The Final Summit by Andy Andrews

Humanity is on its last legs. Generations of greed, arrogance, and corruptness have shaped what we now call “the modern world”. It has fallen away from God. So, He needs to restart. To decide what to do, God calls together all the Travelers to answer a single question that will determine the fate of the rest of humanity. It seems simple enough, except for the fact that they only have an hourglass of time to work and five tries to get the question right. And every time an answer is proposed, it seems to be the likely one. Together with a team of great people throughout history, David Ponder must find the answer to save us all.

I really enjoyed this book because it offered good thoughts to use in my life and it also gave me brief history lessons on a few characters in history that I didn’t know much about. It was short and relatively easy to read, and I like Andy Andrew’s style of writing. I must say that I was a bit disappointed with the presence of God throughout the book, as it always referred to Him as just “the one hosting the summit”. The characters didn’t really talk about their faith in God, and I was hoping the ending would have something to do with faith. Even if this wasn’t so, I would heartily recommend the book to anyone who likes a good story, good advice, or funny characters. Also, thank you BookSneeze for providing me with a free copy of the book.

A Reluctant Queen by Joan Wolf

The story is a view of the life of Esther, queen of Persia. It starts out by describing a little bit about her life before she was made queen. When she ends up going to the harem, on a mission from her elders, she is picked to be the king’s wife and her life is turned upside down. It tells of her life as queen, and how she goes about achieving what her uncle told her to do. She faces hardships, but stays close to God along the way.

The book was focused on the love life of Queen Esther, so there are a few parts that maybe wouldn’t be mentioned otherwise. I don’t feel the author was quite as tasteful with the romance scenes as, say, Francine Rivers is, but there is nothing that could be even remotely compared to what some teens are reading today. I really enjoyed the fact that it told about life in the harem and how Persian women at the time had to live, instead of just focusing on the story that most people are familiar with. I must say, though, that the author had a really annoying habit of describing the male characters over indulgently. It wasn’t too much of a bother; actually, it gave quite a good description of the people in the story.

I would wholeheartedly recommend this book to anyone who loves biblical stories or a good, clean romance novel now and then. I really enjoyed it, and having only 255 pages, it took me hardly any time at all to read it. I read about a third of it coming home from a vacation to Utah recently. And thank you BookSneeze for providing me with a free copy to review and give my input on!