Colliding With Destiny || Sarah Jakes

Title: Colliding With Destiny

Author: Sarah Jakes

Length: 215 pages

Publication date: September 2, 2014

Genre: Christian inspirational

Rating: 2/5 stars

Way back in 2014 I received and read Colliding With Destiny. I had been excited about the premise, but ultimately it fell flat for me. I just had a look at the book on Goodreads, however, and apparently only 2 other people felt the same way as me about this book. So maybe you'll feel differently, who knows?!

Colliding With Destiny is an exploration through the life of Ruth. Sarah Jakes uses her own stories from life to guide you through the trials and heartaches that Ruth faced, and by doing so brings this well-known story to another light. The goal is to inspire you to collide with your divine destiny, allowing God to lead you there.

The Meh:

- So much of this book felt repetitive and forced. I think the whole book would have been a lot shorter if she hadn't kept making the same statement over and over, just phrased in another way. The structure of the book is looking at a section from the book of Ruth, and then the author connecting things that happened in her own life to what happened to Ruth. In my opinion, the connections were often quite forced. It also seemed like the author made generalizations to serve her own purposes, just adding to the forced feeling through a lot of it.

- There was a journal section at the end of each chapter, and they often felt disjointed from the rest of the chapter. Often I didn't even find anything in the prompt that I could journal about! I didn't think they made a lot of sense or impact in a devotional sense. 

The Good:

- Sarah Jakes has had a hard life, and her honesty about it was very encouraging and refreshing. She makes it clear that she made bad choices, and that obedience to God has made all the difference in her life. 

- I found this book more motivating or meditative, rather than devotional. The author made a lot of statements that made me think a little bit longer, which I appreciated. A couple examples:

"We make life so much more difficult that it has to be, all because we make God an option instead of a priority." - pg. 138, Colliding With Destiny

"Those called by God must be willing to have faith strong enough to withstand the rejection of others around them." - pg. 170, Colliding With Destiny 

I would not recommend reading this book as a devotional, but rather as a motivational/inspirational book. There are good lessons to be learned from Sarah Jakes' life, and the overall message of the book was solid.

I received a digital copy of this book for free from the publisher in exchange for an honest review. All thoughts and opinions expressed are my own.

I'm Participating in ARC August!

I found out about this awesome concept from my friend Samantha at Thoughts on Tomes, and I just knew I had to join in for this! I am easily swayed by the newest book I get, so my poor advance reader copies tend to get ignored. This is a fun way for me to get motivated about reading them!

This event was created by Read.Sleep.Repeat, and you can find all of the information for it on their blog.

The Rules:

The rules are very simple:

• It may be a physical ARC or and eARC but it MUST be an ARC.
• It can be an ARC that has released as long as it is an ARC.
• This is meant to be fun!! Feeling like you are being “forced” to read is the best way turn a fun event into a yucky obligation.
• Update posts! You can update once a week, every other week or once for the whole darn event. This update can be in the form of a blog, Tumblr post, vlog, link to your “ARC August 2015″ shelf, or even an Instagram pic!

My TBR:

I have only 3 Netgalley ARCs that have not been published yet, so those are my priority. Then I'll pick up whatever strikes my fancy yet. I don't know if I will read ARCs exclusively or if I'll throw other books in there. (I haven't gotten to read Armada yet, after all.) I am currently participating in the Booktubeathon, and I am not reading any ARCs for that. The rest of the month should be good though! 

I have listed my books mostly in order of publication/how much I want to read them. 

Wild in the Hollow - Amber C. Haines
From a Distant Star - Karen McQuestion
Mechanica - Betsy Cornwell
Anchored - Kayla Aimee

How to Fly with Broken Wings - Jane Elson

Audrey & Bill - Edward Z. Epstein 

Tolkien - Devin Brown

Puppet - Pauline C. Harris

How We Deal With Gravity - Ginger Scott
The Paper Magician - Charlie N. Holmberg
Portal 24 - Meredith Stroud
Cannonbridge - Jonathan Barnes 

I am hoping to get my updates up every week either on this blog or Instagram. My monthly wrap-up will be on my YouTube channel at the end of August. Are you going to participate in this? If you are, leave a comment down below and tell me what you're reading! 

Lizzy & Jane || Katherine Reay

Title: Lizzy & Jane

Author: Katherine Reay

Length: 339 pages

Publication date: October 1, 2014

Genre: Adult contemporary

Rating: 4/5

Elizabeth is a professional chef in New York, with her own successful restaurant. But lately the magic seems to be gone, and something is off with her cooking. In order to find that spark again, Elizabeth goes home to Seattle to visit her family: her father, widowed after her mother passed away from cancer when she was a teen; and her older sister Jane, currently fighting her own battle with cancer. The trip becomes more than Elizabeth or Jane could have guessed, and leaves Elizabeth questioning her career, relationships, and faith.

This book hit really close to home for me. After losing my father to cancer a year and a half ago, cancer stories always impact me on a different level. Picking this story up, that was not what I was expecting, but I was pleased with Reay's depiction on how cancer affects the whole family. I found the story to be quite realistic in its portrayal of emotions, relationships, and situations the characters found themselves in.

This story has a romance sub-plot (what else could you except from a story whose heroines are named after Jane Austen's most famous sisters?) but at the heart of it this book is about family, which is a refreshing change. There are also good friendships to be found here, which I always look out for as well.

I feel that I should note that this story does revolve heavily around cancer, so that might be very stressful for some readers. Also, there is a scene where a character suffers an injury that, while not horribly graphic, imagining it made me quite squeamish indeed. Other than that, I couldn't recommend this more.


I received a digital copy of this book for free from the publisher in exchange for an honest review. All thoughts and opinions expressed are my own.

The Martian || Andy Weir

Title: The Martian

Author: Andy Weir

Length: 369 pages

Publication date: September 23, 2012

Genre: Science fiction

Rating: 5/5

Mark Watney is in trouble. He's on the fourth manned expedition to Mars, and on the sixth day of the mission, an intense storm forces them to abandon the mission, and in the chaos, Mark is left stranded. On Mars. By himself. Oh, and the storm eliminated any communication with Earth. So Mark has to figure out how to make his limited supplies last until the next expedition arrives... in 4 years. But Mark is smart, and he's bound to figure out how to make it, right?

I had heard for months that this book was amazing. I even bought it and had it on my shelf, somewhere close to the top of my TBR (to-be read) pile for a few months. But then I watched the trailer for the movie adaptation, and I knew I couldn't put it off any more. That day I picked it up, and within 2 pages I was glad that I had made that decision, and by page 6 I had laughed out loud at least once. Really.

The Martian was quite different from what I was expecting when I picked it up. I'm not sure what I was expecting, but it wasn't what I got. First of all, this is a very scientific book. After all, it is about an astronaut trying to survive on Mars. He does that through science. And Mark Watney is very smart. This book is filled with his scientific calculations, and yet I never felt bored! Sometimes it went over my head, but Weir did such a great job writing it in such a way that it was accurate and still somewhat entertaining.

I also really liked the character of Mark Watney (I just really like to refer to him by his full name.) He was very resourceful, and his sense of humour was great. That's what made the book for me. He had a very dry sense of humour, and he would react to situations very differently from what I would (ie he remained calm whilst I would have sat in my spacesuit and cried for a year.) The only thing that I would have liked to see more of was a bit more of the emotional and psychological effects of being completely alone for many months. You get a hint of that at the end, but just a hint. But this isn't necessarily that kind of book either. This isn't a story about Mark Watney's emotions. This is a story about his survival. He's too busy trying to grow potatoes in Martian soil to worry about his feelings.

This story is told mostly through Mark making log entries, but there are chapters focused on the people back at NASA and his crew on the ship, which I thought was interesting. Seeing things from their view as they try to get Mark off of Mars alive, and then reading his own account after was really cool. It filled in so much of the story.

This is a survival story at its finest. Really, when the very atmosphere of the planet you are on will kill you, it makes for a really intense story at times. There is some moderate swearing, but I didn't find it to be gratuitous. To my memory there was one allusion to two characters having sex, but other than that there wasn't any sexual content either. If you're looking for a really exciting and funny story that has you holding your breath as you reach the end, this might be for you!

(As a side note, last night I dreamt about Mark Watney. In my dream, his family was with him on Mars, but the rest of the situations were the same. One night, a dinosaur (really, brain?) came into their living area, destroyed his potatoes, and killed his sister. I was really really upset about the potatoes being destroyed.)

The Last Heiress || Mary Ellis

Title: The Last Heiress

Author: Mary Ellis

Length: 304 pages

Publication date: February 1, 2015

Genre: Historical fiction

Rating: 3.25/5

English heiress Amanda Dunn sets sail from England for Wilmington, North Carolina, where she hopes to somehow restore shipments of raw materials for her family's textile mills, which have been severely disrupted by the American Civil War. She also anticipates spending time with her twin sister Abigail and Abigail's husband, who happens to be in the cotton industry himself. While working on her business dealings, she also meets a young grocer who catches her eye, and suddenly business isn't the only thing on her mind...

I enjoyed this book more than I thought I would! It wasn't without flaws, but I liked the story. It is a historical romance, but it didn't feel like the romance wasn't the extreme focus above everything else, and I didn't find it annoying. 

I've not really read anything set during the Civil War, so I don't know much of the history and details of it. This provided enough detail of what was going on without confusing me with names too much, but it did sometimes assume that the reader had at least a rudimentary knowledge of the war, which I wouldn't stay I have. It was interesting to learn some more about it. 

I have mixed feelings about the characters. They didn't feel very complete sometimes, just like simple characters. In the last quarter of the book the main characters each went through changes that didn't have much lead up, so the changes felt very abrupt. However, the characters weren't boxed into a single trope either. I think the potential was there for the author to do more with them. They weren't bad characters, just nothing really deep. The faith part of this story was very surface level, just casual mentions to God. It could hardly be called a Christian fiction.

Overall, I did enjoy this book, and I would recommend it for fans of romance or people interested in American history. 


I received a digital copy of this book for free from the publisher in exchange for an honest review. All thoughts and opinions expressed are my own.

The Invention of Exile || Vanessa Manko

Title: The Invention of Exile

Author: Vanessa Manko

Length: 304 pages

Publication date: August 14, 2014

Genre: Historical fiction

Rating: 2/5

Austin Voronkov is a Russian immigrant to Connecticut in 1913. As an inventor and engineer, he loves the opportunities he has in the United States. He has met a beautiful American woman named Julia, who agrees to become his wife. But Austin is wrongly accused of being an anarchist, and as a result he and his wife are deported to Russia. Over the next several years, they move from place to place in Europe, having 3 children along the way. Because of the Russian civil war and unrest in Europe, the family decides to go to Mexico, where they will try to get permission to go back to the US. Julia and the children are eventually able to return to their home, while Austin must stay behind in Mexico. Over the years of their separation, Austin must deal with his feelings of isolation from what he knows, and struggles to stay connected to his family.

This book had a lot of promise. The summary sounded really interesting to me, right up my alley. I really enjoy historical fiction and I hadn't read anything set in this situation. However, basically everything about his book was a big disappointment. The writing seemed like the author was attempting to be very poetic, but it just came across as scattered. There were SO many sentence fragments, I couldn't even handle it by the end. The scattered writing also made the story feel horribly repetitive; in fact, if it had been written/edited properly, it probably would have lost 50 or 60 pages.

The dialogue was another problem for me. It was often strained, and not because of Austin's grasp of English. The characters felt quite disconnected from each other, like they were strangers being forced to interact, or bad actors without chemistry. I will say that the author was very good at painting a picture of the setting. I really did feel like I was in Mexico with Austin. Unfortunately, as this was a character based story, that wasn't able to carry the story.

I also had a problem with how the author handled the characters. A few side characters were introduced, and then dropped with no mention again. There is a significant antagonist of the story, a character that causes Austin incredible amounts of stress, to the point where he looks over his shoulder all the time for this character. This character seems like a big deal, yet two-thirds of the way through the book, it seems like the author literally forgot about him! He, the huge problem for Austin, just stops being mentioned at all. He doesn't have any last lines, Austin stops giving him any thought, and it makes you wonder if he was even in the book at all?

The ending was horrific - it was such an anticlimactic letdown! I actually kept trying to turn the page on my ereader because I could not accept that I had reached the end! It felt like a section of pages had to be missing! I was so upset because after struggling through the story, I didn't even have a good ending to show for it!

Now, in full disclosure, I did have a galley of it, and I truly hope that there were things legitimately missing from it that are in the final copy of the book. The story truly did have a lot of promise, but the writing was too weak to pull it off. This is a debut novel, and I feel like if the author keeps working at it, she could have some wonderful stories in the future. I also feel like a strong editor might have made all the difference with this book.


I received a digital copy of this book for free from the publisher in exchange for an honest review. All thoughts and opinions expressed are my own.

The Villa || Rosanna Ley

Title: The Villa

Author: Rosanna Ley

Length: 417 pages

Publication date: August 5, 2014

Genre: adult contemporary

Rating: 2.5/5

One day Tess Angel receives a letter from the solicitor of a man she never met, saying she inherited his villa in Sicily. The man, named Edward Westerman, was Tess' mother Flavia's employer when she was a young woman. The thing is, Flavia never went back to Sicily after she left when she was in her early twenties, and she never spoke about it with Tess. Because Tess has so many questions about what her mother's life was like growing up, and why she has inherited this villa in the first place, she goes to Sicily to do some investigating. Flavia struggles with her daughter's decision to go to her hometown, and has to deal with all of the memories that come flooding back. And in the meantime, Tess' daughter Ginny is dealing with her own problems of deciding what to do with her future now that she's completed high school. The story follows these three women as they face the past and make decisions that will greatly affect their futures. 

I was intrigued by this book mostly because it was set in Sicily, and didn't look much at what the plot was, to be honest. So I didn't have many expectations for this book. And unfortunately, this book was not very enjoyable for me. First things first, the writing was really clunky. Ever been a passenger in a car with someone who is learning how to drive manual, and they aren't quite picking up on how to shift gears? That was how reading this book felt to me. The sentences didn't always flow very well, and the author really liked to use ellipses and dashes excessively. It did smooth after the middle of the book, but it still wasn't great. 

I don't have much to say about the plot of the book. It was alright, pretty basic, kind of predictable. It would make a good beach read.  But mostly I didn't like the characters all that much, especially Flavia. **Spoilers ahead** As a teenager, she meets a man named Peter and they fall in love. Peter has to leave, and for 6 years Flavia pines after him. Finally she decides to go to England to see if she can find him. She does end up finding him, but he's married with a child by then. So Flavia is heartbroken, and ends up getting married a couple years later, even though she'll never love him the way she loves Peter. After Flavia gets married, Peter comes waltzing around and tells her that he's left his wife because he "was never happy with her." At least Flavia doesn't run out on her husband, although that would have preferable to what she does end up doing, which is her having an emotional affair on her husband for 25 years. These people have been separated for THIRTY-THREE years and yet they think their love is true love. NO. I'm sure this was supposed to seem romantic, but it was just pathetic and it made me upset. I do not condone cheating at all, under any circumstances. By the time you find out what Flavia and Peter were doing, it was about 75% into the book, otherwise I might have stopped sooner. The worst part? Flavia doesn't think it affects her husband at all, that it has nothing to do with him. Well, Flavia, you are an unbelievably selfish person if you believe that. At then beginning of the book, Tess is "the other woman," and you can see where she gets that trait from. (At least she smartens up and leaves the guy)  That whole storyline was enough to sour my enjoyment of the book.

Overall, The Villa is just a mediocre book, and I feel like there are better books out there for you to spend your time on. I didn't hate everything about it, but I just can't recommend it.


I received a digital copy of this book for free from the publisher in exchange for an honest review. All thoughts and opinions expressed are my own.