East of Ashes by Gideon Nieuwoudt
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Such a promising beginning. My favorite time period, a book with good, solid, believable characters, a clear Christian message – so why only three stars? Actually would be 3.5 if I could do halves. The ending for me seemed truncated, cut off too soon. Its not that I didn’t like the ending, just that there didn’t seem to be the attention to detail that there was in the rest of the story. That’s too bad because the book was well written and I was hooked from the first few pages. I would read other books from this author in a heartbeat and do recommend this as a good read, just not a great one.
It is well worth your time though and I do respect how the clear Christian message was approached and executed. That aspect of the book gets 5 stars.
Give it a chance – I believe you will enjoy it.

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Dirty God: Jesus in the Trenches by Johnnie Moore
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I enjoyed reading this book and how the author illustrates the grace of God. What keeps this from getting 4 or 5 stars from me is that the message seems to get muddled a lot on the way. While it didn’t seem cohesive to me – perhaps better editing would have helped – what he had to say was good. I can see this book being helpful but rarely does the author use inclusive language “we”, “our”, etc.. so it reads kind of like a pep talk and not a conversation. Very useful for those confused about grace, Jesus and salvation or for brand new Christians just exploring their faith.

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