Carolyn McSparrenReseñas

A Great Mix of Stories

This anthology is very entertaining. My favorite story was 'Night Fishing' by Angelyn Sherrod. The author gave a well crafted story in the voice of the characters and of the historical period's setting. Other notable stories are Murder At The Peabody by Patricia Potter a cute who done it. Another enjoyable scare is Voodoo Village by Kristi Bradley. I have heard the urban legends and appreciated her creative use and respect of the location. I recommend this book of shorts for anyone who enjoys experiencing a variety of scary stories.

Very good book to read --- Enjoyed it

just okay. The premise was good but it fell a bit flat. The mystery was not real suspensful and the romance was just ho hum. The heroine slept with him while he was a suspect in a murder which just wasn't right. Also he seemed pretty much a non entity. You wondered a bit why she loved him. The romantic dialog between the two of them was pretty stilted. I just didn't buy into the love between them. It was pretty tepid and seemed to come out of left field.

There was a character who was a weaver which was cool. Since I'm a weaver that was fun to see and very uncommon. Would have been even better if the heroine had been a weaver.

The Cart Before The Corpse (The Merry Abbot Carriage-Driving Mystery)
By: Carolyn McSparren
Narrated by: Erin Novotny

This is a fine and unique mystery! Can't say I have read a mystery before that was based around a horse drawn carriage. Merry had recently been writing and trying to ease back into her father's life. He left her and her mother a long time ago but they had lately been back in touch. Merry then gets a notice that he died. When she gets there, the landlady thinks he was murdered. After explaining why she thinks so, Merry agrees. The cops don't want the a murder on their town or district record and won't pursue it. So both the landlady and Merry do.
It gets deadly, suspenseful, and intriguing! So many possibilities! So much happens! Very exciting! I really enjoyed the mystery! Edge of my seat kind of thrills!
The end was satisfying and I am glad I picked this up from freeaudiblecodes! Will probably follow this series.

A collection of murders and ghost stories based in and around Elmwood Cemetary. The stories are based on historical facts in most cases and fictional stories and events built around them. An interesting, entertaining, and informative series of stories and a good read.

Pat's widowed Dad treats the daughter with kid gloves even after her leukemia bout is over. But she has her heart set on learning to ride and get her own horse. After Mike arrives at Liz's horse training camp, all he sees is the dirt and germs lurking, and Liz who won't treat his daughter as a fragile flower, both irking and intriguing him.

The author weaves an interesting story but there is too much detail concerning carriage racing. Since most readers are probably not familiar with this sport, it makes for very boring reading. While I am not adverse to the use of 'big words' in a book, the author uses them often and many are not familiar enough for the reader to understand without a dictionary.

LOVED this book! I enjoyed all the James Harriott novels, but honestly, this one was better.

The protag. is a woman, and a Southerner. McSparren had me laughing and crying all through the book - sometimes both at the same time.

The characters are so real I feel like I could drive down to see them.

A wonderful Women's Fiction novel. I highly recommend it.

A great story, well written, It kept calling me back...
I couldn't wait to see what they were up to next!

Maggie was raised to be a Southern Belle, but she only wanted to be a veterinarian from the time she worked for a vet to pay off a bill for a half-drowned puppy. She struggled through the man's world of veterinary school in the 60's, and the book follows the story of her life, love, career and family. It is a good story but without that attention-grabbing quality of James Herriott (to whom all veterinary stories must be compared).

rabck bookbox from bookstogive 8/09, mini-ring 2009 back from Kelsey10; different plot than the usual romance. Steve was convicted of murdering his wife & sentenced to 6 years for manslaughter. Now he's in a minimum security prison, that's working with the local vet clinic on a new cow/buffalo/horse program. Eleanor is the local vet in charge of the program, trying to put her life back together after losing her husband to cancer, and the medical bills that bankrupted her vet practice. The book explores the backstories behind several of the convicts, include Steve, who really is innocent after all.

_Finally_ read this book. I started it right after I got it (from Early Readers), and stalled on the first chapter. I've started and stalled at the same place half a dozen times in the...several years since I got it. But this time I powered through, and got through the entire book. And it's good! I enjoyed reading it, and I may well reread. Pity it took me so long. The stories are good - events in a vet's life, which are always interesting and frequently amusing (I like Herriot too). The events in her personal life - from sexism in college (and later) to her marriage, children, and widowhood while working as an independent vet, to her waffling on whether to retire - are also interesting, though mostly much less amusing. I kept trying to decide if it was a memoir or fiction, and couldn't figure it out - there's an afterword, however, in which the author explains that while all the stories are true, the characters are all fictional. Very nicely done, since I couldn't determine whether it was true or not! As a vet, Maggie works with both small and large animals - dogs and cats, horses and cattle. And buffalo, and wolves, and monkeys...but not often. Miracle recoveries, accidental deaths and deaths due to incompetence, weird and wonderful problems mostly solved. Her personal life is less smooth, and less interesting to me. Not bad, but a lot of cases where two or more people act reasonably by their own lights and end up on a collision course. Not particularly enjoyable to read, though in several cases the collision powered the story down the line. Overall enjoyable, and probably worth a reread (to catch what I missed the first time through!).½

I received an PDF of this for early reviewers, which was probably the biggest drawback, as it was difficult to sit and read it for long periods of time. I didn't really notice any editing problems with the copy I had.

Being a fan of horses I enjoyed this side of the story, the technical part was interesting for me as I don't know a lot about buggy racing. I also enjoyed the mystery element of the story. I may've been more invested in the characters if I'd read the Mossy Creek series, but this is okay to read as a stand alone. All in all, I enjoyed the book enough to read other books in the series.

I promised to review this when I got it and am sorry to say I have just now gotten around to reading it. It is a wonderful, warm book about female vets in the 1960's South. If you liked James Herriot's books you will enjoy this one. The people are as interesting as the animals in the story.

I really enjoyed this book, following the life of Maggie McLain, a Southern Belle in the sixties who leaves that life to become a vet at a time when the South was not really ready for women vets, which only makes a hard job even harder.

There is no real over-arching plot to this novel, rather it is a series of anecdotes spread across a lifetime, but it is brought together by the wonderful characters involved in them. The family, friends, colleagues, clients and Dr McLain herself are all well-drawn, bringing good humour and warmth to the stories of the various veterinary crises they encounter.

The book's anecdotes are beautifully told, humorously portraying some of the odder clients and the sorts of situations that end up with vets on their backsides in mud, while sensitively and compassionately dealing with the times when sad things happen, such as the death of a child's beloved horse.

Both moving and giggle-inducing, this was a lovely read.

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Full disclosure for the FTC and anyone else who is bothered: I received a copy of 'All God's Creatures' for free as an ebook via the LibraryThing Early Reviewers system.

Odd, I didnt finish the book, and I dont know if I will.

Carolyn McSparren has written a book, All God’s Creature, maybe not thinking to a large claims but the result is different: a readable book, well written, with passion and love for the animals, humankind is not aside and often animals teach some lectures to people.

This is the story of a woman who becomes a veterinary for love of animals, carrying all her humanity; and, sometimes, becoming a new super-hero or, better, a Super-Vet (I remember, for instance the hunt of the escaped buffalo).

Every chapters tells a new and different story, although there is a fil rouge: the life of this Vet from the first dog to the last horse.

I recommend this book for all animal lover (but who doesn’t love animals?).

‘I always devoured books and loved music and art, but culture never gave me the immediate thrill I got from saving an animals life’ p. 238

Not quite sure the intended audience; I'd assume Christians/Catholics - but you can never quite tell. Its a decently well-paced novel that starts quite a bit slow and then builds, kind of like a slow starting engine of a train or large truck. The characters are interesting, for the most part three dimensional and intelligence, but overall the novel feels lacking and to be honest (and I hate doing this as a reviewer) I can't just quite put my finger on that.

This story was a little slow to get started but eventually picked up speed. The characters were engaging and well developed and the stories were well paced - I'm not much of a horse person but still found the stories enjoyable. I find that the title of the book is a self conscious and probably unnecessary attempt to associate the novel with James Herriot's hugely popular vet books - a view backed up by the publisher highlighting the similarities. That said, if you like Herriot's books, there's no denying that you probably enjoy this book.

This book would have been a much easier read had it not been an e-book. I stopped and started many times and had difficulty staying with it not because of the content, but because I would much rather sit curled up with a book than sit in an office chair staring at a computer screen.
The characters in the story are well developed and the storyline flows in an easy manner through most of the book. The chapters are long and there are a lot of them making this a long book. More time could have been spent on animal stories and less on daily life. The connection between this book and James Herriot's books is not very evident throughout most of the book unless you consider only that they are both vet stories.

Hiram Lackland has moved to Mossy Creek and is living in the apartment Peggy Caldwell has renovated. When he is suddenly found dead, lying under the wheel of a carriage he has been trying to restore, Peggy gets suspicious.

Hiram's daughter, Merry Abbott, comes to Mossy Creek to take care of her father's estate and finds herself involved in solving his murder. All the Mossy Creek characters are there, and Mossy Creek is just as nutty as ever.

I really liked this book. I was left wondering who did it until the end. The end was a complete surprise!

I was very happy to find out I won this Early Reviewers book. I had the ambition of becoming a vet in the past and allthough this story is fictional I really wanted to read it.

The story 'flows'; it is fluid, comprehendable, a narrative that does not get boring at all. It is emotional to read at times and I really enjoyed that.
I can't compare it to 'Black Beauty' by Anne Sewell for the obvious reasons but the feeling I got while reading it is quite comparable. Hard to lay down and once I did, the hunger for more of this!

This was a very good book. I loved reading about Maggie's adventures as a vet. The story reminded me a lot of James Herriot's "All Creatures" books. Plenty of laughter, tears and love in this book.

I can't say that I would compare this to a James Herriot book; while it's a good read and I enjoyed reading it, there's much more focus on the human element than I expected from the publisher's blurb. Definitely recommended for horse people, and very touching in parts -- but the retirement issue did drag a little I'm afraid, and I was a little surprised at the lack of focus on their own pets. Maybe that's just me. Worth reading.

All God's Creatures is a wonderful fictional account of a woman veterinarian who attends veterinary school in the era when women were expected to be housewives, not professionals. It is a fascinating look at the experiences of someone breaking into a male-dominated field and the obstacles faced by anyone who attempts to practice medicine on rather large animals such as horses and cows in their natural environment rather than within the confines of a veterinary clinic. The newly minted Dr. McLain faces her share of interesting cases and bonds with several wonderful people but this book also gives a glimpse of the toll that veterinary medicine takes upon the private life of the dedicated practitioner. A well-written and enjoyable tale.