KND Kindle Free Book Alert for Saturday, June 30: 355 BRAND NEW FREEBIES in the last 24 hours added to Our 4,800 FREE TITLES Sorted by Category, Date Added, Bestselling or Review Rating! plus … Lisa Begin-Kruysman’s FULL SNOW MOON (Today’s Sponsor – $2.99 or FREE via Kindle Lending Library)

Full Snow Moon is the YA debut of author Lisa Begin-Kruysman and it is everything a good YA book should be. It is filled with modern adventure that begins the night young Alex Van Note wrecks his Jeep in the middle of a snowstorm. Assisting in Alex’s rescue is the ghost of one Eli Hampton who went missing during the Great East Coast Blizzard of 1888. Eli has a mission for Alex, help him get home, unfortunately for Eli is historic home is about to be torn down to make room for a modern strip mall. Alex has his work cut out for him.

Begin-Kruysman keeps an interesting narrative going throughout the story as well as peppering the story with facts about the expedition of Lewis and Clark, the Peace Medals, the Lenni Lenape people and the Sand Hill Indians. She maintains the reader’s interest by keeping the pace going and the tension in the story evolving.

I found the characters in Full Snow Moon to be interesting and realistic. Stereotypes were avoided and the characters were, for the most part, well-rounded individuals. All the characters were late teenagers poised on the cusp of developing adulthood and the challenges they faced as a result of the storyline would help define who they would come to be in the future.

I loved the way Begin-Kruysman worked historical facts and details into the story. It was done with perfect timing and in such a way that it was interesting, not just superfluous details. I cared not only about the living characters, but also about young dead Eli, his family and his ancestral home. I was alarmed by the statistics that showed how quickly land is being destroyed and developed in the US and how we are losing the character of our cities and towns in the race to update and modernize.

Begin-Kruysman opened my eyes to all of this and more through the story of one historic house and one family. Alex dug for the information that would help him solve the mystery posed by Eli and the house, it wasn’t supernaturally handed to him and his research made what he learned even more interesting to me as a reader. It kept things vital and alive and well rooted in the present even though the problem that was being solved had begun long ago on the fateful nights of the Blizzard of 1888. I would definitely recommend this story to both adults and YA readers who are looking for something out of the ordinary that mixes fact with fiction in a blend that represents the best of each.