Book Review: Hold Back the Tide by Melinda Salisbury

Hold Back the Tide by Melinda Salisbury starts off as a thriller: Alva lives with her father, and everyone knows her father killed her mother several years before. Alva is trying to survive long enough to save money and move away from him. Every day, she fears she may be his next victim. The story is set in mid-nineteenth century Scotland, and when you get the audiobook, the narrator is Scottish, which goes a long way to making the story very atmospheric and engaging.

Eventually, however, we learn that this is not just a thriller about a girl living with her murderous father, but a vampire novel! Now, I have been a fan of vampires in literature since I was in middle school, and a lot of the time, I am sort of bored by new interpretations because I've read a lot of vampire stories and written a few of my own. The last one to get me excited was The Strain, both as a book and a television series. Hold Back the Tide got me interested again, the way The Strain did. I was excited to learn how the main character and her friends would combat the invaders to save their village and how Alva went from being an outsider to someone who was trusted and listened to.

Melinda Salisbury did such a good job with this book that I went and checked out another of hers right away, The Sin Eater's Daughter. I got both of them free using my library's Libby app. You should do the same.

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Book Review of "The Dare Club: Nita" by Laurie Bradach and Kim “Howard” Johnson

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Another common error young writers make is telling a story, rather than showing a story. This is probably because many of the short stories they have been exposed to are fairy tales, which have a distant point of view and summary-like narration. They start with phrases like "There once was..." and use direct characterization, like "She was the kindest girl in all the land." When we write, we need to show our stories, using vivid verbs, specific details, and deep point of view. Here's an example of a passage that is told. The action is summarized and the reader feels as if the action is happening far away: It was June of 1943. Eric's older brother had gone away to become a fighter pilot. Eric wanted to be a pilot too, so he got in the family's crop dusting plane and started it up. He flew it out of the barn and crashed it into the old oak tree in the yard. He hit his head. The doctor had to come. His brother came back, injured from the war. The two healed...

Review of "Lords of Prophecy" by Michael A. Rothman

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Writer and Editor C.B. Calsing/ G.G. Royale

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