Review: The Holy Trinity in the Life of the Church

Posted February 25, 2015 in Faith, Reading, Review / 0 Comments

Review: The Holy Trinity in the Life of the ChurchThe Holy Trinity in the Life of the Church by Khaled Anatolios
Series: Holy Cross Studies in Patristic Theology and History
Publisher: Baker Academic (2014)
eARC (272 pages)
Via: NetGalley
Rating:
Reading Challenges: 2015 Alphabet Soup, Read 2015

Synopsis

In this volume, a noted theologian brings together an ecumenical roster of leading scholars to explore trinitarian faith as it is concretely experienced in the life of the church. Drawing upon and fostering renewed interest in trinitarian theology, the contributors–including Brian E. Daley, John Behr, and Kathleen McVey–clarify the centrality of trinitarian doctrine in salvation, worship, and life. This is the third volume in Holy Cross Studies in Patristic Theology and History, a partnership between Baker Academic and the Pappas Patristic Institute of Holy Cross Greek Orthodox School of Theology. The series is a deliberate outreach by the Orthodox community to Protestant and Catholic seminarians, pastors, and theologians.

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