The Marvelous Misadventures of Ingrid Winter
by J.S. Drangsholt

Rating: **** (4 stars)
Book Length: 217 pages
Genre: Chick Lit, Fiction, Humor

The Marvelous Misadventures of Ingrid Winter is a fun light read that shows us that mothers are the same no matter where in the world you happen to reside. Ingrid decides that the perfect house will make her and her family so much more complete. So she buys it for way more than she should.

To top it off, her attempts to blend into the background at work teaching at a university leads her to interoffice politics and a trip to Russia. All while she is trying to move, sell her old house, and fix the damage that she did with her husband and family.

This is a perfect book to read when you just want to know that you are not the only crazy person in the world. It is well written, funny, and maybe just a bit too realistic. My favorite aspect of the book is the ending. It is neither a happily ever after or a sad story. It is just the story of coming to peace with what you already have, and sometimes the mess that you have created.

As reviewed on The Book Recluse Review

This is a good adult coloring book. The background is very repetitive, and at times a bit to black for my taste. Overall, it looks like fun and I cannot wait to finish coloring everything. It is a unique concept to put a Coloring Book on Kindle, and I was not sure how it would work out. However, the PDF download was easy. I like how you do not have to join the mailing list in addition to downloading the book. Although, I did anyway - so I can stay up to date on new releases.

This is a cute ABC book lite on words and pictures. It is pretty much exactly what an ABC book is suppose to be. Everyone in my house is too old for this kind of book, but it was nice to see books for Kindle becoming more well rounded.

The book is pretty typical of a children’s ABC book. Each page has a letter and words that start with that letter. There are also a few pictures on each page. The book displays well in landscape in the Kindle app. By viewing it on the app you can also see the full scale of colors.

This is a great Kindle book if you have a younger child or if for some reason you want to review your alphabet.

How Santa Changed is a cute 38 page storybook about how Santa went from being a one-man show to moving to the North Pole with some new helpers.

The pictures are absolutely gorgeous. They are bright and colorful. They tell a story so vividly that you do not even need the words to understand what is going on. I read the book in Kindle. If you do as well then it would need to be fully appreciated on a tablet or phone.

The pages contain between twelve to one line of writing. On double pages, there are some sides with no writing. Most pages contain about four lines.

The word choices would be good for a reader who had a foundation, as long as they had help with some more difficult words. It seems more like it is meant for an adult to read to children. Even though my children are all much older, we will be reading this book together this holiday season.

I just really wish that Karl Steam did not feel the need to rhyme. Without that, it would have been a solid five-star review. However, the rhyming scheme does not stay consistent throughout the book. It was apparent enough that I noticed and had to pause to see what happened to the temp of the book. It just constrained the writing too much.

If you love Christmas and tales of Santa then I strongly recommend this book. Even if you do not have young children you will be drawn into the artwork and the story that it tales. The first thing that I thought of when I finished this book is "Wow, I can't wait to share this with my kids" who are all teenagers.

Attacking Panic: The Power to be Calm by Russell A Hunter, Psy.D. is touted as being a book to help individual concur panic attacks once and for all. The book is a rather easy read. At 147 pages it will also not take too much of your time. The writing is a bit dry at times, but it is easy to understand and flows in a good manner.

The first three-fourths of the book is about panic attacks. A good portion of the book is taken in giving the DSM-V definitions of various panic disorders. The DSM-V is the diagnostic tool that clinicians in the United States use to diagnose their patients. While it is a helpful tool, it is not one that someone untrained should be reading to diagnose themselves. The inclusion of all this information, without once suggesting to the reader that they should contact a licensed clinician, is a bit concerning. My main concern of the book is that not once does the author suggests that someone who is suffering from panic attacks should contact a licensed professional to help them implement the strategies in this book.

So, my disclaimer. If you are suffering from severe panic attacks, like those described in Attacking Panic: The Power to be Calm, I highly recommend that you implement the strategies in this book under the care of a licensed clinician.

While I found the information in this book to be helpful, and to the best of my knowledge to be credible, it also lacks an emphasis on evidence-based practices. The author, Russell A. Hunter, has a Psy.D. This is doctorate level training specifically to be used in clinical settings. A main difference between a Psy.D. in psychology and a Ph.D. in psychology is that a Ph.D. program places greater emphases in research. This book does contain some references back to research. However, the bulk of the book remains uncited. From my limited knowledge of panic disorders, the information presented is correct. Although, there are several concepts included in the book that I had never heard of. It is concerning that there are no references to point back to the original research on these items.

This book would be useful for someone who is interested in learning a general overview of panic attacks. Paired with a licensed clinician the strategies included in the book could be helpful in overcoming panic attacks.

(Note: While I do have an M.S. in Developmental Psychology I am not a licensed Psychologist. I make no notes about the effectiveness of any therapy presented in this book. I do recommend that any reader who is currently suffering from panic disorders, or other mental health concerns, contact a licensed clinical provider. If you are currently having mental health issues and need help you can contact the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill Helpline at 1-800-950-NAMI.)

I find it sad when a book with so much potential falls short. I was about to put Paulie Zahn Vampire Huntress in the unfinished pile about 5% of the way into the book (I was reading the Kindle edition). The entire first part of the book was full of typos and formatting errors. However, I saw a good premise in the book and decided to persist.

The book did get better. The world that E. M. Sorensen created is not a usual take on vampires. And the main character, Paulie Zahn, had a lot of potential. Unfortunately, it was not developed enough to really make the book an Urban Fantasy great. I probably should have counted how many times SGT Zahn had alarm bells ringing about suspicious behavior and just decided to brush it off, it happened a lot.

I am torn about whether I enjoyed the plot of the book. On one hand it was not like any book I had read recently. It was a unique perspective and combined a heroin who is a decorated war hero, so she already was a strong character before the book even started. On the other hand there was so much back-story that I was often wondering what the point of the book was. It just dragged on, and the whole time I was thinking how much promise there really was.

I honestly think I could have come to accept the pace of the story if it wasn’t for the actual writing. At first I thought there were a lot of formatting errors that kept repeating random sentences (there are enough formatting errors that this seemed very logical) except that I realized the second sentence had minor changes in structure. It turned out that the author just like repeating what was said previously. This happened over and over throughout the book. However, the writing did smooth out the further you go into the story. Although, it never got to the point were I could actually lose myself in the book.

This really is a hard review for me to write. It had so much potential and it was sad to see it fall short.

This is the first graphic novel in the Journey to Minecraft series. It is written for younger readers, in early elementary and uses appropriate vocabulary.

The graphic novel is exceedingly short, even for a comic book. It is more like the first part of one complete book rather than the first part of a series. I am sure this is a way by the author to try and get more money out of the publication. It seems like a horrible ploy. I would gladly pay a few dollars for a Kindle version of a book that I know my daughter would read. I think having it stopped so early in the story would just annoy her.

That being said, the graphics are quite good. The writing is simple, but that is to be expected. The plot is extremely appropriate for the age and genre. It also does have a plot, which is a bonus. The biggest downfall is the story being separated between books instead of being combined together.

Unfortunately with the opening of the self published market there are writers who have taken the art out of writing. When I read, and especially review, a book I respect the time and effort that is put into creating that book. However, as a reader I expect that time and effort was actually put into making the book worth reading.

When I read a novel I do not seek out to edit it. I want to enjoy a good story. However, if there are obvious editorial errors then I may take note. When those errors are repeated through the entire novel then it becomes a hindrance to actually reading the book. There are numerous grammar issues within Auraman.

The capitalization is not consistent. At times sentences are not capitalized, at others they are. Capitalization is iffy around dialogue. At one point there was a reference of "Star Trek voyager" where Star Trek was appropriately capitalized and Voyager was not. Then later in the book it was written as "star trek" with no capitalization at all.

Punctuation is also not consistently used. The biggest offender is the use of quotes. At times they are omitted. Other times they are randomly thrown in when not needed. Many times they have extra spaces around them. The same can be said of periods and commas as well. Also, it is very common to see ??? and ... thrown around the novel. It will happen once to ten times a page.

The author continually wrote abbreviations through the entire book. Doctor was nearly always written as Dr. even when it was not being used as a title. Two was inserted as 2 in the middle of sentences. The time was written very weird. I think it was something like 1:pm.

The author also likes to add in details within parenthesis. The first time I noticed this it was included in the middle of dialogue. The speaker said a name and the author explained who the person was in parenthesis within the middle of the quotes. This continues through the novel as well.

The characters were very hard to relate to. It was partly because reading the book was extremely awkward. However, they were also just too perfect. The main character is God like and sweet. He has perfect parents that removed any conflict in his life. He has the perfect girlfriend who loves him unconditionally. There are some villains that read more like a children's cartoon character villain.

Some of the plot was also extremely far fetched. For one an entire planet is set to collide with Earth. I could see an asteroid, but a planet on a collision course with Earth would take longer than our life span to even have to worry about. It just does not make sense.

I had an extremely hard time finishing this book. I kept hoping that it would improve at some point, but it never did.

A Place on the Water is a unique written novel. Instead of chapters, there are section headings. Some sections are only a sentence or two, especially in the beginning of the book. Some sections last for pages at a time. The novel is a journey of the near entire life of one woman, from her early childhood to her later years.

Julie lived on Hawaii during the bombings on Pearl Harbor. She was about seven at the time, during this time she saw people being bombed down, was rapped by her brother and his friend, and had to live with marshal law. It was all told nearly without emotion. The novel continues to document the life of Julie. She had a life of a lot of sorrow, and some joy. Yet, it was all told without passion. I think part of this has to do with the short blocky sections. A lot has to do with covering so much of one life, without really any focus. The end of the book was the best. It was here that Julie really became a person, although she is still missing a lot of depth.

The writing itself was good, the editing was fine, and the plot would have been fascinating told from another vantage point. The book did not reach its potential at all, yet for all of that, it is not a bad book. It is just not as good as it could have been.