More Novel Destinations Readers' Reviews!

Bikini Season by Sheila Roberts
Bikini Season is a fun and cute book about friendship.  A group of friends join together to diet together.  Everyone learns something about themselves along the way. Amid the funny situations they get into, they learn more about life, love, and friendship.  A great summer read! -- Dorris

Betrayal of Trust by J. A. Jance
J. A. Jance's new installment in the J. P. Beaumont series is an excellent police procedural that covers a multitude of dangers facing teens today, including snuff films, cyber bullying, predatorial advisors, non-functioning parents, and suicide.  There is just enough humor sprinkled through the story to lighten its message, and the sub-plot where Beau actually discovers who his father was is a nice twist and proof that these characters continue to surprise and entertain.  It's also refreshing to experience investigative work through the eyes of someone in their sixties, bad knees and all.

Tough love and courage reign in the end, families reunite as a gift for the dying, and reconstructive knee surgery looms as a starting point for the next time Jance treats her readers to more in the lives of these favorites.  It is a great story and scores 5/5 in my book!  -- Diane

Chasing Fire by Nora Roberts
As usual, Nora Roberts writes great attention-getting stories with attractive, assertive characters that are too good to be real.  Rowan fights fires by jumping out of airplanes.  She is beautiful and strong.  She can fight men bigger than she is.  She can't cook and I liked how she got upset when she learned that her dad was dating.  Her shortcomings made her more human.  They guy is also perfect. . . strong, good looking, and owns his own arcade business.  As always in Nora Roberts books, the couple solves the case and ends up with each other.  --Monica

Return to Sender by Julia Alvarez
Julia Alvarez explores the interrelated stories of a boy and his farm in Vermont and a Mexican family's hardships in the U.S.  Alvarez challenges readers to see the whole picture of Mexican migrant families, especially those torn between family members who are legal and illegal.  Though the issues are difficult and a reality that some care not to explore, the story is heartwarming in its narration through the voices of two budding adolescents.  I recommend reading this book.  -- Colleen

The Bible Jesus Read by Philip Yancey
Reading this book helped me understand the Old Testament better, especially the Psalms.  It shows, in simple everyday language, how the Old Testament relates to the present.  People avoid the Old Testament because they feel it's not relevant in today's society and/or it's hard to understand.  This book helps the reader gain a better understanding of these books.  --Joyce

Though Lincoln, Nebraska, seems a strange gathering place for refugees from all corners of the globe, it is the setting for Mary Pipher's The Middle of Everywhere, an ardent, anecdotal, and at times moving study of some new arrivals to the United States. Pipher emphasizes the resiliency of the refugees--from Laos, Bosnia, Northern Iraq, Sudan, Afghanistan, and the former Soviet Union--whose homeland tales of death, privation, torture, and multi-pronged persecution vary only in the details. In America the refugees must learn a new language and pick their way among the temptations and wonders of a complex land. Does a Publishers Clearing House notice mean one is a millionaire? What is aluminum foil? Is an overdue library book a jailable offense? Pipher visits classrooms and homes and offers extended portraits of a female family of Kurds and a bewildered clan of Sudanese, as well as snapshots of many other refugees. She is a harsh critic of the Immigration and Naturalization Service and an advocate of "cultural brokers"--the social adjustment equivalent of practical nurses. --H. O'Billovich

This book is moving, compelling, heart-wrenching, heart-warming, and well worth the time. There is a great humanitarian message to this book. It really opened my eyes to struggles of refugees of gave me a better understanding of the world we live in. At the same time it showed me a lot about America and Americans too--the good and the bad.

~Katrina

A New York Times Notable Book of the Year

A Washington Post Best Book of the Year

A Businessweek Best Business Book of the Year

A Chicago Tribune Best Book of the Year

In this brilliant, essential book, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Thomas L. Friedman speaks to America's urgent need for national renewal and explains how a green revolution can bring about both a sustainable environment and a sustainable America. Friedman explains how global warming, rapidly growing populations, and the expansion of the world’s middle class through globalization have produced a dangerously unstable planet--one that is "hot, flat, and crowded." In this Release 2.0 edition, he also shows how the very habits that led us to ravage the natural world led to the meltdown of the financial markets and the Great Recession. The challenge of a sustainable way of life presents the United States with an opportunity not only to rebuild its economy, but to lead the world in radically innovating toward cleaner energy. Hot, Flat, and Crowded is classic Thomas L. Friedman: fearless, incisive, forward-looking, and rich in surprising common sense about the challenge--and the promise--of the future.

Not a quick read to take to the beach on a summer afternoon, but the topic and ideas presented are too important to ignore. People sometimes quickly dismiss books about environmental issues, assuming it will lead to the condemning of science, technology, and societal advances, instead proposing a regression toward a simpler 1800's style lifestyle. What makes the book different to me is that Friedman has researched and described solutions which exist, have been proven, make both environmental as well as economic sense. The U.S. has faced significant downturns in the housing market, the stock market, banking, a continuing energy crisis, volatile and soaring gasoline prices, Detroit now stuck with 20th century vehicles no longer suitable for the 21st century, soaring budget deficits, and a do-nothing Congress locked in ideological finger pointing. Perhaps the culmination of all these problems arising at the same time is that the public will read this book and clamor for solutions.
~Katrina

Full of incredible characters, amazing athletic achievements, cutting-edge science, and, most of all, pure inspiration, Born to Run is an epic adventure that began with one simple question: Why does my foot hurt? In search of an answer, Christopher McDougall sets off to find a tribe of the world’s greatest distance runners and learn their secrets, and in the process shows us that everything we thought we knew about running is wrong.

Born to Run is that rare book that will not only engage your mind but inspire your body when you realize that the secret to happiness is right at your feet, and that you, indeed all of us, were born to run.

As a runner, I give this book a solid 10. By the end of it I was so inspired about running that I wanted to just go and run 50 miles right out the gate. I'm not even kidding (however, I thought better of that and decided to stick to my 5-mile jaunts). So, way to be super inspiring, Born to Run! But even if you're not a runner, there's fascinating stuff here: about the way we appear to have evolved to be the world's greatest distance-running species; about the way that modern, "advanced" running shoes tend to promote more injuries, not fewer injuries, than the cheapest shoes on the the market, than the shoes of yesteryear, than no shoes at all; about a tribe of people who--every single one of them--can achieve feats of endurance running that seem superhuman to us, but probably are in reach of all human beings.

~Katrina