Location: United States
Member Since:
July 20, 2010
Mary Endersbe
Mary Endersbe's favorite authors on Smashwords
Smashwords book reviews by Mary Endersbe
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Northwoods Deep
on July 26, 2010
This book had me hooked from the beginning. I could hardly put it down! The writing made me feel like the characters were old friends. Lots of unexpected twists and an original plot made this a great book. I will be telling my friends about it. Well worth the price!
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Snow Burn
on March 09, 2011
Snow Burn is a novel about two teen boys who decide to go on a winter adventure without their parents’ knowledge and end up getting into way more trouble than they could have ever imagined. What seems like a harmless adventure turns into a nightmare when the boys find a half-frozen man and decide to help him and things end up taking a scary turn, forcing the boys to see how far they will go to save their lives. Told from a high-school boy’s perspective, the story telling is very true to life and the characters are well developed. The conversations in the book reminded me of all the guy talk I overheard in the halls in my high school. From the first page, the author had my attention. The characters were likable, very believable and the story unique and entertaining. In a world full of novels directed at teen girls and bookshelves that seem to be full of fantasy and science fiction for teen boys, to have such a believable, unique story and well-written book aimed at mid-teen boys is very refreshing. I have read a few other books by this same author and have always found his writing to be exceptional and have never been disappointed. Snow Burn is a book that I would highly recommend to anyone, especially for the teen boy looking for something original, entertaining and fast-paced; you will not be disappointed.
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The Love You Crave
on July 30, 2011
Don't know how John Locke does it, but somehow each book in the Creed series just gets better and better. Leaves you CRAVING more! :) The characters and storyline are even more fun, more outrageous and are just one wild ride that makes it impossible to put this book down. Nothing not to love here!
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Ox Cart Angel
on Aug. 27, 2011
Ox Cart Angel will transport you back to a time that your children may never knew even existed. It is so hard to realize that there were days before highways, before cars, before grocery stores with everything we could ever need were on every corner. This book reminds us that it really was not that long ago in our timeline that these conveniences were not available to us. The story starts out with a girl, Claire. Claire is Métis, her mother being Indian and her father French Canadian. After the death of her mother, Claire finds out her father wants to pick up and move from the little town of Pembina to the big city of St. Paul. She does not want to leave the only home town she has grown up in and the friends she loves, but she has no choice. Her father has decided to sell what they can and move his photography business to St. Paul. All they can afford is an old, half blind ox the town children call Bone Bag and a rickety old cart. Having missed leaving with the big wagon train of Métis, but hoping on catching up with them, Claire and her father set out on their difficult journey. Along the way, Claire refuses to leave her mother’s wedding gown, so she wears the dress almost the entire trip, even though it is uncomfortable, as Claire feels the dress is one of her last connections to her mother. As this little crew runs into people, they start to comment on how she appears to be an “angel.” Their trip with the old ox and cart is long, monotonous and oftentimes dangerous. This story is about all of the people they run across, the good and the bad, the adverse situations they have to deal with and the unknown future that awaits them. This is also a story of a relationship between a daughter and a father and how hard times make young people take on grown up responsibilities and how these responsibilities turn children into adults. It took me a while to really get into the story of Ox Cart Angel, but when I did, it was so filled with interesting characters that the father/daughter team met along the way, it was hard to put down. Arnold’s writing was so descriptive it was easy for me to picture all of these people in my head. Each new situation the little ox cart team ran into was like another tiny story within the story and it was fun to see what these little side stories were about. I found the book very creative and original, not like any other book I have read set in that era. I think once a reader gets to know the characters and gets into the story, the rest of the book is so entertaining it just flies by. I was excited to see a sequel is in the works for this story as there is so much more that can be written here. I can’t wait for the next installment!