Tag: 5 star

{Review} Encountering Truth – Daily Homilies from the Casa Santa Marta

Posted October 19, 2015 in Reading, Review / 0 Comments

{Review} Encountering Truth – Daily Homilies from the Casa Santa MartaEncountering Truth by Pope Francis
Publisher: Image (2015)
Hardcover (416 pages)
Via: Blogging for Books
Rating:
Also by this author: The Joy of the Gospel, Walking with Jesus, The Name of God is Mercy
Reading Challenges: Read 2015

Synopsis

Experience the morning homilies of Pope Francis and witness how he continues to change the life of the Catholic Church.
Shortly after seven in the morning, Pope Francis gives a brief homily in the little Vatican chapel of Saint Martha, in front of an audience that is always different: gardeners, office workers, nuns and priests, as well as a growing group of journalists. It is a set appointment, and in some ways a revolutionary innovation, where a pope speaks to everyone, off the cuff, without any written text, as he would have done as a parish priest.
Encountering Truth is a collection of highlights from these homilies from March 2013 to May 2014. Along with summaries by Radio Vaticana (who recorded and transcribed the homilies) and commentary by Father Antonio Spadaro, SJ, these reflections provide moments of inspiration, simplicity, and a glimpse into the papal world very few ever get to experience.

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{Review} The Commander – A Sacrificed Short Story = More Riece!!

Posted October 15, 2015 in Reading, Review / 0 Comments

{Review} The Commander – A Sacrificed Short Story = More Riece!!The Commander by Emily Wibberley
Series: The Last Oracle #1.5
Publisher: Paranoid Productions (2015)
eARC (15 pages)
Via: Author
Rating:
Also by this author: Sacrificed, Divined
Also in this series: Sacrificed, Forsworn, Divined
Reading Challenges: Read 2015

Synopsis

In this short story addition to Sacrificed (The Last Oracle, Book I), discover Riece’s point of view when he first met his new and beautiful prisoner, Clio, inside Morek’s great pyramid.
This story is best read after Sacrificed but can be read during any point in the series.

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{Review} The Kiss of Deception – A Strong Princess and a Secret

Posted October 8, 2015 in Reading, Review / 6 Comments

{Review} The Kiss of Deception – A Strong Princess and a SecretThe Kiss of Deception by Mary E Pearson
Series: The Remnant Chronicles #1
Publisher: Square Fish (2014)
Paperback (486 pages)
Via: Library
Rating:
Also by this author: The Heart of Betrayal
Also in this series: The Heart of Betrayal
Reading Challenges: Read 2015

Synopsis

A princess must find her place in a reborn world.
She flees on her wedding day.
She steals ancient documents from the Chancellor’s secret collection.
She is pursued by bounty hunters sent by her own father.
She is Princess Lia, seventeen, First Daughter of the House of Morrighan.
The Kingdom of Morrighan is steeped in tradition and the stories of a bygone world, but some traditions Lia can’t abide. Like having to marry someone she’s never met to secure a political alliance.
Fed up and ready for a new life, Lia flees to a distant village on the morning of her wedding. She settles in among the common folk, intrigued when two mysterious and handsome strangers arrive—and unaware that one is the jilted prince and the other an assassin sent to kill her. Deceptions swirl and Lia finds herself on the brink of unlocking perilous secrets—secrets that may unravel her world—even as she feels herself falling in love.

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{Review} Daughter of the Forest ~ Retelling a Celtic Tale

Posted October 5, 2015 in Reading, Review / 4 Comments

{Review} Daughter of the Forest ~ Retelling a Celtic TaleDaughter of the Forest by Juliet Marillier
Series: Sevenwaters #1
Publisher: Tor (1999)
Hardcover (400 pages)
Via: Library
Rating:
Reading Challenges: 2015 Fairytale Retelling, 2015 Re-Reading, Read 2015

Synopsis

Juliet Marillier is a rare talent, a writer who can imbue her characters and her story with such warmth, such heart, that no reader can come away from her work untouched. Daughter of the Forest is a testimony to that talent, a first novel and the beginning of a trilogy like no other: a mixture of history and fantasy, myth and magic, legend and love.
Lord Colum of Sevenwaters is blessed with six sons: Liam, a natural leader; Diarmid, with his passion for adventure; twins Cormack and Conor, each with a different calling; rebellious Finbar, grown old before his time by his gift of the Sight; and the young, compassionate Padriac.
But it is Sorcha, the seventh child and only daughter, who alone is destined to defend her family and protect her land from the Britons and the clan known as Northwoods. For her father has been bewitched, and her brothers bound by a spell that only Sorcha can lift.
To reclaim the lives of her brothers, Sorcha leaves the only safe place she has ever known, and embarks on a journey filled with pain, loss, and terror.
When she is kidnapped by enemy forces and taken to a foreign land, it seems that there will be no way for her to break the spell that condemns all that she loves. But magic knows no boundaries, and Sorcha will have to choose between the life she has always known and a love that comes only once.

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{Review} Code Name Verity – Historical Fiction on WWII

Posted September 24, 2015 in Reading, Review / 0 Comments

{Review} Code Name Verity – Historical Fiction on WWIICode Name Verity by Elizabeth Wein
Series: Code Name Verity #1
Publisher: Disney Hyperion (2012)
Hardcover (332 pages)
Via: Library
Rating:
Reading Challenges: Read 2015

Synopsis

Oct. 11th, 1943-A British spy plane crashes in Nazi-occupied France. Its pilot and passenger are best friends. One of the girls has a chance at survival. The other has lost the game before it’s barely begun.
When “Verity” is arrested by the Gestapo, she’s sure she doesn’t stand a chance. As a secret agent captured in enemy territory, she’s living a spy’s worst nightmare. Her Nazi interrogators give her a simple choice: reveal her mission or face a grisly execution.
As she intricately weaves her confession, Verity uncovers her past, how she became friends with the pilot Maddie, and why she left Maddie in the wrecked fuselage of their plane. On each new scrap of paper, Verity battles for her life, confronting her views on courage, failure and her desperate hope to make it home. But will trading her secrets be enough to save her from the enemy?
A Michael L. Printz Award Honor book that was called “a fiendishly-plotted mind game of a novel” in The New York Times, Code Name Verity is a visceral read of danger, resolve, and survival that shows just how far true friends will go to save each other.

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