Independence Day Book Two: Tangled Webs

Author: Bex Aaron
ASIN: B0056UA20W

"Oh what a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive."

Since book one ended with "To Be Continued," I guess I needed to move to book two to see who killed Carol Masterson. Except after reading the book, I still don't know who killed her. And, another resident of Haven Park has been murdered. This time it's Lance, Terri's husband. And, she is missing, too, until......well, you'll have to wait until book three is released. There are five books in this series and I intend to read them all.

As I indicated in my review of book one, Ms. Aaron seems to write as a first-time novelist. However, the simplicity of her writing makes it easy on someone who is wanting a quick read that doesn't take five pages (like Stephen King) just to tell you what someone is feeling and why. Don't get me wrong, I love Stephen King. In fact, he's one of my favorites. But, Ms. Bex's books make the reading easy, yet still getting her point across for the characters. Her style is growing on me. I'll definitely finish all five books because each one seems to end with "To Be Continued." Book two cost me $1.99. Not bad for a book. The first was free, so if her pricing continues, I will have bought a book for $8. I can handle that. Most books I get from Amazon.com for my Kindle are free.

This book has the town's people trying to figure out who killed Carol, then discovering Lance murdered and his wife missing. We learn more deep, dark secrets about various people and are introduced to a Laramie detective, Michael Goldman. His interview with church secretary, Marnie, is bizarre to say the least. When we are introduced to him at Lance's murder scene, you get the feeling he is FBI-type material, not the weird sex-minded person he is when interviewing Marnie. There is a little foreshadowing in this scene as you get the feeling that eventually something will happen to Marnie's husband, Evan, and she and Michael will get together. But, that's just speculation on my part!

Book three isn't ready for publication yet. I hope it comes out soon before I forget what happened in books one and two!

Independence Day Book One: The Beginnings

Author: Bex Aaron
ASIN: B0051QFHYC

This book takes place in a fictional town, Haven Park, Wyoming. It's a "who-done-it" with a plethora (a word my brother loves to use) of characters who could have all "done it." The story begins on July 4, 1966, when Carol Mathison is found dead in the town park. The town is small, so everyone knows everyone else and Carol is no exception. She is the daughter of the retired police chief. It seems everyone has secrets, but the deep, dark ones are not shared or known by many others.

The story is written almost like a play. It begins by telling the reader all about the characters and alluding to the secrets no one else knows about. Someone is having an affair, someone else has committed murder before, someone has a drinking problem, another with a drug problem, and the list goes on. Then the story begins. The book is divided into parts, this being the first part. Had I known that, I probably wouldn't have read the first part. I bought the book from Amazon for my Kindle during the summer, and didn't realize that it was not the entire book.

I wish I knew who committed the murder. I have my suspects, but I guess I won't know for sure unless I get the remaining four parts. Is it worth the read? Yes, and no. Yes, because I'd really like to know who did it. No, because the book reads as though the author is not experienced. It almost seems like the work of a student in a creative writing class. Still, it is a pretty book book. I will probably see if I can't get the rest of the book to finish it, so stay tuned!

Grade: B+
Commentary on grade: I might have given this book an A- if it had been the complete book. I hate it when you aren't given the entire book -- just a taste, for free -- and expected to buy the remainder of the book. Oh, it's a clever literary ploy to make money, but it hardly seems fair to this reader.

New Blog / New Year

It is three days before the New Year, and I've finally finished a book for pleasure since I finished my fall semester at IUPUI. Since my blog isn't needed for the original purpose of writing for an assignment for my class, I've changed the mission to book reviews. I've thought about doing this for a while, but all I seem to be able to read is my texts for classes. This is my last semester (yippee!) and I'm on Christmas break. I'm reading purely for pleasure, and I want to give a review of books I read from this point on as sort of a chronicle of what I have read so that I can remember what I've already read, what it was about, and along the way, help others who are looking for a good book.

So, here goes......

Blog Fodder - The Last One

Oh, blog fodder, why do I always want to write about something else when I'm supposed to be writing about my class? I think of brilliant things to write about when I go into the blog area and forget by the time I finish writing my class assignment. It's a true sign of either age or too much writing to do at the end of the semester. In any case, below is my last reflection that will be posted for W390 for the fall semester.

As I looked at each group's project I thought they all looked pretty good for amateur multimedia students. The topics were interesting as well. Since it is hard to come up with a topic that no one else has covered in past classes, I think we did pretty well coming up with three different topics. I don't want to begin to say who's project looks the best as I think they all look pretty good.

We all understand who our audience is -- students! So, we used our student/professional voices in creating our projects. I thought the project on the evolution of women's literature was written a little more professionally than the other two projects. Each project has a measure of multimedia in it. Most use clickable links and video. We used a feature that allowed us to give a quiz in the project. The viewer gets to choose the right answer or keep trying until he/she does. Our reviewers said that was a valuable part of the project that they enjoyed.

You know how you feel when you think something is really great and then you find out it isn't? Well, that's how I felt when I read the comments on our project. But when I think about the comments, I know they are right. Our project is a little dull in color; we could stand to jazz it up a little with brighter colors or a better background. There was a typo in the section I did! Time is running out and it was suggested that we have a writing sample or something written/interviewed by a current tutor. Yikes! I think one of the group members will take care of that. I must say that working on a PowerPoint as a group without meeting is a chore. It's too bad you can't do a PowerPoint in a wiki. Maybe you can, but we didn't do it. We all want to make changes now based on the comments, but only one of us can have the project at a time. I'm glad someone mentioned that we had too many quiz slides. I thought the same thing after I reviewed the project, but I didn't want to take away from another member's portion of the project.

All in all I have learned that not all group projects end with one person doing all the work. We truly worked as a team on this project. Each of us had skills that we brought to the table. Perhaps I won't groan as much the next time someone suggests doing a project with a team. That can be said for my professional life as well!

Cheers, Sharon, it was a really nice class! 

Facsimilee is signing off on the project blog! I'll post the link to it if I can once it's finished. Feedback is still welcome...