Tag: book review

Last Days – A Book Review

On By Betty OwensIn Betty Thomason Owens

Nike N. Chillemi – Mystery & a Merry Heart

According to Nike’s website, her novels contain “Grace and Grit” and she likes her bad guys “really bad” and her “good guys fighting for justice against steep odds”.

I have known Nike Chillemi for some years now. We are both members of an ACFW critique loop, so I have been involved with the writing of several of her detective novels. We have both weathered a few storms in our personal lives along the way–a positive, bonding experience for sure.

This may lead some to believe my review of her latest book might be biased. But I would like to be honest about her latest work, because in my humble opinion, it’s her best yet.

Last Days – A Katerina “Kat” Andruko/Dimitri Garmonin Novel

A spry elderly woman has died mysteriously in a Florida coastal town, and the head of a clandestine organization in Washington D.C is interested in the case. All evidence, or lack thereof, points to accidental death, but Detective Katerina “Kat” Andruko has nagging doubts. She also has doubts about a mysterious phone call profiler Dimitri Garmonin, PhD, her intended, took and hid from her.

As if that wasn’t enough, Kat’s former fiancé and fellow law enforcement officer gleefully taunts her, predicting the demise of her relationship with Dimitri. Her future mother-in-law thinks she’s less than demure and not suitable marriage material for her son.

Meanwhile, all leads on the elderly woman’s death go nowhere. Old enemies at the local TV station are calling the police incompetent. They air an unfavorable segment about Dimitri. Just as Kat and Dimitri reluctantly begin to believe the death was accidental, the woman’s neighbor goes missing.

Like most good detective stories, Last Days begins with a crime that needs solving. Detective Andruko is on the case. In the beginning, all the roads lead to dead ends. Chillemi keeps the action high and the story moving forward. She also keeps a constant battle going as Kat Andruko deals with doubt and anxiety surrounding her upcoming marriage to Dimitri Garmonin.

Though the two seem perfect for each other, the future mother-in-law is not at all pleased with her son’s choice. So, our main detective, Kat Andruko, is off-kilter and questioning herself in every way. Add in a liberal dose of whodunnit, and you have a winning recipe for a riveting story.

Chillemi keeps her readers guessing till the end. Even me. I thought I’d predicted the outcome early on, but I was wrong. I love that! This was a quick, fun read. One of the things I enjoyed most was Chillemi’s inclusion of characters from her Ingles/Hughes series. The familiar “faces” made me feel at home in the story.

Keep ‘em coming, Nike!

Nike N. Chillemi has a passion for crime fiction. She writes detective stories and mysteries with a national security twist. Some have called her novels “classic whodunits,” while others think they’re “cozy thrillers,” loaded with taut suspense with a healthy dose of wry humor. She’s known for compelling main characters, zany and quirky secondary and tertiary characters, and dangerous villains. She is a member of American Christian Fiction Writers (ACFW) and is the founding board member of the Grace Filled Fiction Spotlight (formerly Grace Awards).

Find more information here: NikeChillemi.com and Nike’s Amazon Author Page

The Revolutionary – A Book Review

On By Betty OwensIn #amreading2 Comments

The Revolutionary
Liberate The Captives
Rogues, Book II, by Kristen Hogrefe

After being sentenced to a labor camp in Rogues Book I, The Revisionary, Portia Abernathy’s story continues three months later, in a coal mine. [You can read my review of The Revisionary here]

The Revolutionary—I was hooked by the opening paragraph. The rest of the paragraphs kept me turning pages far into the night. Like this one:

“Get your cart, idiot,” he says. “We need you to clear the coal from a new tunnel before we can move forward. It’s tight, but you’ll fit.”

These days, there’s not much I won’t fit through.

What happens afterward starts a romp that doesn’t quit, even as the book winds up (on a high note, leaving a smile on my face). I can’t wait to read the next one.

Hogrefe mixes suspense, espionage, angst, pain, and anxiety into the pages, along with a hint, and sometimes more than a hint of romance. Her characters are real and flawed. They fit smoothly into the story line; well balanced and fully told.

The protagonist, Portia Abernathy, may be small, but she’s tough, and keeps moving forward with a strong purpose throughout. Though fear and doubt threatens, she holds hope in her heart to see her loved ones again. She keeps secrets trapped in the steel vault of her mind and heart, while chasing after an elusive dream she stumbled upon in the words of an ancient Bible—a promise of freedom for the oppressed.

Rogues is a young adult (YA) dystopian series that presents a dark and dangerous world without God in it. The powers that be have managed to enslave most of the population and put them to work for the benefit of the ruling class. Hogrefe weaves in historical facts as the students in book one make discoveries about their once proud nation.

Book I, The Revisionary, has won several awards to date, including the Grace Award, and the Selah Award. Though I’m not a young adult, and usually don’t care for dystopian stories, The Revisionary intrigued me. It was so well written and kept me turning pages. Often, book two of a series can be a let-down, but The Revolutionary was anything but. I liked it even better than the first.

Why? Maybe because the first book was laying the groundwork. Even though there was constant danger, the reader is just getting to know Portia and her friends and the world Hogrefe created. And why her friend Luther calls her, “Cotton”.

In Book II, we “hit the ground running”, already familiar with the main character and her friends. As they enter unfamiliar and very dangerous territory, we hold on for an exciting ride. This is my new favorite. I loved it so much, I bought the print versions of both books to give to my favorite young adults—my lovely granddaughters. I know they’re going to love this series.

A little about the author / Kristen Hogrefe’s byline on her website is: Think Truthfully, Live Daringly. She goes on to say,

My fiction stories develop characters that young adults can relate to and that a person of any age can identify with in some way. The choices they make, the situations they face stretch them relationally, physically, and yes, spiritually.

The bottom line is not what happens to the characters, but what the characters do with what happens to them. That’s where the characters grow–and where we can grow right along with them.

This is an author you can feel good about. Maybe, like me, you’re hesitant to read a new genre. But I encourage you to take a chance on this one. I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised.

Click to Tweet: In The Revolutionary, Hogrefe mixes suspense, espionage, angst, pain, and anxiety into the pages, along with a hint of #romance. Her characters fit smoothly into the story line; well balanced and fully told. #dystopian

The Revolutionary—Liberate the Captives

Revolutions run on sacrifice … and blood. Three months a satellite prisoner, Portia wonders if the Brotherhood has left her to die—until she plunges into the domain of a smuggler contacted by her brother. But her rescue comes with a price tag, and now, she must forfeit her identity to act as a spy. She learns that her enemies want the Dome to approve mass satellite executions, though no one knows why. Worse, they’re using her friend Luther, now a Court Citizen intern, to sign the short-term orders. She wants to confide in Luther, but can she still trust him with the company he keeps? Plagued by shadows and guilt for leaving her protector Gath behind on the satellite, Portia must find a way, not only to rescue him and the other prisoners, but also to destroy the slave camps once and for all.

Next Week – Hello, Thursday Morning! continues…

Read A Book – The Revisionary

On By Betty OwensIn Betty Thomason Owens4 Comments

As far as titles go, this one’s probably not perfect, but you can read it two ways. Past tense – I read a book, or it can be taken as a command: Read a book!

Either way, I’ve just finished reading a book. You might say I stepped out of my “comfort” genre a little on this one. The Revisionary by Kristen Hogrefe, is a dystopian novel. If you’re not familiar with the word, the dictionary describes it as:

…relating to or denoting an imagined place or state in which everything is unpleasant or bad, typically a totalitarian or environmentally degraded one.

A dystopian novel explores social and political structures in a dark, nightmare world.

Hmm…some of you may not like the sound of that. But Hogrefe’s novel has an inner light shining. The world she created promises that light will come. In this first novel of the series, the promise is dim, the light far away. But the evidence is there—you want to go after it. Like that thin thread of romance she dangled in front of me. Just enough to keep me wondering. And guessing.

train, locomotiveThis dystopian world is real as we see it through nineteen-year-old Portia Abernathy’s eyes. I feel her pain and fear, sense the ebb and flow of hope as she struggles through her difficult but sometimes chosen circumstances. She’s a brave young woman who sets out to rescue her older brother, but may end up helping to save her world and gain her own redemption in the process. These are all my assumptions as I read (present tense) this book.

document, parchment, billInto the mix, Hogrefe supplied tempting morsels of our own national history. She made me want to go back and read the constitution and bill of rights. She helped me remember important facets from our glorious past. Let’s not take our present freedoms for granted.

I won’t go into too much detail or add spoilers here. Instead, I’ve included the author’s book blurb below.

So, why would you want to read a story about a nightmare world that has lost important things like personal freedom and electricity, whose leaders seek to keep many in darkness, and enslaved? Because, in the end, it’s entertaining and quite interesting. Those of you who read (past tense) and/or watched those other dystopians will be pleased to find this one, especially if you’re a fan of clean/inspirational fiction. Action, adventure, suspense, and plenty of drama! I give it five stars.

The Revisionary is Young Adult (YA) fiction, written in first person, like other popular series–The Hunger Games and the Divergent trilogy. The end of the story left me yearning to know what happens next.

FREE BOOK! If you were here last week, you’ll remember I promised a giveaway! Read the information about the book (below), and if you’re interested in winning a copy — either paperback or Kindle — please let me know in the comments section. I’ll announce the winner here next Thursday Morning!

CLICK TO TWEET: The end of the story left me yearning to know what happens next. #TheRevisionary reviewed. #YA

THE REVISIONARY by Kristen Hogrefe

A Revisionary rewrites the rules. A Rogue breaks them. Which one is she? Nineteen-year-old Portia Abernathy accepts her Revisionary draft to the Crystal Globe with one goal: earn a Dome seat so she can amend the satellite rules and rescue her brother. Her plan derails when Head Gage Eliab brands her as a suspect in a campus Rogue attack, and in a quest to clear her name, she questions if the vigilante Brotherhood responsible might be fighting for a cause greater than itself, a cause championed by the last civilization. But the current leaders have obscured history’s pages, and if she dares to engage the past through her training technology, they might wipe her own memory as well. Her shifting loyalties pit her against Luther Danforth, her Court Citizen ally who believes in reform, not revolution. Joining the Brotherhood makes a future with him impossible—and Portia must decide if it’s better to rewrite the rules or to break them.

Kristen Hogrefe is a young adult fiction author and teacher. Her books include The Revisionary (Write Integrity Press) and the Wings of the Dawn trilogy. She has written for a variety of publications and blogs regularly at kristenhogrefe.com where she challenges young adults and the young at heart to think truthfully and live daringly. A few of her favorite things are coffee, sunshine, and good books—and she loves sharing them with friends.

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