The Existence of Pity

Growing up in a lush valley in the Andes mountains, sixteen-year-old Josie Wales is mostly isolated from the turbulence brewing in 1976 Colombia. As the daughter of missionaries, Josie feels torn between their beliefs and the need to choose for herself. She soon begins to hide things from her parents, like her new boyfriend, her trips into the city, and her explorations into different religions.

Josie eventually discovers her parents’ secrets are far more insidious. When she attempts to unravel the web of lies surrounding her family, each thread stretches to its breaking point. Josie tries to save her family, but what happens if they don’t want to be saved?

*May Contain Spoilers*

The Existence of Pity by Jeannie Zokan is a story of a family breaking apart and one girl's trials to keep them together while searching for herself. This novel is a coming of age story that allows Josie the chance to direct her own path, while trying to avoid the collateral damage her family's mistakes create. 

Josie is the daughter of missionaries, living in Columbia, South America. The book is set in the 1970s and focuses on Josie's discovery of her family's secrets and the aftermath they create. Josie is a faithful girl who believes in God and her parents mission, however, she's uncertain that the Baptist faith is the right one for her. Other religions intrigue her and she dearly wants to know more about them, but she feels oppressed by her parents in this regard. Josie is a brave, caring, and loving girl who tends to see the best in people. She's very thankful and loyal to those she loves. However, her personal struggles create tension in her familial relationships. Her parents seem to be very hard on her, for reasons I don't comprehend. They strongly dislike her interest in other religions as well as compare her to her older brother, often stacking the deck against her. Though she tries to look past their mistakes, her family doesn't offer her the same courtesy or attempt to understand what she's going through. I think readers will relate to this feeling of being misunderstood as well as her desire to find her own place in life and in faith. 

The plot of this book is like the climb at the beginning of a roller coaster, moving ever closer to the dropping point. It begins with Josie's older brother being shot, though the reader doesn't know why or how. Thus, the beginning of the rise of chaos as the novel flashes back to the start of it all. Though the novel only takes place over the course of one summer, many things happen and many secrets are revealed, taking the family closer to the edge. I don't want to give each secret away, but something about each family member is revealed which leads to a climax of extreme proportions. The very ideals of family, friendship, trust, and love are tested. Some bend, while others seem to break. Though full of sadness and upset, I enjoyed this book. It's entertaining, questioning, exploratory, and tackles some of the tough parts of growing up and finding the right path. However, the ending is a bit bittersweet as the reader gets to decide if anyone other than Josie learned anything from this one summer of shattering secrets. 

Rating: 4/5 Cups

Silk Armor

Her name is Didem, a young Turkish university student. Though she has left her veil behind in the provincial village she grew up in, she is still watched over closely by her father and certain friends. But when she meets Victor, an American instructor at the university, and they fall in love, Didem is propelled into an entirely new and dangerous future. The obstacles and threats they face lead Didem and Victor into plans of escape, an escape Didem must keep secret. SILK ARMOR follows her adventure through her battles with her community, her culture, her traditions and conscience, leading to her realization that though these battles may be lost her war can still be won.

*May Contain Spoilers*

Claire Sydenham unveils a Turkish story of love, betrayal, hope, and despair with her novel, Silk Armor. Told from a third party's perspective, the romance between an American man and a Turkish woman is shared as the world works against this imagined kismet. 

Though Claire is the narrator, she isn't part of the main character cast. She's the hub that holds each spoke of this story in place, connecting them and allowing them to rotate around her. The story is really about Victor and Didem. Victor is an alcoholic English teacher who traveled (with Claire and others) to Turkey in order to share his language skills. He is an unforgiving brute who knows nothing of morality. Yet, he bears his shame, even accepts it, condemning himself before others have the chance. 

When Victor first meets Didem, he is enamored with lust. Didem is portrayed as a naive girl who believes that she can force the hand of fate by falling in love with an American, an escape from the oppressive veil of Turkey. Though her experiences far outweigh her naivete and she seems to evolve in the eyes of the narrator into a very calculated character. 

Readers will connect with the beauty of the love affair, falling themselves for the fated meeting of Victor and Didem, until all is revealed and death comes to the love that blossomed so quickly. 

The novel follows the story of the love affair through Claire's eyes as she travels back from Turkey to the U.S. for summer vacation. The entire book is a remembrance with a peek at the consequences and what became of Victor and Didem. Though, there remains a question that I can't shake even after the conclusion of this tilted and temptation-ridden book. Can Claire be trusted as the narrator? She obviously despises Victor and doesn't hold much respect for Didem, or perhaps she has too much for another character, which leads me to believe that the true story is not complete. Silk Armor is definitely a book that demands a second-look, a deeper investigation, to satisfy the itch it leaves behind. 

Rating: 4/5 Cups

Morning Light

Emily, a twenty-four-year-old dancer and choreographer, confronts her husband's fixation with right-wing Catholic dogma that condemns her use of birth control. His faith is so powerful that he refuses to have sex with her, even though he desperately wants to. As awful as this broken faith feels, she is troubled more by her best friend's losing fight with cancer, and seeks to help her friend's grief-stricken, precocious, son-the seventeen-year-old David.

But the boy's willful ways turn the tables on her. Denied intimacy by her husband, the boy's passion asserts itself, and everyone's life is explosively altered. Twenty years later, the successful David, a theater director, gets his hands on Emily's secret journals and uncovers her covert emotional life, revealing family secrets unknown to him, and discovering prickly truths about himself.

Part literary memoir, part poignant psychological drama, this haunting love story explores the secrets of attraction and the mysteries of obsession-a boy's coming-of-age, and one woman's search for love and success in a year of intense achievement and painful loss.

*May Contain Spoilers*

Morning Light by Holland Kane is an unexpected religious romance full of discovery, doubt, and deep secrets. David tells the story as an outsider, twenty years after it happened, though he plays a large part in the plot. When Emily, the main character, gives David her journals from the past, he shares them with the reader, adding insight and details from his point of view. 

Emily is a hopeful dancer who lets infatuation and love carry her through life. She's completely in love with her husband, but when he removes sexuality from their marriage it condemns Emily to searching for physical love with David, a seventeen year old. Though Emily isn't open in life - she's in fact very secretive - she's open with readers. As David shares her journal entries, readers become members of Emily's inner mind. Readers will connect with her through empathy and understanding. As a young woman, she yearns for life lasting love. 

The novel is set up as a memoir, though it's easy to forget while reading that the narrator is looking back while telling the story. Readers follow Emily through a year that held her defining moments. She becomes pregnant, her dance/choreography career takes off, all while trying to hold her marriage together. Though religion plays a huge role in the story line, it isn't overwhelming. It's a common thread throughout that holds the pieces and players together. When the weight of the characters become to much, the thread snaps and the story crumbles into chaos. 

Morning Light is a hindsight novel where the worst outcome is always on the horizon. A ploy of Murphy's law that will leave readers feeling inept. 

Rating: 3/5 Cups

Teaser Tuesday (76)

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. Anyone can play along! Just do the following:
• Grab your current read
• Open to a random page
• Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page
• BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)
• Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers!

Morning Light (Kindle Loc. 1070-71)
   - Holland Kane

His words of condolence were warm but she hung up dissatisfied. Mourning, like love, was a personal thing with a depth and a height and a weight no one can measure for you.

The Transformed

Dr. Robert Newman is a man obsessed--obsessed with the death of his wife from a rare genetic disease--obsessed with finding a cure to save her sister from the same fate. After years of single-minded effort, he has developed a revolutionary gene therapy procedure. Now the most devastating of human diseases can be stopped in their tracks. But within weeks, his discovery has unleashed a deadly cancer epidemic. His life is threatened and everyone he loves becomes his enemy. As he searches frantically for clues, he discovers a long dormant secret hidden within the human genome. 


Dr. Newman realizes that malignant transformation in human cells is not a random event. The marked increase in malignancies has a more horrific explanation. Silent for millennia, Cancer is now awakening as a rationale entity with an agenda of its own. And unless it can be stopped, no one--least of all Dr. Robert Newman--has long to live. - Goodreads 

*May Contain Spoilers*

Oh my scary! The Transformed by Raphael Hirsch is a novel epidemic. The entire book has completely dumbfounded me. The science background that I have has instilled within me a need for explanation, documentation, and theoretical support. Well, Hirsch gives so much more than that. 

The idea that we, as humans, could be sharing our bodies with a parasitic organism that was "created" the same time that we were is unbelievable. Until Hirsch explains it to you, in depth. Dormant for thousands, perhaps millions, of years, it now chooses to come out of the DNA, so to speak, and wage war against humans. 

A plot line like this is so creative and fantastic, I fail to do it justice. I found myself wondering, countless times, how the hell Hirsch was going to jump the hurdles of this plot, and each time I was amazed, and impressed. And the characters, oh goodness. What to say? And I never run out of words... 

The characters are human (until they aren't...) carrying emotional baggage and a hope to achieve their dreams. Bob Newman, one of the main characters, is a ball of tense emotions that he refuses to express. The death of his wife destroyed him and all he can focus on, as a scientist, is curing her disease. Readers will connect with him on the foundation of love and what it does to everyone it touches. 

Ellen is a wonderful, strong female character. Which is more than needed in novel overrun with men. As a med student, she helps Newman and other characters explore their deepest thoughts while pushing them to make the right decisions when faced with absolute human extinction. As a character, she coincides with the motherly role while Newman and his friend, Malcom, face the collapse of the world. She's the support system, cheering them on. A role that is vital in an apocalyptic visionary novel.  

Overall, I think Hirsch's writing style made the novel. He went into just enough eloquent detail that anyone reading this novel will understand it. It was simple and to the point with only key elements included. And trust me, everything in the novel is key. It was an astounding read, even if it did scare the daylights out of me. 

The Transformed

on Amazon

rating: 4/5 cups