If I Fall, If I Die by Michael Christie

"If I Fall, If I Die" by Michael Christie is a
coming of age story with all the best elements.

I was sitting in the break room at work, reading on my lunch break, when a friend walked in and said, "What are you reading?"

I did what I normally do, just held the up for her to read the title while I kept reading the page I was on.

"That sounds depressing," she said.

"If I Fall, If I Die" really is a depressing title but the story is anything by depressing.

Will has lived as long as he can remember Inside with his mother.  Will's mother suffers from panic attacks and sever agoraphobia.  She has never forbade him from going outside,  so in the opening of this book he goes outside for the first time.

Once outside he meets a boy who he think is his first friend.  This encounter opens up a whole new world for Will.

Not only does he go Outside, but he goes to school. He makes more friends.  He learns to skateboard.

He also finds himself in the middle of a mystery.  In looking for a missing boy he befriends a crazy vagabond, and finds himself on the bad side of a local bootlegger.

As Will moves further and further away from his mother, she finds herself more and more wanting to beat her own paranoid fears.

A typical "coming of age" story, I loved watching Will find his own way Outside, and find his place in a world that couldn't be more different than the one he grew up in.

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I received this book from the Blogging for Books program in exchange for this review.  All thoughts and opinions are my own.

Q&A a Day 4 Year Journal for Creatives

 I like to consider myself to be a creative person.  I love to write and I love answering question when I'm stuck for a topic, so I was excited to be offered Q&A a Day for Creatives.

I guess I should have looked a little closer at the description though. 

Since this is a 4  year journal called Q&A I was expecting questions to write answers too.

What is actually is is 365 prompts to make small drawings.  Each page has one phrase on it, and is divided into 4 parts.  Each year you are supposed to make a small drawing on that phrase.


The back cover displays what the inner pages look like very well.

I'm not entirely disappointed though.  Fllipping through the book I found several prompts that I can use to write on instead of draw on.  AND, I've been wanting to flex my drawing muscle a little.  I'm not an artist, but maybe 4 years of small doodles can help me out!

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DISCLAIMER:  “I received this book from the Blogging for Books program in exchange for this review.”

The Drosten's Curse - A Doctor Who Book Review

The Drosten's Curse is available on
Amazon, in paperback or Kindle.

As I was reading this book my husband asked me, "Is it any good?"

To which I responded, "Its kind of like the TARDIS."

This earned me a funny look, so I explained, "Its Bigger on the inside."

While The Drosten's Curse was greatly entertaining, it seemed that I would NEVER finish this novel.  I can usually  eat up a good read in a day or two, but it took me weeks to make my way through this one, despite loving the tale nearly from the beginning.

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 Bryony Mailer is working at a golf resort - quite peaceful even if patrons do tend to just disappear from time to time - and pondering what more exciting things she might do with her life.

Then the Doctor loped into her life, wondering if he might have missed January, and was he not in Chicago after all?

Certainly not in Chicago, the Doctor landed in June, just a few miles outside of Arbroath.  And something odd is going on in Arbroath.

In a story complete with a set of un-normal twins, a lovely grandmother who is obsessed with octopusses (or octopodes), an incompetnet golfer named Putta, and a mighty behometh thought to no longer exist called the Bah-Sokhar Bryony finds herself in a grand adventure.  She is actually enjoying herself, despite being almost dead a couple of times.

The Bah-Sokhar feeds off of anger, hatred and negative energy, and is looking for a new ruler, because it needs to be controlled.  And the world of humans is full of anger and hatred.

"I shall make you the jewel at the heart of the universe."

The Bah-Sokhar offers it's power to a few people, but is quite taken with the Doctor, who it wants to stay and play with it.  Forever.

Meanwhile, a petulant young man/child decides to take the Thing up on its offer to be made the heart of the universe.

And that is when the world ends.

While it took me a couple of weeks to read the first 2/3 of the novel, I finished the final 1/3 in an evening.

Doctor Who?

The Doctor in this novel is the 4th Doctor, as portrayed by Tom Baker.  With overflowing scarf and hair that is a character of its own.  Though I'm familiar enough with how Tom Baker looked as the Doctor, I could't help but read him as David Tennant.

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I received this book from the Blogging for Books program in exchange for this review.”