Reviews By Charline

“The Take Charge Patient: How YOU Can Get The Best Medical Care”

Author: Martine Ehrenclou

“The Take-Charge Patient: How YOU Can Get The Best Medical Care” is an extremely well-written, well thought out and well put together book. This isn’t author Martine Ehrenclou’s first go round with providing helpful and informative information in an easy to understand format; her first book “Critical Conditions: The Essential Hospital Guide To Get Your Loved One Out Alive” received high accolades as well as fifteen separate awards. Ehrenclou seems to have a true calling as a patient advocate not only for herself but also for those in the world around her.

In “The Take-Charge Patient: How YOU Can Get The Best Medical Care” Ehrenclou takes the reader by the hand and provides him/her with step by step instruction on how to become that oh so important “Take-Charge” patient. Rather than having her readers become medical victims due to their lack of medical knowledge and resources she provides them with the information and know how needed to take charge of their medical situations. Surely a higher level of knowledge and understanding will go a long way towards helping assuage a patient’s concern plus give him/her a needed sense of confidence that any medical condition has the possibility of completely stealing away or slowly eroding over time.

“The Take-Charge Patient: How YOU Can Get The Best Medical Care” is laid out in an easy to read, easy to emulate format. After the introduction, which is followed by Ehrenclou’s story, the author then provides an easily understood roadmap with important mile markers for her readers to use. She shows her readers how to become “Take-Charge” patients; how to choose the right doctor and how to understand when they have the right doctor for them. I won’t go over Ehrenclou’s entire formula here but I was impressed (and appreciative) that it was in a concise and logical order rather than helter-skelter and all over the place.

In summary, “The Take-Charge Patient: How YOU Can Get The Best Medical Care” is excellent resource material. It is written in layman’s terms rather than hard to understand medical jargon and it has a sincere and honest quality to it. Almost as if the author cares about each and every one of us as an individual…

“The Job”

Author: Cramer Louis Jackson

I finished reading my copy of “The Job” by author Cramer Louis Jackson and honestly once I was done I could do nothing but sit there in stunned and horrified silence. I don’t like having to be the bearer of bad news; I dislike having to write less than glowing reviews but even more importantly than that…I really and truly hate reading bad books! Wow! I almost don’t even know where to begin with this review…

Startlingly “The Job” was only forty-five pages long which…when reading a good book that’s depressingly short however, with regards to “The Job,” I found it to be a blessing in disguise. And truthfully? I couldn’t get to page forty-five fast enough!

“The Job” is classed as Science Fiction and focuses on Joe Jamison who is currently out of work with absolutely no job prospects anywhere on the horizon. This isn’t to say that Joe is unemployed due to lack of trying – there’s just nothing viable anywhere. Or is there? One afternoon Joe receives a “cloak and dagger” type letter giving him covert instructions on where to go and what to do in order to qualify for some “secret” job. Deciding he has nothing to lose Joe follows the instructions to a tee and what do you know? He, and he alone, qualifies for this job. What are the odds?

After the initial interview Joe’s identity is changed; he’s provided with more money than he knows what to do with and then shortly thereafter he meets the woman of his dreams who just as miraculously falls head over heels in love with him. I don’t want to give any more of the story away but after completing the book I reread the back cover and idly wondered who had actually had the…audacity…to use the phrase “cinematic brilliance” with regards to this particular title. At best it read like a sub-standard “B” rated Sci-Fi movie that went directly to DVD because it was too corny to garner any interest at the box office.

In summary, I found “The Job” to be very poorly written; the plot bordered on ludicrous and inane and…that “sinister force” mentioned in the synopsis was laughable at best.

“Dreams Unveiled”

Author: Peggy Lara

I recently finished reading “Dreams Unveiled” by new author Peggy Lara. The premise of this fiction / romance / suspense novel is as follows: Holly McPhearson has finally met the man of her dreams. He’s charming, kind, great with her son and best of all? He’s a successful businessman and doesn’t need her to support him. Oh right! And he actually loves her for her! Sounds great and Holly too is definitely in love, the only problem is that Robert’s past is coming back to haunt her.

Three years prior to Holly, Robert was engaged to be married but his fiancée was murdered in his house the night before their wedding. After deciding that Robert was no longer a murder suspect the police finally settled on the belief that the killing was an unfortunate byproduct of a badly botched burglary. However, one of the detectives assigned to the case never completely bought into that theory.

With Holly and Robert’s big day fast approaching detective Melanie Sanders is more convinced than ever that some important piece of this investigation was overlooked. If Robert’s fiancée wasn’t murdered because she was in the wrong place at the wrong time, then will Melanie be able to figure out what really happened with enough time left to save Holly’s life? I guess you will have to read “Dreams Unveiled” for yourself to find the answer to that question.

All in all, I found “Dreams Unveiled” to be an interesting read. I enjoyed the ironic twist of the book’s title and I would say that Lara has a gift for storytelling. I wasn’t completely fooled as to where the tale was going or even who the real culprit was but it made for an enjoyable airplane read on my way to Maui. It would have made a great beach read too if the flight itself wasn’t oh so long!

In summary, a good book; a fun read. The plot is believable; the dialogue between characters flows well and for the most part the book transitions seamlessly from one scene to the next. Anyone who enjoys reading fiction / romance / light suspense will probably appreciate this title and the author did a great job of keeping the grisly aspects out of this book making it age appropriate for young adults as well.