Imagine this, if you
will. Your little daughter is playing in a lush green park. You are sitting
with your friends there, a little away from your daughter. Suddenly, there
is a high-pitched scream. You are startled and frightened to see it’s your kid who is screaming. You are
horrified to see deep scratches on her hands and neck as if a ferocious animal
had attacked her. But there is no vicious creature in sight. Strange?
girl playing in a park
Residents of North Laketon, Michigan—an idyllic community—are grappling with such bizarre incidents. Brooke Davis arrives at this seemingly serene place with her daughter and pet dog with hopes of a new future. However, they are soon going to find out something sinister is hiding in North Laketon. Read The Night of the Sciurus: A Western Michigan Tale of Terror by Linda Watkins to discover what.
Welcome
to my first author Q&A. I have been wanting to do them for quite some time
but couldn’t since I’m a big
procrastinator. Nevertheless, let’s dive into this feature.
Today,
I’m interviewing indie author Sacha T.Y. Fortuné. I liked her debut
contemporary romance novel, Climbing The
Walls, very much. Her characters and their struggles are still deeply
entrenched in my mind.
Please feel free to check out my review of Climbing The Wallshere.
The blast from the shotgun decimated his face leaving behind a gory mess of brains and blood.
The Revolutionist by Robert Tucker
That’s how Luther Baggot, a bounty hunter assassin, slays his victims. Baggot is after a list containing the names of influential social democrats who fled Otto von Bismarck’s tyrannical regime.
Two of these families are the Josephsons from Sweden and the Wohlman brothers from Germany, both of whom took refuge in America. The Josephsons settle on a farm in Minnesota, and the Wohlman brothers establish a successful business in Chicago.
Unfortunately, Baggot tracks down Olaf and Ingrid Josephson and kills them. Consequently, the Josephson children, Newt and Julie, are forced to flee. They hide in a logging camp up north and ultimately land in St. Cloud. There they meet Matias Bauman alias Heinrich Wohlman, a former friend of the Josephsons. He takes them to Chicago, an unfamiliar world to them, where they are plunged headlong into the bedlam of urban politics and the violence of their past.
Fallen Mountains by Kimi Cunningham Grant – a review
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
Rating: 5 out of 5.
The haunting yet beautiful cover – that’s what drew me to this book, and I don’t regret picking it up.
Transom Shultz—son of the only rich person in the small town of Fallen Mountains—goes missing. Who could be behind his disappearance? Is it his best friend, Chase Hardy, whose farm Transom had bought and damaged irreparably? Is it his ex-girlfriend, Laney? Or is it Thomas Miller, the boy Transom bullied in school? It’s up to Sheriff Red to solve the case, but Red is hiding a secret too.
Recently, I watched two films, August Rush and Leap Year, and read a book, A Thousand Splendid Suns. While the films were good overall, the book was wonderful.
In A Thousand Splendid Suns, penned by Khaled Hosseini, the narrative seamlessly blends the stories of the two women protagonists, Mariam and Laila, against the backdrop of the Taliban invasion in Afghanistan.
In addition to a beautiful and heart-moving story, the writer has also employed rich prose to transport imagery to the readers, thereby, displaying his writing finesse. Hosseini has tremendously improved himself since his first book The Kite Runner. The book has definitely given me a new romantic pair to cheer – Laila and Tariq.
A Thousand Splendid Suns is as much “a story about a woman’s freedom from brutal and systematic oppression as it is about human endurance and courage to move on and start afresh.” It’s a story of hope.
As far as the films are concerned, I liked both of them, although when I checked the Internet, none of the films were appreciated by the critics. Carping is the profession of critics so, let’s leave them to that.
August Rush
August Rush tells the story of a charismatic young Irish guitarist (Jonathan Rhys Meyers) and a sheltered young cellist (Keri Russell) who have a chance encounter one night (the most common trope in romantic movies, lol). However, they are soon estranged, leaving in their wake an infant, August Rush, orphaned by circumstance.
Cared for by a stranger (Robin Williams), August (Freddie Highmore) starts performing on the streets of New York and uses his impressive musical talent to find his parents.
August Rush is a story about a child prodigy in music and his attempts to find his lost parents. It was a simple story and proved to be a good source of relaxation. However, I do agree with the critics on one point- the movie ended abruptly and thus, left a jarring note.
Verdict: Fairy-tale ending. Watchable.
Leap Year Movie
The other film Leap Year (2010) was a good romantic movie starring Amy Adams and Matthew Goode, two formidable acting talents. It had a sweet, simple, and a humorous story.
Anna (Adams) wants to propose to her long-time boyfriend Jeremy and decides to do it the traditional Irish way. So she takes a flight to Dublin, but due to inclement weather, the plane has to land at Cardiff, Wales.
From there, she boards a ramshackle boat to travel to Cork, yet her plans are thwarted once more and she has to land in Dingle.
There she meets a surly but a handsome (yeah, bring on another romance movie trope!) Innkeeper Declan (Goode) who agrees to take her to Dublin.
Voila, Declan and Anna, along with the audience, embark on a road trip and lo behold! What a transformation both of them undergo.
The transformation of both Anna and Declan has been convincingly portrayed by the lead actors. Further, the chemistry between them is undeniable and jumps right off the screen.
Verdict: Happy ending. Definitely watchable!
All in all, both the films were good for biding time.
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Debjani's Thoughts 
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