To Iraq And Back by Jessica Scott.

Jessica is a soldier who writes a blog and her book is compiled from her blog posts between October 2008 and December 2009. She has a deployment for a year to Mosul in Iraq and this is an insight into her life.

I enjoyed reading To Iraq And Back because it was such a refreshing read for me. I am a pacifist and was totally against the illegal invasion of Iraq but I wanted to read her book with an open mind. What I found was a lovely tale from a very ordinary girl-next-door type of woman, who chose to serve in the US Army. That is Jessica’s day job but she is not the aggressive, movie star, all action, guns blazing heroine. She is an ordinary soldier who has her specific job working in signals, she has a combat role but she is not front line. But Jessica is not a regular workplace blogger as she blogs about lots of things, not just her Army job. Jessica is also a wife, a mother to two young daughters and a romance writer seeking her first publication.

The content of her book is quite a split between Army life, being a mother and writing romance with a view to being published. This made for an enjoyable read as you got to know the whole person. You felt as though you were on tour with Jessica getting all the highlights by squeezing the year into the time it takes to read her book. I liked the structure of her book because the time-line was rigid and there was no going back in time which is one of my pet hates. I found it easy to indentify with Jessica and her personality really shines through her blog posts.

She was unable to give away any military secrets but was incredibly open about the process of writing romance novels. I was not expecting this and really enjoyed reading about her writing problems and her involvement with the Austin Romance Writers Association and others.

I liked how she wrote about her home, her marriage, her children and pets. Rather than being a hard faced soldier, this book let me see her as a normal person who has many interests outside of her day job. You get conditioned by many thriller novels that ALL soldiers are gun-ho and looking for a fight and are unquestioning about killing people. Her book showed the other, softer side of soldiers in support roles who are no different from blue collar workers around the world. What is refreshing is that these soldiers have a normal life with outside interests although they are serving in a combat zone,

I read To Iraq And Back with an open mind and am really pleased I had downloaded a copy. It was good to get a condensed view into a stranger’s life. Jessica is not a bland woman, she has attitude which gave her blog a lovely bite. There were no graphic scenes of bombs or limbs hanging off but Jessica lived in fear of the spider! What I took away from her book was that workers around the world do what they are paid to do but regardless of their uniform, they have personal interests outside of work, just like everyone else. Although you may not agree with company policy or the actions of government agents, these workers are only doing their job but underneath the uniform, they are ordinary nice people. The US army had invaded Iraq and many people lost their lives but not every soldier had their finger on the trigger. Some soldiers were just doing their duty and outside of work are quite nice people. I found To Iraq And Back to be a good read and I will vote it 4 stars. Jessica is now a successful published author and her hobby has developed into paid work. I am pleased that her perseverance has paid off, not just emotionally but in her bank account also.

To Iraq And Back is available as an Amazon Kindle eBook and was written in 2012

Nothing To Lose by Lee Child.

Thank you to the passenger who left this paperback on my coach as I have not read a Lee Child novel before but many of our drivers enjoy his books. Nothing To Lose is the 12th Jack Reacher story and sees him having an adventure in Colorado.

All these Jack Reacher stories are stand alones, you do not have to read them in a sequence. You can just read the odd one if that is all you want. The story is told in the third person and focuses very heavily on Jack, it is his tale. Something is not quite right about the small town of Despair and Jack is determined to get to the bottom of why the locals do not like strangers entering their town.

Lee Child’s writing style is different. Although his stories are set in America, because Lee Child is English, his spelling is British English which I find a boom as cars race around on real tyres! He writes in short chapters as there are 73 chapters in this novel, making reading session times easy to break. There is NO SEX in this story even though he takes a woman to bed! Lee simply writes “Afterwards…”. There are a few concurrent plot lines to follow but I thought why does Jack really bother? Things are thrown into the script in a tabloid fashion, things do not go too deep. There is not much character development as it is all centred around Jack. Everything is explained in the same way as a Drivers CPC course in the UK, lots of background as to why things are done a certain way. The pace of this novel is okay but I did feel as though I was on a training course completing modules to get a pass at the end.

Nothing To Lose was an okay read, it filled a space. I did not find it exciting or gripping. It is a shallow read and has about as much depth as a made-for-tv movie. It is quite a cheap read and I was not impressed. I do not know why Lee Child has so many fans and sells so many books that he is now onto his 20th Jack Reacher novel to be published in September 2105. I am glad I stumbled across this thrown away paperback because had I downloaded a Kindle copy I would have paid £5.01 which is far too much for a book of this quality. Nothing To Lose does pass my quality threshold but I can only vote it 3 stars as it is just an okay read. Having sampled his writing, I will NOT be in the market to purchase another Lee Child novel. There are plenty of very good authors out there and there is no need to pay more than £4.00 for a Kindle download - even a highly acclaimed 5 star read.

Nothing To Lose has 548 pages and was written in 2008.