Michele Phoenix

Dear Readers,

Okay okay okay it is so hard to write a review for a book that I want to tell you everything about and yet can tell you nothing.  Michele Phoenix's newest release In Silence and Storm is a book that once you get finished reading it you want to find someone else who has read it so you can have a discussion about it.  This book will not leave me alone even though I have finished over a week ago.

Lauren and Sam new that wanted to do mission work and yet Lauren thought that had passed them by once they started their family and their life seemed perfect.  But the day Sam comes home with the pamphlets for Nepal, Laura knows their lives will never be the same.

Two years after arriving in Nepal their family has come to a crisis.  Sam is content with his life of mission work, but Lauren and their son Ryan are dying. What choices will be made when it all comes to a head.

I know this book focuses on mission work and the choices that are made and lives that are sacrificed for the work, but I also think it is a reminder for us all when we make life changing choices with out consulting the rest of our family. How sometimes we can think things are of God and yet we ignore all the signpost along the way that tell us otherwise.

This is one of those type of books that each reader is going to get something very different out of the story.  Michele is very good at writing books driven by huge issues and then not giving us pat answers to the problems.  I will be the first to tell you that the book did not end the way I thought it would, which I was very glad for.  But I also am going to be the first to say, it ended is a very good way.

Happy Reading,

Michele Phoenix

Dear Readers,

I have found a new favorite author and her name is Michele Phoenix.  I so enjoyed Tangled Ashes, her first book, that I really looked forward to reading her newest release In Broken Places.  All I can say is if you haven’t read either one of these books, pull up a chair and start now.

In Broken Places you meet Shelby and you will want to hug her right away.  Of course she won’t let you as she has some pretty thick walls built up around her heart and life.  Her and her brother,Trey, survived years of emotional abuse, and now have moved into adulthood with the idea of making it through life without anyone else hurting them.

When their father, who has been out of their lives for years, passes away, he leaves everything he owns including a step-sister neither one of them knew about.   Shelby isn’t sure she can adopt Shayla until she meets the little 4 year old, then she knows she has to.   Shelby’s biggest fear is that she will turn into her father and to keep from doing that, she accepts a job in Germany and heads off with her new daughter to a new country and new job.  To say that her stress level is a bit high may be a little understatement.

I am not sure what Michele does but her characters make you feel like you are right with them as they are experiencing the abuse.  She has a way of turning a phrase that makes you see things differently.  She makes her stories your own experience, which makes the moment you close the cover of the story one of the saddest moments of your day.

Happy Reading

Michele Phoenix

Tangled Ashes by Michele Phoenix looked interesting to me from the minute it came in the store.  The storyline is one where you get mostly contemporary, but there is an interesting historical story also.  The historical part is set during WWII in France in a beautiful manor; the Nazis have taken over the manor, but not just for their headquarters in the area.  They have other plans for Meunier manor and they are not plans they want people to know about. 

50 years later Marshall Becker is hired to help renovate the manor for the new owner’s wife’s birthday.  He is short on time and he is in no mood to make it easy for anyone else.   He is an alcoholic who thinks he has it under control, but family and friends know better.  When his business partner springs the job in France in the hopes that Marshall can get his life back together, Marshall is not happy, but he goes to do the job anyways.   

The story is about the manor and all that happened there, but it is also about the people.  I was surprised how much I was drawn into the character’s lives.  It almost made the historical story secondary.  Between Marshall, Jade, the Fallon family and several of the workers, they are rich, well written characters that may make you want to run off to Lamorlaye, France to find them. 

This has been one of those books that I stayed up way too late reading.  Long after I should have turned my light off and gotten some sleep, I was reading.  Because there is a bit of mystery to the story and there are few times where things go “bump” in the night, this book kept my attention throughout the whole thing. 

I am really looking forward to reading Michele’s next book, In Broken Pieces, due out in May.

Happy Reading