ReGuarding Grace by Karen A. Leppert

Blurb:

When a new student arrives at Mansfield High School, Grace Evans feels an inexplicable kinship with the boy. Strange feelings are not new to Grace, who has experienced lapses in time accompanied by injuries that defy logical explanation. As much as she tries to ignore this latest mystery, Grace cannot deny her already-troubled life is getting darker and more dangerous and wonders if this new boy knows her secret.

Jack Elliott has always known what he is and believes his life is one of destiny and fate because of one person: Grace Evans, a young woman who has haunted him since the day she was born. Everything…his education, training, sacrifices…has led to this moment, but Jack‘s skills are about to be tested beyond his wildest imagination.

Review:

Jack Elliott is an Amalgamate.  He is a person who most psychologists would diagnose as having Dissociative Identity Disorder.  In his world, however, it is not a disorder; it is an asset.  It is not the result of extreme abuse or trauma.  His personality did not fracture to protect him.  He was born with his alternate personalities, or “alters”, and they are assets, not liabilities.  His job is to guide people through Integration, but again in his world that means something different from ours.  His job is not to help people subdue and absorb their alters.  His job is to guard people and keep them from getting injured during their black-outs and when the time is right, introduce them to their alters, stay conscious when their alters come out, learn to lead their alters, and work with them.  In his world, some alters have special abilities such as ESP, enhanced strength and speed, or higher intelligence.  And, in his world, guys work with guys and girls work with girls.  But he’s been connected to Grace Evans since the day she was born.  And he just has to be her Guardian—despite the rules.

Grace doesn’t know she’s an Amalgamate.  She just knows she wakes up in strange places, or finds herself in her room but with leaves and twigs in her hair and bruises she can’t account for.  Oddly, the new boy in school seems interested in her and he seems to turn up at the strangest times.  She could swear he’s sleeping in her room.  He has a unique scent and she smells it in her room when she wakes up, especially if she wakes up with twigs and leaves in her hair.  Susan Fairchild knows exactly who Jack is, what his mission is, and what’s going on when Grace blacks out.  And she doesn’t want him to succeed in integrating Grace.  She has her own Guardian—Phineas.  He’s the alter of Peter, a friend of Grace’s.  Of course Grace has no idea Peter is an Amalgamate.  Phineas has told Susan that the host does not have to lead the alters in a body.  He’s convinced her she can become strong enough to eventually subjugate Grace and take over as the leader of Grace and the rest of her alters.  Even Jack doesn’t know how much danger Grace is in.  Oh, and then there’s Clare.  She’s another one of Grace’s alters, and her talent could get them all killed.

Ms. Leppert has added a paranormal twist to an already fascinating psychological disorder that is so rare, not everyone in the psychiatric community believes in it even when they see it.  I have a good friend with whom I shared a psychologist at the VA in Chicago.  Our doc did not believe in DID even though my friend suffered from it.  “John” was a fifty-plus year-old man when “Joan” manifested herself.  She was in her early teens when she first showed up.  “Dr. F.” thought she was just an excuse for John to dress in drag.  I’m not sure whether it was John or his wife who convinced Dr. F. that Joan was real, but John does not remember what goes on when Joan controls their body.  The two of them have different food allergies.  One can cook but not bake; the other can bake but not cook.  They communicate via e-mail.  I spent the night with them, and stayed up late chatting with John’s wife. The next morning Joan woke up and wanted to know what John had for supper the night before.  She also started to tell me some news John had already imparted the night before.

Back to the book.  The characters are well-drawn, three/four/five… dimensional people you can root for.  There is action and emotion.  It’s a really good book.

Length:  413 Pages

Price:  $5.95

Buy Link:  https://museituppublishing.com/bookstore/index.php/new-releases/series/reguarding-grace-detail

You’ll notice I always include the publisher’s buy link.  That’s because authors usually receive 40% of the book price from the publisher.  Editors and cover artists usually receive about 5%.  When you buy a book from Amazon, Barnes & Noble or another third-party vendor, they take a hefty cut and the author, editors and cover artists receive their cuts from what is left.  So, if a book costs $5.99 at E-Book Publisher.com and you buy from there, the author will receive about $2.40.  If you buy the book at Amazon, the author will receive about $0.83.

Downloading the file from your computer to your Kindle is as easy as transferring any file from your computer to a USB flash drive.  Plug the USB end of your chord into a USB port on your computer and simply move the file from your “Downloads” box to your Kindle/Documents/Books directory.  I actually download my books using “Save As” to a “Books” file I created on my computer that’s sorted by my publisher, friends, and books “to review,” and then transfer them to my Kindle from there.  That way, if there’s a glitch with my Kindle, the books are on my computer.  Your author will be happy you did when he/she sees his/her royalty statement. 

 

Thanks for visiting.  RIW

Crumple Zone by Edith Parzefall

Blurb: 

Lara, a workaholic from Seattle, loses her job, drowns her frustrations in scotch, and books a trip to Chile. Instead of facing her messed up life, she escapes to South America and hooks up with a backpacker, whose bag of tricks conveniently distracts her. 

Hauling freight along the same route, trucker Enrique battles the loneliness of the Atacama Desert, imagining his wife by his side. If only she'd stop urging him to come home. With growing unease, he sets off on the return trip. When his path crosses Lara's, the impact knocks them both off their errant tracks to face unpleasant realities.

Review: 

I bought Crumple Zone on sale at MuseItUp Publishing, Inc., and I must say—Ms. Parzefall had me guessing all the way through the book as to how Enrique and Lara would meet.  I thought maybe she’d end up driving drunk and put him in the hospital, preventing him from getting home to his wife and sons.  The question was…where?

Chile is a long, thin country and according to Ms. Parzefall who has lived and traveled in South America, the Atacama Desert is something like five-hundred miles long, snaking along the sides of mountains above deep stone quarries and the Pacific Ocean.  I wondered if either Enrique or Lara might end up at the bottom of a quarry or in the sea.  Rick, the Australian back-packer Lara picked up, might have swept her off her feet and persuaded her to return to Australia with him where the people she encountered would at least speak a form of English and she wouldn’t have to look things up in her handy/dandy English/Spanish or vice/versa dictionary to communicate.

They even glimpse each other and interact briefly before they “meet” on the road.  But once they met, I still had questions that were not quite answered until the very end of the book—when Ms. Parzefall wanted me to know the full answers.  I was constantly speculating about what might be waiting around the corner, and much of the time I was wrong.  I highly recommend Crumple Zone.  If it kept me guessing, it’ll keep you guessing, too. 

Length:  225 Pages 

Price:  $5.50—As of 06-19-2013 this book is on sale at MuseItUp Publishing, Inc. for $0.99, a real bargain.  You can grab it at the link below. 

Buy Link:  http://museituppublishing.com/bookstore2/index.php?page=shop.product_details&flypage=flypage.tpl&product_id=663&category_id=101&manufacturer_id=163&option=com_virtuemart&Itemid=1

You’ll notice I always include the publisher’s buy link.  That’s because authors usually receive 40% of the book price from the publisher.  Editors and cover artists usually receive about 5%.  When you buy a book from Amazon, Barnes & Noble or another third-party vendor, they take a hefty cut and the author, editors and cover artists receive their cuts from what is left.  So, if a book costs $5.99 at E-Book Publisher.com and you buy from there, the author will receive about $2.40.  If you buy the book at Amazon, the author will receive about $0.83.

Downloading the file from your computer to your Kindle is as easy as transferring any file from your computer to a USB flash drive.  Plug the USB end of your chord into a USB port on your computer and simply move the file from your “Downloads” box to your Kindle/Documents/Books directory.  I actually download my books using “Save As” to a “Books” file I created on my computer that’s sorted by my publisher, friends, and books “to review,” and then transfer them to my Kindle from there.  That way, if there’s a glitch with my Kindle, the books are on my computer.  Your author will be happy you did when he/she sees his/her royalty statement. 

Thanks for visiting.  RIW

Unexpecting by Lori V. Fogarsi

Shelley and David are a couple of almost-empty-nesters preparing to embark on the next stage of their lives. They just ordered white furniture and planned the vacation they’ve waited their entire lives to take when Alexandra, seventeen and pregnant, shows up on their doorstep and announces that she’s the daughter they never knew they had!

I have a love/hate relationship with books that keep me up all night reading.  Or was it the caffeine I consumed at my granddaughter’s birthday party?  I didn’t even finish the book because I had to be at the Captain James A. Lovell Federal Health Care Center early the next day.  I had two appointments scheduled before my volunteer shift, and I overslept and missed the first one.  Oh, and then I was a bit preoccupied with my clients because I was so close to the end and I wanted to see how the book turned out, but I was having a busy day helping veterans sign up for the My Health eVet program.  Thanks, Ms. Fogarsi.

By the way, this was the granddaughter who had a baby at seventeen, not long after my daughter got engaged to her father.  I have to say how proud we are of our “baby-mama.”  She finished school from home while caring for her daughter, found a job right after graduation that worked with everyone else’s schedule and night-time feedings, and now Sydney is entering the terrible twos at fifteen months because she’s extremely bright and terribly spoiled by the whole family.  She tried honey mustard with her chicken fingers and French fries.  She kept dipping the same fry and licking it until it fell apart.  She offered some to grandma, grandpa, and one of her aunts who was sitting close by.  We were all laughing so hard, she knew she’d done something cute so she applauded herself, and laughed with us.

Can't you just see the Intelligence and mischief in those eyes?

Needless to say, Unexpecting struck somewhat close to home.  However, Alexandra was not only got pregnant, she soon got into drugs—crystal meth.  And that stuff puts a whole other kind of strain on a familyand a marriage.  The product of a fling David had between marriages, Alexandra’s mother never told him about her.  She told Alexandra that her father was a good man who would want to be involved in her life if he knew about her, but since neither of them had feelings for the other, she didn’t want to burden him.  She promised to give Alex info about him when she turned eighteen.  But she died of cancer before then, leaving a pregnant Alexandra with nothing more than her clothing and a big, shaggy, slobbery dog named Tiny.

Again, this book was engaging, keeping me up all night reading.  It sucked me in on the first page when the doorbell rang, and I devoured the book, which is mainly told from Shelley’s point of view with occasional forages into Alexandra’s and David’s heads.  Listening to the teenagers’ dialog in this book, I often thought I was at my daughter’s house.  My sixteen year old granddaughter uses the word “fine-uh” all the time.  Ms. Fogarsi has definitely done time in a house full of teens and recently, at that!

And then there were Tiny and Frick.  Who couldn’t love a big, slobbery dog who bonds with an elderly cat and tries to groom him?  Of course dog slobber isn’t quite as efficient as one cat grooming another, but Frick doesn’t seem to mind.  That big ole tongue works pretty well on gunky babies, too.  One swipe and half of Patrick is “clean.”  Tiny always seems to know when he’s needed.  Or is it just that he’s always under foot?  About as much as a dog the size of a pony who thinks he’s a lap dog can be under anything.

This book will take you through a gamut of emotions.  You’ll laugh, cry, and wonder what’s happening next.  Definitely have the tissues close by.  It’s a must-read.

Length: 272 Pages

Prices:

Paperback:  $14.99

E-Book:  TBA

Buy Link:  http://www.amazon.com/Unexpecting-Lori-Verni-Fogarsi/dp/0984028439/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1363370924&sr=1-2&keywords=Unexpecting

Thanks for visiting.  RIW