June 2018 – Becoming Extraordinary

I read speculative fiction of all sorts, have a fondness for metaphysical tales and particularly like stories with a strong female protagonist. How could I pass on reviewing this novel?

Review summary: Sedona Hutton has written a well-constructed contemporary romance novel with interesting characters, complex subplots and a splash of metaphysical theory. This is a book that many will enjoy. Details are below.

About this book: Katie Callahan longs to start a family of her own. Infertile and unable to convince her relatives to accept the man she married, she regrets giving away the daughter from her secret teenage pregnancy. When a twist of fate brings a second chance at motherhood, she’s caught between joy and the fear of her husband’s rejection of another man’s child… until a devastating motorcycle accident rips the decision out of her hands.

With her body trapped in a coma, Katie finds herself in the dreamlike space between Earth and the afterlife. Guided by spiritual forces and the soul of her beloved dog, she learns the life-changing power of intention and self-transformation. From her ethereal vantage-point, she watches as her loved ones work together to connect the pieces of their broken hearts. As she finally realizes her true destiny, Katie’s only chance to fulfill her purpose means completing an impossible journey back to life…

Cloud Whispers is a mind-expanding women’s fiction novel with a strong spiritual message. If you like headstrong heroines, heartwarming stories of family and forgiveness, and new age concepts, then you’ll love Sedona Hutton’s empowering tale.

About the author: Author Sedona Hutton finds inspiration in the beautiful Smoky Mountains of Tennessee, where she lives with her husband and curly-coated retriever. In addition to writing, she’s a Reiki Master and a certified Chopra Center Meditation instructor. She enjoys reading, yoga, gardening, playing with her dog, and riding motorcycles. Her “Peace, Love, & Joy” blog can be found on her website. Visit her website, find her on Facebook at SedonaHuttonAuthor, and on Twitter @SedonaHutton.

Buy the book at Amazon.

Giveaway: Sedona Hutton will be awarding a $40 Amazon or Barnes & Nobel gift certificate to a randomly drawn winner via rafflecopter during the tour. Learn more, and register to win.

My full review: If you don’t like coffee, and I prepare you a well-made cup and then flavor it with French vanilla (which you love) you probably won’t like the beverage, no matter how well made it is or how much French vanilla I add. Right?

That’s the problem I have with this book. I happen to not enjoy romance novels, with all due respect to those who do. There’s nothing inherently better about the science fiction and crime novels I relish; it’s just personal taste. I try to avoid reviewing genres I don’t appreciate, but it happens.

And, at its heart, this book is written in the romance genre. From the large amount of time characters spend lusting to the focus on appearance and clothes (always beautiful, always hot) the book speaks the language expected by romance readers. I can’t fault the author for doing that, and doing it well, but it’s not what the blurb led me to expect.

What I liked best:

The book is well crafted. The pacing is nice, the changing points of view are well-handled, the mix of dialog, action and description is effective.
The characters are the best part. They have quirks and interesting back stories and occasionally behave in unpredictable ways. I also liked her multi-generational approach. Teens act and talk like teens, older adults are believable and not relegated to bit parts. The emphasis on families is warming.
I genuinely enjoyed the story line about the daughter given up for adoption and her reuniting with her birth mother.
There is this one scene where Katie-in-a-coma gets to see the energy that connects all of humanity. I loved it.

What I liked least:

The book is chiefly driven by a smoldering love affair between the protagonist’s sister and her husband’s brother. I know it’s hard to write a blurb, and I can understand why the author wanted to focus hers on what was unique about this book, but it is misleading. As much as anything, this is the story of how Liz and Shane finally have sex.
I was disappointed in the metaphysical aspect, and it is the main reason I chose to read and review this novel. Maybe a third of the word count during the first half of the book (so like 15% of the story) is about Katie’s time in the clouds where she is being told about the Law of Attraction. Katie is supposed to be an intelligent woman, but her reaction to this philosophical education is in the vein of “I can have anything I want if I believe hard enough? Cool. Good to know.” I am certain that if I found myself on a cloud with two “beautiful” spirit guides and my dead dog and they assured me I could fix everything in my life, I would have a lot more to discuss with them.

While I don’t recommend this book to a nerd like me, who loves sinking my teeth into a hearty analysis of metaphysical theory, I do recommend this book to anyone who likes contemporary romance and wouldn’t mind a dab of basic new age philosophy with it.

This review is part of a book review tour sponsored by Goddess Fish Promotions. Visit Goddess Fish on Facebook and on Twitter.

Read more reviews of Cloud Whispers at:
Long and Short Reviews
Uplifting Reads
Locks, Hooks and Books
Fabulous and Brunette

My favorite excerpt: Absently, Katie rubbed her wedding band. Now that she knew Savannah was her daughter she had to tell Liam the truth.

She’d wanted to tell him before, and she had almost told him many times. But family was of the utmost importance to Liam, and more than once he had made comments like, “How can a father not want to see his daughter?” and “How could any parent give up their own child?” What would he think of her once she told him she’d given up her baby girl at birth without ever holding her, hugging her, nursing her?

A personal note: I am a writer myself and therefore come to all reviews with biases born not only of my personal preferences but also of my own writing style. In this case, the author of Cloud Whispers and I just didn’t mesh in our interests and our approach in the way I had hoped. I can’t keep that from coloring my review, but I acknowledge my part in that chemistry, and wish her and her writing great success.

I also received a free pdf copy of this book from Goddess Fish, the value of which would never be enough to entice me to write a better review for anyone.

If you are interested in a review from me: I read speculative fiction of all sorts and I will consider novels of almost all types that relate to the general theme of world peace. I am not interested in reviewing non-fiction, romance novels, stories which promote any particular religion, children’s books, or horror of any type. Please do not ask me to review books about vampires or zombies. If you would like to be considered for a review please send all the usual information to Lola (dot) Zeitman (at) gmail (dot) com.

If you spend too much time analyzing why you do things, you end up doing nothing.

That’s my conclusion after forcing myself to spend a few weeks considering why, I mean really why, I spent the better part of seven years writing novels. The question is reasonable, but enough is enough. I’m cutting myself off at seven reasons.

Reason #7 is? It is my most audacious yet, that’s for sure. I want to change the world.

What exactly do you want to do with the world, you might ask? That is a reasonable question, too.

And here’s the thing. I do know. It’s sort of a problem, isn’t it, when you think you know how the world should be?

Yet, I’m certain. We need more more empathy. More kindness. More gratitude for what most of us do have, and more generosity with it. I want each of us to behave as though we are going to live every single other person’s life, and soon. I have this theory that if we behaved in such a way, we would be entirely capable of turning this planet into a paradise.

If I’m going to reform something, shouldn’t I start with myself? Yes, of course I should, and I’m working on that. Be the change you want to see and all that. Some days it goes pretty well, other days not so much so. I am trying.

It doesn’t alter the fact that I’ve got this burning desire to tell the stories in my head, and soon as I get started telling them, this desire to make the world better while I’m at it kicks in. If I wrote for no other reason, I would write because it is my way of trying to improve things.

I’ve answered two questions for myself. Thanks to all this analysis, I know I need to keep writing. I understand that I need to write my way, for my reasons, but that I also need to give care and effort to reach more readers, because being read is integral to several of my key motivations.

Thanks to this understanding, and some excellent advice I have received recently, over the next few months I will be revamping the 46. Ascending collection one last time. Then, my books will get new, more market-friendly titles. I will pay a little of my own hard-earned treasure to buy them genre-appropriate covers more likely to catch the eye of new readers. I will do what modest amount of advertising I can, but only after I’ve researched the most effective ways to use my limited funds. It will be a final push to make the most of what I’ve created.

Then, I will move on and create something new. And yes, I’ll probably be hoping to make the world better with it, too.

(The above photos are of three of the six displays I made and hung on the wall of my writing room to motivate me and keep me going over the past seven years. They got the job done. I’ll be posting the other three on my other blogs soon.)