Joe DeRouen is a friend of mine on Facebook. So when I found out that he was an author, I was pretty excited to be able to write a review on his book. I was even more excited when I found out it's a trilogy!!
Small Things:
It’s a hot June morning in a small Midwestern town when fifteen-year-old Shawn Spencer arrives at the church for his best friend Tanner’s funeral. Though his drowning was officially ruled an accident, Tanner’s sister Jenny swears she saw something rise up from the Carthage Lake to pull the struggling teenager beneath the surface.
Shawn doesn’t believe in monsters… but he will…
The real threat, however, lies in the man behind the monster, a mysterious old man who has vowed to settle an old grudge and regain something that was stolen from him decades earlier. To survive the dark days and nights ahead, Shawn must not only decipher what the man is after, he must move past his own grief, fears, and insecurities, and learn to trust in Jenny, the disgraced town sheriff, and, most importantly, in himself. The Small Things trilogy spans forty years and three generations in a tale of murder, betrayal, corruption, sacrifice, love, redemption, faith and magic that culminates in a showdown that will pit the very forces of heaven and hell against Shawn and his family in a battle for the future of mankind and the world itself.
Small Things is a book that everyone can get into. The author has given us an amazing character and storyline that get's more involved as you get deeper and deeper into the book. You get so deep, that you rarely come up for air...
Small Things has been rated 4-5 stars across several sites... Here are some things other's had to say!
Jolene writes:This was a great read! I could not put this book down and finished it in 2 days! I was drawn in to the the story and really cared what happened to the characters. With the author great discriptions, I felt like I was along for the ride. If you like authors like Stephen King, You have to read Small Things!
Robin says: This is a fascinating book that draws you in right at the somber opening and takes you on a thrilling adventure from start to finish. As an eclectic genre-bending book, it is both light and dark at the same time within the same scenes and chapters. Suspense is plentiful, as you really become cheerleaders for the young protagonists. The characters are endowed with their own unique dialogue, well-defined vulnerabilities, longings, tragic flaws, perfectly nuanced personalities, strengths, and weaknesses that make you ultimately care about all of them. The location and time period are given with clarity. Although this is the debut novel by Joe DeRouen, he is a masterful storyteller, unraveling the story's secrets at just the right moments and providing a fulfilling experience for the reader. His unique voice as an author is one to follow, and I hope this is the first of many books from DeRouen.
Irene wrote: Move over Stephen King, and make room for Joe.. This book kept me on the edge of my seat, with twists and turns, and surprises, all the way to the end... Looking forward to book 2 in the trilogy. It's going to be a long time till fall. Awesome book. :)
As you can see, I'm not alone in my belief that Small Things is A BIG THING!!
You can also find him on his own site, joederouen.com
Oh... Check him out on facebook too!!
It's amazing how little we know about our facebook friends... This experience (finding out Joe is an author, after nearly 3 years of being fb friends) has encouraged me to start a new-new years resolution. Every couple days, I'm going to visit one facebook friend that I friended for games, or otherwise, and try to find out more about who I'm friends with... Who knows... I could be friends with someone who can further my blogging, and not know it...or someone who has a products that could use a blog to expose it...
ReplyDeleteI'd challenge you to do the same...
why am I just now reading this?? :)
ReplyDeleteLOL...probably because your spending so much time writing all about my character in Shreds!
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