Review of Derailed

Derailed: Five Lessons Learned from Catastrophic Failures of Leadership, by Tim Irwin, PhD discusses the principles of leadership and where some of the high level CEOs have failed and why.  Six CEOs are profiled, and the author identifies the lessons learned, thendescribes how to avoid the failures.

Derailed fell flat for me because it didn’t give anything that I didn’t know already, and there were areas I thought it should have addressed.  One of the things that never gets mentioned–and it is obvious to me–is that in each case when the CEO failed, he came in to fix a company that needed change.   When I was in the army, we had a bad leader who caused morale to sink to a new low.  We needed change, and when the old leader left, the new one rushed in to fix the problem.  She alienated everyone.  Yet, she’d been in this position twice before, quite successfully, but the difference was the change.  Would these leaders have been successful if they had come into a  company that was doing well and didn’t need change?   They certainly would have made different decisions.

The book felt a little like it was treating the symptoms and not getting at the underlying causes.

Disclaimer:  I received this book for free from Thomas-Nelson, the publisher, in exchange for doing this review.

Seaside Letters

 Seaside Letters by Denise Hunter is a romance novel set in Nantucket.  Tucker McCabe has been emailing a woman named Sweetpea for a year and has fallen in love with her.  But Sweetpea refuses to meet with him, so Tucker asks Sabrina Kincaid–known for her research skills–to find the woman.  The problem is that Sabrina is the mystery woman …

The story missed for me in a couple of places.  The first was setting.  I’ve never been to Nantucket, so I wanted to see how the setting was brought into the story.  Unfortunately, the setting didn’t have much of a role.

I also found Sabrina to be unlikable.  She swears off relationships–but starts one through email.  When Tucker asks her to find Sweetpea, she lies, feels guilty, worries, and continues to lie.  The attempts to cover up the lies don’t come across as believable–instead, I wondered why she just didn’t tell the truth.  And how come Tucker kept tap dancing around everything without telling her the truth either?   I understand that theme of the book was lying, but the lies felt more like they were for the story to happen than a logical development of the characters.

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Received a free ARC from Thomas Nelson do this review.

Lonestar Secrets – Review

Lonestar Secrets is a romance novel by Colleen Coble.  Veternarian Shannon Astor returns to her home town in Texas to for a fresh start and a better life for her daughter.  She discovers  Jack MacGowan’s daughter is a twin to Shannon’s daughter–switched at birth for Jack’s dead daughter by a nurse.  Jack and Shannon decide to get married, but between Jack holding onto his dead wife and a dangerous man pursuing Shannon for money, the pair must find their way to romance.

This story felt not well-thought out and thrown together.   Major elements are given cursory treatment and left behind.  When Shannon discovers the babies were switched at birth, we get a hasty explanation of a doctor’s incompetence, and that’s it.  The same thing for Shannon’s illness, which only pops up when the story needs it for complications and the implications of it ignored.

The worst for me was the money storyline.  Shannon’s roommate has been kidnapped, Shannon threatened, and her house broken into.  And it gets ignored until the story needs a complication.  Then something happens, everyone gets excited for a little while, and then it gets forgotten again.

This was an unsatisfying read.

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I’m a reviewer for Thoms Nelson books.

A Man of His Word

A Man of His Word, by Kathleen Fuller, is a romance with the “Plain People”–the Amish.  Moriah marries Levi and starts her life as a new wife.  But things are not well for the newlyweds.  On the day Moriah learns she is pregnant, Levi decides to leave the Amish and his wife.  Under Amish law, Moriah cannot get married again, so she is trapped in limbo.  Gabriel, Levi’s brother, has always loved Moriah, but she locks him out of her life in sorrow and depression.

I got the book because the idea of a story about the Amish sounded intriguing.  Ms. Fuller captures the flavor of a different society very well.  However, the story itself  was flat and predictable.  When I read that Moriah could not get married again, I knew instantly what would have to happen for the romance with Gabriel to bloom, and it happens.  What then follows is many pages of Moriah sinking into self-pity about her problems, and I kept wanting someone to come in and give her a stern shake to bring her out of the funk.  There’s so much self-pity that it never gives time for the romance with Gabriel to develop.

The X and Y of Buy

The X and Y of Buy by Elizabeth Pace is a book for people who have to sell or market products to both men and women.  Both genders think differently, and it’s easy to misunderstand cues and lose the sale.  Ms. Pace gives examples of how marketing appeals to the genders, like when you go inside a mall, and supports it by citing research.

The book felt a little superficial to me.  I kept looking for more detail, a more depth.  Instead, the book hit topics that are common knowledge.   Her commentary about malls being laid out for men and women made me think that maybe the women’s section was that way because it is so hard to fit the clothes because of the differing body shapes!  My father can go in and pick up a packaged shirt, and it’ll fit him.  I have to try on ten shirts to find one that fits.

I also thought she missed several obvious places that do market to genders: movies and books.  And I kept wondering about the people who don’t fall cleanly in the categories.  Instead of giving me good information, the book made me wish the author had done more work.

Face of Betrayal

In Face of Betrayal by Lis Wiel and April Henry, a Senate page disappears, resulting in a media storm because a politican may be involved.  Reporter Cassidy Shaw, Federal Prosecutor Allison Pierce, and FBI Special Agent Nicole Hedges quickly get involved to try to find the missing girl.  Then the disappearance turns to murder.

The book is a take off of the Chandra Levy Case and the James Patterson’s women’s club series.  I found it a fun story and enjoyable to read.   One of the most refreshing things is that it avoids the more traditional aspects that would have turned up in a book like this–a police officer who doesn’t get along with the world, a reporter who’s a nosy jerk, etc.  It also stayed–thankfully–away from the trend of gritty violence that’s been turning up in suspense novels.

The two things I didn’t care much for was the lack of a main character and the subplots.  Each of the characters seemed to share equal weight, so the story didn’t follow a particular character.  Each of the characters also had their own subplot, which was too much for a book of this size.  At times, the subplots overwhelmed the main story. 

A good book, but it needed two less subplots.

Higher Hope by Robert Witlow

In Higher Hope, by Robert Witlow, summer law clerk Tami Taylor is assigned to a libel case against an abrasive preacher with amazing prophetic abilities.  A local businessman wants to buy the church’s land, and the preacher refuses, spreading allegedly libelous statements about the businessman.  The further Tami investigates the case, the more shefinds her beliefs being challenged.

I had a difficult time getting into this book.  I was expecting a complicated legal thriller, and instead got a weak story that was overwhelmed by the subplots.  The opening chapters deal with the legal part of the story, and then veered off for 200 pages of family subplots.  It finally got back into the legal part of the story, but the libel lawsuit didn’t engage me.  It seemed more like a petty spat than anything with real stakes or real risk–accentuated by the preacher’s confidence that nothing was going to happen to her.

The most disappointing part was the resolution.  It was true to life, but true to life doesn’t always make for a good story.  Here, it left me feeling unsatisfied because ultimately nothing much happened other than Tami stood up for her convictions.

Collapse of Distinction

When I saw the summary of Scott McKain’s book, Collapse of Distinction, the first thing I thought of was Hollywood.  Every time there’s a big success in Hollywood, everyone rushes in to do the same thing, of course with less successful results.

The book is for businesses who want to stand out and stay in business.  Many of the examples are businesses that most people will know and can connect to, and they’re all recent.  Chances are, the reader will have seen something about them in the news.  Other examples include the movie industry, as well as the recent Presidential election.

The movie industry is where the author missed an opportunity.  He referred to the film ”Snakes on a Plane” as having a great hook that made it distinct.  The problem was that he only reported on the pre-buzz of the movie based on the hook, not what happened with the movie.  It bombed at the box office because the hook gave too much away.  That would have been opportunity to discuss where a seemingly good hook turns bad.

For me, I’m not a business owner.  I’m an employee in a company, and I’m also a writer, so I have a different perspective to this book.  The first thing I realized was that the distinction and hook is very similar to what writers have to do when submitting a novel to an agent.  They have to come up with a query letter with a hook that makes the story stand out.  It’s hard concept to get, and the hook–like the hook for businesses–is often surprisingly subtle.

That made me wonder if the same thing could be applied to job hunting.  I remember reading in the newspaper about people sending shoes with their resumes (foot in the door) to get the attention of an employer.  How does that make one different?  On the other hand, maybe a subtle and simple hook in a cover letter might be what gets the attention.

It was an interesting book that made me think in ways I hadn’t expected.

Kiss by Ted Dekker and Erin Healy

Kiss, a suspense novel by Ted Dekker and Erin Healy, is a pretty standard amnesia story.  Victim is in an auto accident, suffers from a six month memory loss, and is accused of doing something she didn’t. 

Growing up in abusive household, Shuana is estranged from her father, a politician who is planning on being the next President (I’m sure the recent election inspired the authors here).  She confronts him, and on the way home is in an automobile accident that leaves her missing six months of her memory and her brother brain damaged.  Drugs are also found in the car, and she’s quickly indicted for it, though she doesn’t remember anything.  Of course, she goes in search of the truth and soon discovers that there’s a big conspiracy. 

What I thought:  I think the amnesia storyline may have worked against the more complicated political storyline.  The political storyline is something that would have needed to be developed through at least several viewpoints so the reader can follow what’s going on.  Instead, the whole book is told through the eyes of the amnesiac character, Shauna.  We learn things when she learns it, and it made reading both frustrating and confusing.  Add to that several events which are given importance (“unfired cats”) and then ignored, and I found the story quite convoluted.

“Unfired Cats”: The first is the brother.  In the opening, a big deal is made over him and how the accident affected his life and the families.  Then he disappears from the book, never really talked about again.  It’s like he was important to set up conflict, but once that was done, bye-bye.  He could have been left out, and we wouldn’t have noticed.

The second is the psychic experiences.  I’m still trying to figure out what purpose they served.  Again, I think the amnesia storyline worked against the book; the pyschic experiences felt more like a way to get the story moving when the main character couldn’t remember then actually fitting the story.

The third is the therapist in the opening of the book.  Shauna is surrounded by a family who hates her, a boyfriend she doesn’t remember at all, and there’s evidence everyone has lied to her.  The therapist would be a neutral party outside the circle and would likely fill in some of the gaps and expose lies.  Yet, Shauna doesn’t do the obvious and ask the therapist!

I think the authors bit off more than they could chew, and it showed in the story and how it developed.

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Publisher Thomas Nelson recently started a Blogger Book Review program.  Sign up, and you receive a book free in exchange for reading it and posting a 200-word review on your blog and one of the book sale sites like Amazon.  Christian writing isn’t something I would normally read, so it’s been a different reading experience for me!