Indie-Fever Book Review: Spirits of Lakewood

This is my second book review. I'm happy to review Indie books and link my reviews to the Indie-Fever Reading Challenge 2013 (just click on the picture to learn about it), as well as post them on Amazon and any other book site requested. 

Here's my review of Spirits of Lakewood - Hidden Secrets by Samantha Rindfuss:

This is a Young Adult ghost story about an orphaned teen-age girl, Sophie, who goes to live with her grandmother. Sophie learns the house, and now she, is haunted by a dead girl who demands to be reunited with her dead father. Sophie is relatable and the story is cute - good for younger teens. There is a sufficient amount of suspense and fairly chilling ghost descriptions. The ending is a bit too quick, and some of the story line could be more developed, but it’s still an enjoyable read. It is Volume 1, so this could be the first book of a series of similar stories, or maybe the story will continue with the next. I can see teens wanting to read more of this story and learn whether Sophie will settle in her new hometown.

This being an Indie book, I would like to also comment on more technical issues that often come up with self-published books. The writing could be spruced up a notch. There was nothing glaringly wrong, but there were some typical missteps, like starting too many sentences with “as I.” “As” is a too common word in the book, such as “as she looked out the window” or “and as he walked in.” Despite this, I would recommend this for young teens.

I won Spirits of Lakewood eBook from LibraryThing. The LibraryThing Member Giveaway is a great place to get free eBooks in exchange for reviews. 100 copies of my eBook, Anticipation of the Penitent, is being offered at the LibraryThing member giveaway. Follow the link, scroll down until you see my book, and sign up to request it.

Allow me to re-introduce myself

Hi folks! I'm so glad to be a part of this blog hop that's started by several people. Just click on the picture and you can learn all about it.

I'm Nancy LaRonda Johnson, a passionate writer of Christian and other fiction and some poetry. I love writing flash fiction. Poetry comes when it comes. Only twice was I able to sit and intentionally write any half-way decent poetry.

But anyway, I'm a strong believer in Christ, love hanging with my crazy family (and my mom's doing better and better everyday, though she's still in the hospital). I'm also very involved with my church and love having lots and lots of down time, which is contrary to my busy schedule.

My favorite word in the English vocabulary is "vacation". My favorite sports: tennis and yoga, though I can't do yoga anymore because of early onset of arthritis in the knee and those darned yoga knee bends just kill it. But tennis is still a go. Authors who have written my favorite books are: Stephen King (of course), Gloria Naylor, Octavia Butler, Toni Morrison, John Grisham and Michael Crichton. Okay there are many others, but this is the short list.

Other things I love: listening to audio books, networking on the web, and did I say vacations?

Sorry for the late start, but I'm looking forward to being intro'd and re-introduced to many of you folks.

Celebrating the Small Things

Thanks to VikLit's Writing Blog for this wonderful blog hop. Although I have to try and make this quick (a very busy day), I do have a lot of small and not so small things to celebrate today.

#1 - My mom had a heart procedure done on Wednesday that went twice as long as it should (over 10 hours instead of 4-5 hours), and was placed on a ventilator. Why celebrate? Today she is off the ventilator, and although the doctors had to do much more than they knew until they looked inside, the procedure went well. Today my mom's talking up a storm and doing well. Definitely a time to celebrate!

#2 - Much smaller than the first, but my book is available at Nu Revelations Christian book and novelty store at 22431 Foothill Blvd. in Hayward, right next door to Kraski's health food store and Author Murray's dance studio. I'll eventually will do a book signing (maybe in May or June), and the owner of Nu Revelations has a TV show on the Hayward cable station channel 28 where they interview local artists on Tuesdays at 9 p.m. and he'll interview me prior to the book signing. The book will also be placed in the Hayward and Castro Valley libraries catalog.

God is good. Looking forward to reading about a lot of celebrations as soon as I'm able.