A review for THE PROMISE OF LIVING

Thank you, Jack, for taking the time to review my novel! Go to his blog because he is a great lover of books. Mahalo nui loa!
https://jackdanfabbooks.wordpress.com

Genre: LGBT, Coming-of-age, Young Adult, Contemporary

Rating: 3.5 / 5

“Despite the grounded daily activity of milking the herd . . . Ryan knew something terrible was about to happen.”

Ryan has been having visions. They come to him at random intervals, showing him suicide and murder. Will those visions save the man he loves?

Ryan Colton’s boredom of Wilson’s Ferry is shoved aside when he gets a vision of a murder of a high school peer. With the help of city boy, Skylar, he discovers how to control his visions in an attempt to uncover the truth behind the murder. While Ryan is in Boston, he comes to terms with his sexuality, embracing his identity for the first time.

I’ve not read LGBT fiction before. I’ll be honest, I was expecting to read explicit material – limbs akimbo and private parts waving. I breathed a sigh of relief when this was not the case. The characters’ orientation was not central to the story; it could have been taken out and the narrative would have stood by itself. This is what good LGBT fiction should be. A story about people who also happen to be gay. As a gay man myself, the book felt very authentic in its dealing with the issue of ‘coming out’ and handled the feelings of a person accepting themselves very well. This coming-of-age story has a well thought-out plot that threads everything together smoothly and the descriptions of small town life is clear, without unnecessary embellishment.

The writing is superb. There were a few lines that felt a little messy, such as “He grabbed his own books under his right arm and left.” It’s clear what was meant but the two directions did distract me from the natural rhythm – momentum – that was nicely built up throughout the story.

The characters were relatable and felt very authentic. If I was to sum the book up in a single word it would actually be ‘authentic’. There was no extravagant event included for the sake of entertainment. It was a real story about real people.

The Promise of Living is a book I wanted to read. Whenever I had to be somewhere, I wanted to take it with me. I needed to know what happened next. If you’re looking for your next read, here it is!

“I love you, Ryan. I’ll always remember the blond trombone player in the farmer t-shirts and the red John Deere cap.”

I was kindly gifted a Kindle version of this book, by the author, in return for an honest review. Thank you very much to J. Lee Graham.

Book Review for THE PROMISE OF LIVING

Thank you Jamie Deacon for a terrific review of THE PROMISE OF LIVING. Jamie has a blog entitled "Boys on the Brink" where YA gay novels are discussed and celebrated! 

Part of the Review: 

The Promise of Living certainly isn’t a novel for the faint-hearted. It has more than its fair share of harrowing moments, and one twist in particular shocked me so much that I had to put the book down for a while before going back to it. For all the grimness, however, there are some tender scenes, and overall I found it incredibly inspirational.

In defiance of the tough hand fate deals him, Ryan somehow comes through his ordeal, not only stronger, but the kind of young man any parent would be proud of.

If you enjoy novels that combine the clairvoyant with harsh reality, and which don’t shy away from the more disturbing aspects of life, you may well want to give this one a go.

To read the full review, please click here! 
http://blogcritics.org/books/article/book-review-the-promise-of-living/

A book review for IN THE NICK OF TIME

Thank you Susan from her blog timetraveltimestwo where she wrote a review of my time travel novel. This was such a surprise and I was extremely flattered. Mahalo!

In The Nick of Time

Posted on December 10, 2012 

In the Nick of Time, J. Lee Graham (2008, 99 pages), is a straightforward time travel tale in which three 13-year-old kids–Andy, Roger, and Miranda–go to a plantation in Georgia in 1858 where slaves are used. The story is given added drama because Roger is African-American, and the other two are white, and so only Roger finds himself a slave. As in a YA time travel book I admired, Trapped Between the Lash and the Gun by Arvella Whitmore, the stakes are very high as the kids are stuck in slave times until they can figure out how to return to their present.

Andy’s aunt, with whom he was very close, dies at the beginning of the story. She was a mystical personality and believed she could communicate with the dead. She had been a world traveler and picked up spiritual souvenirs from all over the world. The time travel starts when Andy’s family is cleaning out her house and Andy finds some mysterious incense that had been hers. He lights it and is transported back to the scene of the Boston Massacre of 1770. This foray into the past is brief and is not really connected to the main time travel in the story. I think the only reason for this trip in the narrative is to show what is needed to return to the present. Andy is able to return home when he relights the incense stick.

Not knowing where it will take them, Andy invites Roger to go on an adventure via another incense stick. He figures they can just relight the incense to return home. But this time he drops the incense stick just as they are leaving his bedroom. They have lost their return ticket! Miranda wasn’t invited, but happens upon the scene and inhales some of the incense smoke, so is also whisked away. The three find themselves on the plantation.

Roger finds he is part of a family of slaves living in a shack, while Andy and Miranda live in the fancy house of the owners of the plantation. Roger must do the back-breaking work of picking crops and is treated horribly by the white overseer of the plantation. Meanwhile, Andy and Miranda come to believe if they can find the herb that smells like the incense and they burn it, they will be able to return home. They begin a desperate search to find the mystery herb.

I admire the author for taking on such an important topic as slavery. The storyline would be easy enough for younger middle grade readers to follow, but because Graham does not shy away from the ugliest aspects of slavery, including whippings and even a hanging, a teacher or parent would have to decide if their children were ready to emotionally deal with this subject matter even if they were able to read the book. Once the kids arrived at  the plantation, I appreciated that the story kept a clear focus on how awful and unfair slavery was. I also liked how the story was not merely a time travel adventure, but also a tale of friendship, and how much can be forgiven in friendship.

In the Nick of Time is not to be confused with Nick of Time by Ted Bell which is also a  time travel story, or with the numerous other books of the same title!