Mailbox Monday (Feb 20, 2012)

 Mailbox Monday will be hosted in February at Metroreader.  In My Mailbox is hosted Sundays at The Story Siren. Please visit these posts and take a look at what packages everybody else got this week! 

For review:

You're Already Amazing

Embracing Who You Are, Becoming All God Created You to Be

by Holley Gerth

Pssst . . . pull up a chair and I'll tell you a secret.  You'd better lean in close for this one.

Ready?

You don't have to do more, be more, have more.

I'm sure there are security alarms going off somewhere.  You should probably hide this book when your in-laws come over.

But it's true.

It's the kind of true that will change your life, set you free, and make you wake up smiling for the first time in a long time.  I know because that's what it did for me. . .

So watch out, sister.  If you keep reading you just might be next.

With this heart-to-heart message, Holley Gerth invites you to embrace one very important truth -- that you truly are already amazing.  Like a trusted friend, Holley gently shows you how to forget the lies and expectations the world feeds you and instead believe that God loves you and has bigger plans for your life than you've even imagined.



For review:

Frantic

by Mike Dellosso

Can a deranged serial killer be stopped before it's too late?

For gas station attendant Marny Toogood it's just another day on the job when an urgent message from a young girl in the backseat of a car draws him into a daring rescue attempt.  Now on the run with the girl and her brother, Marny begins to realize he must conquer his own past and surrender all to Christ.

As they face kidnapping, underground cults, and other evils, can Marny trust the simple faith of a child and stand his ground against a power so twisted?





For review: 

The Good Father

by Noah Hawley

As the chief of rheumatology at Columbia Presbyterian, Dr. Paul Allen's specialty is diagnosing patients with conflicting symptoms, patients other doctors have given up on.  He lives a contented life in Westport, Connecticut, with his second wife and their twin sons -- a life hard-won after a failed marriage that produced a son named Daniel.

In the gripping opening scene of this compulsively readable novel, Dr. Allen is home with his family when a televised news report announces that the Democratic candidate for president has been shot at a rally.  Daniel is accused of pulling the trigger, sending the Allen family down a harrowing path of no return.

Daniel Allen has always been a good kid -- a decent student, popular -- but, as a child of divorce used to shuttling back and forth between parents, he is also something of a drifter.  Which may be why, at the age of nineteen, he quietly drops out of Vassar and begins an aimless journey across the United States, during which he sheds his former skin and eventually even changes his name to Carter Allen Cash.

Who is ultimately to blame when a child turns out to be far from what his parents ever expected?  How long can a parent punish himself for the events of the past?  When does a parent let go?

This absorbing novel unflinchingly defines the responsibilities -- and limitations -- of being a parent and examines our capacity to provide our children with unconditional love in the face of an unthinkable situation.





For review: 

What Dies in Summer

by Tom Wright

"I did what I did, and that's on me."  From that tantalizing first sentence, Tom Wright sweeps us up in a tale of lost innocence.  Jim has a touch of the Sight.  It's nothing too spooky and generally useless, at least until the summer his cousin L.A. moves in with him and their grandmother.  When Jim and L.A. discover the body of a girl, brutally raped and murdered in a field, an investigation begins that will put both their lives in danger.  In the spirit of The Lovely Bones and The Little Friend, What Dies in Summer is a novel that casts its spell on the very first page and leaves an indelible mark.



Purchased for a read-along:

The Hunger Games

by Suzanne Collins

In the ruins of a place once known as North America lies the nation of Panem, a shining Capitol surrounded by twelve outlying districts.  The Capitol is harsh and cruel and keeps the districts in line by forcing them all to send one boy and one girl between the ages of twelve and eighteen to participate in the annual Hunger Games, a fight to the death on live TV.

Sixteen-year-old Katniss Everdeen regards it as a death sentence when she steps forward to take her sister's place in the Games.  But Katniss has been close to dead before -- and survival, for her, is second nature.  Without really meaning to, she becomes a contender.  But if she is to win, she will have to start making choices that weigh survival against humanity and life against love.



Paperback Swap: 



The Awakening

by Kelley Armstrong

If you had met me a few weeks ago, you probably would have described me as an average teenage girl -- someone normal.  Now my life has changed forever and I'm as far away from normal as it gets.  A living science experiment -- not only can I see ghosts, but I was genetically altered by a sinister organization called the Edison Group.  What does that mean?   For starters, I'm a teenage necromancer whose powers are out of control; I raise the dead without even trying.  Trust me, that is not a power you want to have.  Ever.

Now I'm running for my life with three of my supernatural friends -- a charming sorcerer, a cynical werewolf, and a disgruntled witch -- and we have to find someone who can help us before the Edison Group finds us first.  Or die trying.