Drinking Water To Lose Weight by Lexi Burke Alexander.

Drinking Water To Lose Weight is a very small 90 KB ebook published in 2012.  It has a very simple message, swap other drinks for water. By switching to plain water, your reduced daily calorie intake results in a weight loss. It is surprising how other drinks mount up the calories throughout the day. This book also explains how some foods contain a fair amount of water which lead to a fuller stomach but without the high calorie value. Lexi mentions also the importance of hydration to good health.

Lexi's writing style is rather happy clappy diet club and she does drone on about exercise. Her book is okay and I vote it 3 stars. Lexi gives some good advice and it could make a difference because that tasty latte is 200 calories and as she shows, the maths are easy!

Back Spin by Harlan Coben.

16 year old Chad Coldren goes missing and a telephone call claims that he has been kidnapped. Has Chad simply ran away and this is a cruel hoax? Myron Bolitar has a job to solve this mystery.

Back Spin has a very good plot with many possibilities of perpetrator, giving lots of avenues for Myron Bolitar to explore. There are plenty of suspects and this story has lots of twists that raise many doubts and suspicions. Harlan is very good at developing characters and each one has bags of personality. There is no drivel about someone wearing a blue coat but Harlan explains exactly what makes each character tick. Every character is described in depth. This is a people story with a diverse cast. As this story progresses, you do not know how it will end.

Back Spin has 343 pages and was written in 1997 but re-issued in 2007. This book is an enjoyable read that is enhanced by some lovely dry humour. Harlan Coben is a great storyteller. Back Spin refers to a move that golfers make but it does not matter to this mystery. The ending of this tale is okay and I shall be voting this novel 4 stars on Goodreads as it is a good book.

Stop Prediabetes: Eat S.A.F.E. and Don't Be a Sea Squirt by Robert Creighton.

Pre-diabetes metabolic syndrome affects 1 in 3 American adults, which can lead to type 2 diabetes. Look at your friends and workmates, even people walking down the street, because many of them have developed diabetes. You can see and hear about the problem of increasing diabetes within the adult population, so why not get the knowledge so that you can miss out on becoming a victim of diabetes?

Stop Prediabetes is a small 315 KB ebook that was published in 2013. This book is nicely put together, it is uplifting and provides a solution that is a light at the end of this very dark tunnel. I understand how petrol and diesel engines work but human biology is very different. The action needed to stop pre-diabetes is simple and the results are well proven. Making minor lifestyle changes is all you need to stop diabetes. This book explains the complicated biology involved and how metabolism actually works. The food you eat and the movement you make work hand in hand with each other. Get the balance right and you will not develop pre-diabetes. Human ancestry is very important and modern processed foods do not work well with our bodies. The best advice is to avoid all food that has a label. Robert explains very well how our metabolism works and he makes the complicated biology easy to understand. He explains why you should avoid processed foods.

The small lifestyle changes Robert describes are not strict or hard to follow. He is not recommending exercise, joining a gym or talking part in sports. He is supporting simple movement, where you muscles are contracting, simple everyday activity like walking or gardening - moving around! Although modern processed foods are bad for you, Robert's 80/20 rule means that you can enjoy the odd biscuit etc - provided it and other processed foods do not exceed 20% of your intake. This is not a strict diet, just intelligent eating when you know what modern processed foods are made of and how your body deals with them.

Robert also explains why after a good walk you feel good. Walking in the woods is a pleasure, not a chore. This is because of the way your body chemistry and metabolism works as you walk. Your food and movement work together, these small changes in lifestyle make your risk of prediabetes go away. Nobody is force feeding you and you are empowered to make intelligent food choices.

I really enjoyed reading this book, it is well written and his style is polite. Robert does not bully the reader and he is not a happy, clappy evangelist! I will vote this book the maximum score of 5 stars on Amazon as it is such a brilliant self help book. I urge you to take Robert's advice so that you don't become a victim of diabetes but grow old without the worry.

bare bones by Kathy Reichs.

bare bones continues the tale of Dr Temperance Brennan, a forensic anthropologist. There are 3 parts to this story, the bones of a newborn baby, a plane crash and a cache of bones discovered in the woods. This novel is about Dr Brennan's life in and out of work. It is written in the first person and she is a likeable, hard working character. You will read some interesting forensic detail as Temperance goes about her job. Slowly the clues mount up and the investigation of suspects unfold.

bare bones is a rather run of the mill Crime, Scene, Investigation novel. There is nothing unusual or particularly gripping. This is an easy book to put down. I last read a Kathy Reichs novel in 2009 and although bare bones is easy reading, it is not her best novel. It is quite shallow and rather dull, I lost empathy for the characters. The last 13 pages explain how everything fits together but by then my heart was not really into this book. Kathy Reichs is a top selling author but bare bones is pedestrian. Was bare bones at 420 pages and written in 2003 just published to fulfil Kathy's contractual quota? I think it is a poor read as it disappoints and I know Kathy Reichs can do much better. I will be voting bare bones 2 stars on Goodreads and suggest you give this one the MISS.

Dark Passage by Griffin Hayes

5 year old Tyson Barrett was told to never enter the locked room at the end of the hallway in his home. One day he did... what he saw the reader does not know as the story jumps to when Tyson is 38 years old. Tyson now has really bad nightmares and finds sleep very difficult. You assume Tyson is suffering from PTSD at whatever he witnessed was behind the locked door when he was 5 years old. Tyson joins a drug trial to see if the medication will help him sleep. The dreams continue and you wonder if something sinister is going on or whether Tyson is slowly losing his mind. Dark Passage got off to a good start but then tragedy strikes Dr Stevens and the story rolls downhill from there. It becomes a paranormal fantasy novel and is a little daft. Things do not add up and the characters motives are unbelievable. This book was written in 2011 and I downloaded the 434 KB Amazon Kindle version. Dark Passage fails to live up to it's promise and simply becomes an okay read which I will vote as 3 stars on Goodreads. It is a disappointing read that could have been a gripping thriller that dealt with mental health issues.

A better reward for your feedback.

When you give feedback to a company, the results vary quite a lot. In a previous post I sent my feedback to National Express and because my text had a key safety word in it, I received within minutes a call back from a manager at Service Support. The issue was dealt with in the manner National Express thought was appropriate. I was not rewarded for my stress.

Brewers Fayre have a better idea when they receive feedback from their diners. Keep your till receipt and do the online survey. Yes, there is a lot of questions and a lot of box ticking but at the end they send your a voucher for a free pudding when you buy a main meal on your next visit. This rewards the diner for spending their time to give feedback to Brewers Fayre in a manner which they find very useful in running their business. Brewers Fayre are paying for this feedback rather than getting snitchers for free like National Express encourage.

If you want people to put the time and effort into giving your business genuine feedback, then take a leaf out of the Brewers Fayre menu and offer a small reward. The puddings on the menu sell for under £4 and the cost price is considerably less. Brewers Fayre get to sell another main meal to the diner and get the volume of genuine feedback they desire for a very small cost. Brewers Fayre are happy to pay a token sum for the feedback while National Express view passenger feedback as a freebie.

The Curious Case of Daniel Walter by Rose Carter.

This story starts with Daniel killing his father. Ryan Cook is the detective assigned to the case. Witnesses point to Daniel being the killer. Can Ryan prove the killer was Daniel and not his identical twin brother Peter?

This book has a bad format, as from the start you know that Daniel is the killer. This novel is written in sections from the viewpoint of Daniel and Ryan. It is a teenage drama set in America and is not much of a crime thriller. Daniel's quest is to create doubt in a courtroom, so he has to be somewhat creative.

This novel does ramble on quite a bit. At one stage I even wondered if Daniel actually had a twin brother or if he was a schizophrenic with 2 personalities. I developed no empathy for any of the characters in this story. Proof is generally found by good Police work but the ending was no great shakes.

I bought the 278 KB Amazon Kindle version of this book which was written in 2011. I thought it was a disappointing read and I will vote it only 2 stars on Goodreads. This is a book to MISS and I consider it a FAIL.