Winter of the World (The Century Trilogy #2)

Winter of the World by Ken Follett
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Not quite as gripping as the first in the series, but still amazing!

This book is primarily about the children of the characters from the first book. This book felt more scientific and historic and a little less dramatic and was primarily about WWII. I still learned a lot, though I do not rely on it to be perfectly accurate! It's enough to quench my thirst for history.

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Redeeming Love

Redeeming Love by Francine Rivers
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

What an amazing book. It was sad, it was beautiful, it was haunting, it was lovely. It was powerful !

This brings love and forgiveness to a level that not many people would possibly consider these days. To be broken in so many ways, body and soul, unable to see that there is a higher power who can cleanse you entirely. To go through hell and think you cannot be loved and be told again and again that there is One who can cleanse you, love you, cherish you. Trying to find a purpose in life when all you have to do is believe. It may take time, it may be hard, but in the end, there will be peace.

There were times I would get a little irritated with the dialogue, but it was minor. The ending was moving and brought me to tears. I even loved the authors note at the end. I was very happy to read that finding Christ for her was not a mountain top experience, but a journey.

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Always You

Always You by Kirsty Moseley
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

I feel generous giving this book two stars, but if it had been properly edited by a publisher, it might have received a higher rating.

Terribly overdramatic, poorly written, poorly researched story. I suppose every author starts with something and we live in a time of self published books, but this is the kind of junk that leaks into the ebook world and people haphazardly buy for $.99 and feel it was a waste. I know that's incredibly harsh, but I honestly think it could have been good if it had gone through the proper publishing channels.

I just finished reading a phenomenal book, Winter of the World by Ken Follet. He's a Welsh author writing not only about his home country, but Germany, Russia, and the United States. The lesson here? An author really ought to do their homework if they truly want to be a respected author.

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All The Way Home

All the Way Home by Ann Tatlock
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Overall the story (stories) were decent. It felt like two books, almost like it could have been a series, but it was a two part book. The first half of the book took place with the two main characters as children living in southern California leading up to and during WWII. Sunny is a second generation Japanese American who has an incredibly loving and supportive family who feel they are as American as anyone else. Augie comes from a broken family and quickly comes to love Sunny's family when they quickly become best friends.

World War II erupts and Sunny's family is forced to leave their lives behind to live in Japanese internment camps. Augie is devastated as she had become so much a part of Sunny's family, she even thinks of herself as Japanese at heart.

Augie and Sunny's family lose contact and Auguie thinks they have abandoned her and is devastated by what she sees as betrayal.

Fast forward twenty something years and Sunny, now Helen, finds Augie and invites her to her home to write a magazine article about anti-civil rights Mississippi. Augie is shocked to learn that the invitation to Mississippi is from her childhood best friend; there is a weird twist there I won't spoil.

Augie is there to write a story about a school that prepares African Americans to register to vote. She meets a really great guy...blah blah blah, he turns out to be something completely different than she thought...blah, blah, blah...the KKK are everywhere, they are bad, horrible people. I do not mean to demean what happened there, it's disgusting, but the story dragged on too much for me to read every fine detail.

The second part started out good, but then I just lost interest. It could have been shortened substantially. I skimmed over many pages just trying to get to the end quickly.

Great basis for a story, just not as interesting as I think it could have been. And have I mentioned how much I HATE reading accents? It is one of the more annoying parts of this book.

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