Shade Tree Book Reviews and Blog: ALL THIS TIME - Book Tour, Review, and Giveaway

SYNOPSIS
American, Lydia Fadoul, hasSyrian spent a year waiting for her fiancé to return from war in Iraq, only to discover that he is broken by trauma and the devastating effects of PTSD. Just when he finally agrees to seek help, he takes his own life and leaves behind a story of murder, betrayal, and mystery. In her second, contemporary fiction novel since Budapest, Tiffani Burnett-Velez weaves a fast-paced literary tale about the rumors we believe and the prejudices we create in order to protect our hearts from the truth.

REVIEW

Some books are easy reads. They are ones that you sit back in the porch swing on a Sunday afternoon with a big glass of lemonade and spend the afternoon immersed in another world. A world where boy meets girl, and they run through the meadow with their arms outspread and laugh at the joy of life and the love that they share. Ahhh what a nice relaxing Sunday afternoon, to sit there and wiggle your toes and grin with the daydreams.

Then there are the books that you sit down and pull your favorite throw close. Grab your favorite cuppa and make sure it is fresh and hot, because you know, before you open the book, that you are going to need it. Not all books are easy reads. But there are some books you want and need to read! There are some stories that need to be heard.

ALL THIS TIME is such a story. From the first page, as I stood in the cold cemetery, next to the cold empty grave, and listened to the dry liturgy of a preacher who no more knew the soldier whose body was lying there in that cold coffin – my heart broke. It never got any better.

PTSD is one of those subjects that is hard to talk about. It is harder to watch a loved one live with. Tiffani accomplished a seemingly impossible task of adequately portraying and vocalizing the pain, anger and confusion that the young fiancé of the dead marine and heroine of ALL THIS TIME went through after his suicide.

Utilizing a wonderful and tantalizing story of intrigue and mystery to speak to a national tragedy in our nation’s military, Tiffani upheld the honor of our servicemen while speaking to the unimaginable atrocities that oft times drives many of these young men over the edge of sanity. She addressed the questions of lack of adequate pre-screening and post diagnostic treatment upon return from the theatre of war.

I deeply appreciated the sensitivity she gave to the many aspects of the vagaries that can cloud such situations involving multi-ethnicity incidents, no matter where they occur or between what peoples. My hats off to Tiffani for a story well told and job well done on telling a difficult story. This reviewer would give this book a rating of 4.5 Stars.

About the Author

Tiffani Burnett-Velez has been a freelance since 1996. Her non - fiction work has appeared in magazines and newspapers in the US and Europe, including Pennsylvania Magazine, Country Discoveries, St . Anthony Messenger, Health.com, Yahoo! News, and many more online and in print publications.

Her first novel, Budapest, was featured in the New York Book Festival and the 4 2nd Annual Conference of Jewish Librarians and it's re-release became a 2014 Amazon Bestseller in Literary and Inspirational Fiction. Her second contemporary novel, All This Time, will be released by Booktrope in 2015, and the second, A Berlin Story, in her bestselling WWII novella series, Embers of War, is an Amazon Historical German Fiction Bestseller. She has studied English Literature at Harvard University and the University of Pennsylvania and holds a BA in Cognitive Science from Ashford University. She is currently completing her MFA in Creative Writing.