While I Was in Rome

While I was away, my reviews of The Unforgiving Minute by Sarah Granger and A Shot at Forgiveness by Cardeno C ran on the AAR site.  Both are easy reads and pretty good books, the first about the world of tennis competition and the second revolving around a school bully ashamed of his actions as an adult.

In the Granger book, I learned a lot about the psychology of winning and the importance of a winning attitude that I've never thought about before.  For some reason I thought the younger the competitor, the less stress in competing.  I thought that the parents were the ones driving the competitive spirit, not the competitors themselves.  Granger makes it very clear that I was wrong.

The Cardeno story illustrates how the sins of the past can weigh very heavily on the present, especially when the sins of the past were committed as a cover-up, masking the perpetrator's real nature at the expense of an innocent party.  Cardeno deftly handles uncomfortable moments and makes protagonist Rafi Steiner believably resistant to former bully Isaac's advances.  All the angst of whether to believe a guy who was relentless in his harsh treatment in high school makes the reader squirm, just as Rafi did when he was the victim.  Cardeno has just the right touch to make me believe that Rafi could and should change his mind about Isaac and be willing to see him now as romance material.

For a quick summer read, I recommend both.