Words by Sooz

I feel cheated. I spent an entire night reading Explosive Eighteen and at 6 a.m. when I finally put the proverbial book down, I simply shook my head. All the elements were there for - FINALLY - a fantastic Stephanie Plum novel by Janet Evanovich , but instead of digging deeply into the characters that many have fallen in love with, we were still left with so much surface nonsense. I wonder if the characters actually feel anything. Perhaps I'm being a bit too harsh, but there was no introspection. You would think after a woman has had her life flash before her eyes about a dozen times, she would at least get some clarity in her life. The book starts with Stephanie on the way back from Hawaii. I actually found the opening of the book to be a strange start because nothing really happens. She's on a plane. She's drunk and annoyed. But we find out something did happen and leads to the crazy run around Stephanie has to deal inevitably deal with. O.K. Fin...

There is a story in there, I promise. Even though I wasn't sure, I kept telling myself that and felt compelled to finish reading the short story,  The Soul Garden by Cege Smith. My hope was founded, once I got past the back story and extra words that it took to get there. The first part has too much information, at times going between memories, which created the opposite effect of I believe Smith was aiming. There was too much story to create tension. As readers open the book they met are with about five pages worth of back story and a little bit of action. No dialogue. There has to be good a balance of all of them and I believe a good editor would have been able to help Smith cut out the unnecessary parts to get to her story quicker and with much better pacing. The Soul Garden takes place in a society where people follow the rules of the governing body, The Office of Souls. Humans are born without souls and because of the limited number of souls, bab...

The Beat Do you ever have a moment when reading a story and the plot makes you pause? That's what happened when reading “ The Beat: A Baseball Short Story ” written by Jessica Quiroli. Initially, I didn't know where the story was headed. Was it going to be about about a pitcher and the excitement/nervousness of his upcoming Major League debut? Or how a female reporter has to cope with being in a male-dominated environment? These are the two main characters introduced in the beginning of the story, but while the story is centralized around the female journalist, the decisions by the baseball player move the book forward. The story seemed to be more about how we never really know people even when cameras and photographers are all around them. When reporters throw out questions, they never really ask the right ones. I won't give away the twist because getting to the surprise is part of the fun.