“Going Green” by Chris Skates

(Note:  This is my November 2011 review originally published on Patriot Update.  Ann-Marie Murrell)

Since I started writing for Patriot Update, authors sometimes contact me asking if I will read (and hopefully review) their books.  The first time this happened I was thrilled and couldn’t wait to get my copy in the mail.

And then I read it.  (Whah-whah…)

So when my Facebook friend Chris Skates asked if he could send me a copy of his book Going Green I was torn.  I had already lost several Facebook friends who were upset with my honesty regarding their writing.  I mean, I’ve only been doing this writing thing a few years myself, so who am I to judge anyone else’s work?

But nonetheless, when Chris asked me I said sure, send it.

For almost three months Going Green gathered dust on my “must-read” pile of books.  After getting a second Facebook message from Chris asking me if I’d read it, I finally knew I had to go for it.

I was flying to Atlanta with a 2-hour layover in Utah so I only brought one book with me—Going Green—which I knew would force me to read it.

After the first page—or actually the first paragraph–I realized life had thrown me a happy, unexpected curve ball and I was completely hooked.

To call Going Green a page-turner isn’t doing it justice.  I was reading it so fast, wanting to find out what would happen next, that I found myself having to re-read paragraphs.  I was actually disappointed when the plane landed in Atlanta.

The next day I was filming Politichicks and didn’t have any time to read so I had to wait until my flight home.

Now I’m on my final layover in the Salt Lake City airport; I’ve just finished reading Going Green and, like all great works of fiction, I was sad when it was over.

In a nutshell, Going Green is a story about young Ashley Miller who gets caught up in the Global Warming scam.  A Muslim terrorist weaves in and out of her life and is one of the scariest bad guys since Blue Duck in Lonesome Dove.

You root for Ashley and you fall in love with Hunt and Walter—both who remind Ashley that God is always with her, guiding and directing every step of the way.

Author Chris Skates is a former chemist and chemical supervisor in nuclear power, as well as an expert in fossil-fueled power generation—and he makes good use of his knowledge in building the thriller in a fun, fast, easy-to-follow way.

“Write what you know,” Skates says in his acknowledgments, and although Going Green is a fictional  thriller, it is clearly written by an expert who is as baffled by the global warming/climate change myth as all the rest of us Conservatives.

I laughed, I cried, and I learned just enough about the scheming behind the climate change movement to make me want to research more about it on my own.

So I am VERY happy to say that I highly recommend Going Green and I am looking forward to whatever Chris Skates writes next!