Friday, September 19, 2014

Book review of Fallen Angel by KC Berg

Fallen Angel
KC Berg

 
Create Space
ISBN 978-1500461911
Date August, 2014
Price 13.95 print, 4.99 ebook

From the publisher: Beth loves Sam so much that it hurts, but he is a prisoner to his past. Listening to her broken heart, Beth packs up her belongings and flees Eagle River in the middle of the night, hoping to leave all of the pain and the heartache behind. Five years later, a mysterious stranger—and a phone call from a deceased friend—convince her that Sam is in danger and she needs to go back. With her heart in her hands, she returns to Sam and the Thunder Ridge Ranch, but will her love be strong enough to save both of them before time runs out? "Fallen Angel" is a spiritual romance that examines the theory that souls are bound together across time, and that they travel together through a succession of lives, helping and guiding each other on their way home.

buy the book on Amazon

About the Author

K.C. Berg became a published author at the age of fourteen when her first full-length article appeared in The Hoards Dairyman, a national magazine. She graduated cum laude from Lawrence University, Appleton, WI, where she studied creative writing and received the Mary. E. Morton scholarship for a short-story titled "Bonds." K.C. berg also writes and produces dramatic plays. Two of her plays placed in a national competition. The first one, Adamantine, was performed in New York City in February of 1996, and Clean Linen received a reading in Myrtle Beach, SC, in May 2014. Berg resides in Northeast Wisconsin, which is the setting for her third novel, Fallen Angel, and is active with and supports both the community theater and the animal shelter in her home town. In the Light of the Passing: Book 1, was a finalist in the USABookNews.com competition; both In the Light of the Passing and its sequel, Brinda's Promise: Book 2, were awarded the Eric Hoffer Book Award for Commercial Fiction in 2007. 

My review:

Desperation hope learning enough, doing enough good to earn our way to heaven...

Sam and Beth met at an inopportune time in their lives; Beth, in her late forties, is six years older than Sam who never got over his former wife and their shotgun wedding and loss of their baby decades earlier. Ten years of choosing to stay with Cindy who simply leaves him without, in his mind, any warning, tells us what kind of person he is. He didn’t handle it well, broke down and moved up north to run a supper club. People keep leaving Sam until he is in need of saving.

Beth is given a mission by a mysterious stranger, one she feels ill-equipped to handle until she’s taught the theory of old souls who need the help of others on their journey.

In many ways the story is more of a celestial battle between sure and surer, between right and wrong, however you want to interpret that, between who can reap more souls while the other wreaks more havoc. Mysterious people, Peter and Mark, appear to Beth to plead for Sam’s soul, and Beth is unwittingly drawn into this fight between the two. Both use whoever and whatever is at their disposal – loved ones, signs, creatures, miracles, rumors and innuendo, sins even, to reach for what they want.

I was given a pdf proof copy to read for review. I honestly think there could be have quite a lot less narration to get the story told. The story is told mostly from the point of view of Sam and Beth with some other conversations and characters dialog thrown in.

Drawing on the popular supper club, bars, Friday fish fries, Berg’s Wisconsin is as familiar as home, wherever it is…’cept we drink Miller here, or at least Spotted Cow. Buds are fer them across the border. Those who feel curious about someone’s idea of reincarnation will enjoy this gentle story of—dare I say it?—middle-aged people who step out of their ruts.

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