Hazel has still been plugging along in her life. She’s not doing as much as she was in the beginning, but she’s easily the best-selling title I have, and she’s selling pretty regularly, which makes me happy. What also makes me happy is that she’s been getting ratings and reviews.
That means I can share this three-star review with you. The reviewer was kind enough to post this on both Goodreads and Amazon, which is twice as nice!
As always, I hope you’ll consider leaving a rating and review. Even if you didn’t like it, there is no such thing as a bad review.
First, let me please thank you for the reception Hazel has received thus far. Even as I type this, things are looking good. I don’t know if we’ll hit our goal, but things are already going pretty darn well. But I’ll have more on that next week. For now, what I do have are some reviews for Hazel and one for Bob.
Since we only have one for Bob, let’s start with that.
Such a great book! Felt like a trilogy all wrapped into one book. So much heart put into this book and I can’t wait to get my hands on the other ones. This book has it all and takes you through a full range of emotions. Highly recommend picking this one up!
As for Hazel, well she has two reviews. Check out this four star review and this five star review. Neither of them have a lot of words, but I promise they both have a ton of value. If you’ve read Hazel in some form or another (or any of my books), we’d appreciate a rating and review. Also, if you haven’t tried Hazel out, maybe these reviews will inspire you to check it out.
Stealing Freedom is probably my most socially conscious project, and it’s nice to see feedback that indicates readers resonate with the themes I was trying to convey.
As always, I’m hopeful those of you who’ve read my work might consider taking a moment or two to post a rating and review on Goodreads, Amazon, Audible or all of the above. They really boost my morale, and they help with marketing and sales.
Whatever you do, I’m honored and grateful you’ve decided to give this wacky self-published author a chance.
I don’t care how “big” I get (not claiming to be big now); I’m always going to love sharing reviews. The five-star review below from Shawna is for The Power of Words.
Great Collection!
I was given this free review copy audiobook at my request and have voluntarily left this review.
These short stories were a great collection. I love having short stories by different authors in one book. It always seems to shake things up a little bit.
These stories really spoke to me and I loved every second of them. Usually, I can’t really connect too well with shorter stories but these ones all had me hooked from the moment I hit play. Very well done!
I truly appreciate the thoughtful words.
As always, please allow me this opportunity to ask that if you’ve read any of my books (especially Betrayed), please be kind enough to leave a rating and review on Amazon, Goodreads, or Audible (or all three). They really do help.
Amazon reviews are particularly valuable because they help improve an author’s visibility. I’m so grateful to the reviewer for taking the time to share his review. This particular review might be a little on the spoiler side of things, so I feel a bit of need to at least offer you fair warning. That doesn’t diminish my appreciation at all though.
Just when I thought it was too good to be true, I found this five-star review on Goodreads from Shawna! (Thank you again so much for your awesome support!)
If you’ve read any of my work, would you please consider leaving a rating and/or a review on Amazon, Goodreads or both? It really does help.
For now, I just want to thank this reviewer one more time.
I have the honor of being able to share another Audible review for you. Today’s review comes from Troy Buffington for Caught.
Fantasy and horror mix
I breezed through this book pretty fast. I wasn’t sure at first what I was getting into. The story pulls you in. The characters are people you care for. Some twists and turns.
I’m so glad that Troy liked the story. I’m very close to finishing the Beta Draft of Discovered, and I hope it keeps the action going.
As always, if you’ve read my work, please be kind enough to leave a rating and review on whatever platforms you use. It’s always appreciated.
I’m always happy to share reviews, so it’s with great joy that I present this four-star (sort of) review for Stealing Freedom. This was a review by Margaret for the Audible version of the story, so I have to copy-paste it below for you to access.
4/5 for narrators ability, 3/5 for having two
This is the first book I have read/listened to by this author. It is a very poignant, original book. It was written before 2020, but resonates now due to recent government and law enforcement actions. The book constantly reminded me of the recent excessive military responses to peaceful protesting and false, inconsistent and contradictory narratives provided to the public from governmental bodies. In this story, everyone over the age of seven must wear a collar that would punish people for speaking or publicly displaying emotions (hugging, smiling, negative facial expressions). Drones and cameras monitor everyone every moment of their day to ensure no one rests longer than allowed, spends more than allotted time in the bathroom, etc.. Everything was regulated. It was possible to purchase words, a cost that was prohibitive to most people to the point our main character purchased six words to say to her daughter and that is the first she had spoken to her in two years. Knowing this was no way for people to live and believing they had the ability to do something about it, the main character and a few other people attempt to shut down the servers that operate the collars. They do it at extreme risk to their lives. Their plan reminded me of the movies Ocean Eleven and Now You See Me. I really liked the ending part with the main monitor and his final moments.
This is the first book I have listened to by these narrators ( Lisa Negron, J.M. Needham ). They both do well narrating. She narrates the parts that have Laurie and Laurie’s conversations (even if it is with a male) and he narrates the parts from the perspectives of the male characters when they are not having a conversation but just re-counting their thoughts or actions. Since no one can speak, the narrative often switches perspectives many times within the same chapter. This meant the narrator switched many times throughout the chapter. Lisa did a fine job giving voice to both male and female characters and had very nice pacing and cadence. I think it was quite unnecessary to have a second narrator. I found it uncomfortable for the first half of the book until I got a little more used to it. The only reason it was not fully disruptive, was both narrators were good at what they were doing. There are no explicit sex scenes, excessive violence, or swearing. I was given this free review copy audiobook at my request and voluntarily left this unbiased review. Please feel free to comment on whether you found my review helpful.
As you can see, she would like feedback, so if you have the time and want to help a reviewer, please pop onto her link above and offer your thoughts. Just as I love feedback, some reviewers also seek and desire feedback.
I’m noticing a trend of reviewers be less happy about a team of narrators. I’m not sure how I feel about that. I love having a male for the male POVs and a female for the female POVs. What are your thoughts?
If you’ve read my work, please consider leaving a review on Amazon, Audible, Goodreads, or all three. It really means a lot.
Dr. MacArthur was in an interestingly difficult position, not because he wanted to take a stance for the truth of Biblical doctrine, but in that he wanted to also distinguish between righteous defense of the truth and needless contention or even disagreements among brothers on smaller, less-clear issues.
This book does have some repudiation of other religious texts, but it’s much more necessary here in the context of discernment, which is another major topic of the book.
This book was actually a motivating call to action for me. And it starts with the most important truth. Jesus Christ, God in flesh, came down to Earth to free mankind from its sin by dying on the cross and being resurrected on the third day.
MacArthur spent a significant amount of time seeming to shift from a firm declaration of truth, and justification of why the truth must be defended. The book spends the bulk of it’s time explaining that one can not stand for truth by avoiding possibly contentious doctrine.
This is the great challenge facing Christianity today in my thinking. I imagine many Christians such as myself feel torn between wanting to stand for Biblical truth but not being lashed out at simply for stating my beliefs and standing by them. The big take away is, so long as you lovingly and patiently defend the truth, you can actually rejoice in persecution as it sets you apart. I certainly don’t mean to say one can stand on a street corner shouting at people with megaphones, and I don’t believe that’s what MacArthur is stating either. I believe he advocates for the patient but firm contribution to discussions without sidestepping culturally charged issues. It is here I always find myself conflicted.
This image of Dr. MacArthur was taken from his church’s website for review purposes under Fair Use doctrine.
If I were to post a blog on how I feel that chicken was best and listed my reasons, I might receive some response and even some polite discourse. If I then post that I don’t eat pork, and I don’t like the food, I may have some people shrug and call me weird. I might have some disagree, but in this we allow a person to have their point of view. But point at a sin that the Bible clearly speaks against, and watch how many people call me narrow minded even as they narrow-mindedly call me any sort of name they can think of.
The simple truth is anyone willing to stand up for what he or she believes in must also be willing to endure anger, hostility, or even down-right hate. Christianity demands even more foreknowledge because it takes such a clear stand on several issues. This book explains that refusal to avoid these uncomfortable conversations only contribute to the degradation of the faith. If Biblical truth is to be upheld, it must start at the pulpit and extend through the congregation, and Christians should never compromise or alter God’s word for the sake of political correctness or inclusion.
That statement alone could lead to a lengthy debate, so I just state that once more everyone has a right to their own decisions, but they are also subject to the consequences of those decisions.
Once more, neither I nor MacArthur endorse needless argument for the sake of argument. Neither does MacArthur endorse resentful arguments over issues on which scripture isn’t clear.
What I wish this book had was more actionable information on how to go about it. I wish there was a section on social media. I wish there was more direction in those areas, and I hope MacArthur speaks to that in other books.
This book was a motivating call to action even though I wish it had more actionable information. I always enjoy MacArthur’s exegetical insight, especially because it is (almost) always based in scripture.
It’s always nice to have a review to share. For starters, it makes it easy to post a blog every Saturday. More importantly, it allows me to share the reviews people leave with you readers.
Today is a four-star review from Cyber Cowboy on Audible.
Decent
I’ve always been one to say that words have power more than just their meaning and lived by that idea, so I was excited to see this book. For some reason the first 2 stories didn’t speak to me much, but the last two, the ideas behind them. The acts of defiance they displayed via the use of words was incredibly powerful, and I intend to check out both of those authors’ other works. That doesn’t mean the first two stories weren’t good, they were good stories, just didn’t illicit a strong reaction either way in me. I received a copy of this book at my request in exchange for a FAIR review.
I did another Audio Book Boom for The Power of Words, so I’m hopeful I’ll have a handful of reviews to share with you soon.
As always, I humbly request that you consider leaving a review if you’ve read my work. I’d be happy to share it on this blog, and reviews really help an author out.
I’m thrilled that this is the third week in a row where I have (at least) one review to share with you! We’ll see how this all progresses, but I’m just so happy that people are trying my work and enjoying it.
This review is special because Krantz isn’t just an author; she’s an author in this genre. I love when readers like my work, but when my peers acknowledge it, I feel a special appreciation. To me it’s like getting a vote for the Top 100 in the NFL because the players also vote on that list.
If you like my work, there’s a chance you’ll like hers too. I haven’t tried her work yet, so if you do, and you like it, please let me know in the comments. My TBR has somewhere around 13 books on it (before the new Stormlight drops), so I’m just trying to get caught up before I add to that pile more than I already plan to.
Once more, I’m so grateful for the review, and I hope it encourages people to try my work. As always, if you’ve read some of my work, please consider leaving a review on Amazon, Goodreads, Audible, or all three.
M.L.S. Weech 