WHAT I LEARNED UNDER THE SUN takes you on a roller coaster ride with the author. After leading the reader through his very interesting start in life, things for Kyle start going downhill. Only by faith, does he get through the terrible Family Court system. What a story he has to tell!! If you are going through or have been through a divorce and child custody battle, you may want to pick this book up!!

What I Learned Under the Sun by Kyle Coon
My rating: 4 of 5 stars


I won this book thru Library Thing and was so amazed by it. The book is a quick read and is about Kyle and his life. He went thru some pretty rough times along which God was there & still is for him. It was awesome reading about all the good things that the author went thru. The passages about his ex wife made my gut wrench, but Kyle delivers it with grace. I am so looking foreword to his second book and hope I will get the opportunity to read it.

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I received an Advance Reader's Copy (ARC) of this book, and I will post a review after reading.
I thought this story was fascinating and a page-turner. I couldn't wait to find out what was going to happen next. The author's life is truly unbelievable, and I guess one of the messages I took from this book is: you have nothing unless you have God in your life. I'm looking forward to the next book; it should be amazing. ( )

Blurb: People go through life and wonder, what if I had? What if I opened that door? What if I had gone right instead of left? What if I had more time? Where would my journey have taken me if I had made another decision?
Is it a mystery or is our journey all part of God's plan that will lead you to your final destination under the sun? In What I Learned Under the Sun, the only requirement is to have faith even against seemingly insurmountable odds.
So many things happened in my life where the odds of them happening were inconceivable, virtually impossibly; my journey could have come only from a Higher Power, because my life is truly unbelievable. I learned Under the Sun you have to live by faith and when the Lord opens doors for you and gives you a sign...walk through it! That door will change your life forever.

What Stephanie Thought: Kyle L. Coon presents an incredibly touching and simply unbelievable memoir in What I Learned Under the Sun. In exquisite precision and detail, he describes the things he has done -- and hasn't done -- in his lifetime, and in the end, shows the reader how blessed he is to have a life under the sun that he has grown to love through thick and thin, warts and all.
Beginning from his early adulthood, Coon displays the young and carefree innocence exhibited within himself. Living in sin with his then-girlfriend, Brenda, he realizes that not always are two perfectly nice people meant to be together. He then goes on explaining marriage to his beautiful wife, Marlene, and details the success and happiness he achieves then.
However, that's the end of the happy-go-lucky story in Coon's life. Soon, he discovers even under God, Satan will always find its way to shine through, when it is revealed that Marlene becomes irresponsible, going to bars at night, and hooking up with other men. It's all turmoil from there, including severe bankruptcy and divorce conflicts. For three years, he describes how he was unable to see his two daughters, due to Marlene's false accusations that he was an abusive dad. Battling custody rights, Coon is able to hold his head high without ever giving up, because he knows the Lord's power is by his side.
The inconsistency of grammar and spelling was heavy, which made the book read dreadful. I could not go a sentence without finding some sort of mistake, including "your/you're", missing punctuation, unnecessary punctuation, random symbols like ~ and ,,, and THIS that should never be seen in a book of text, and incorrect usage of quotation marks, bold, and italics. It was extremely annoying that Coon did not bother to edit the text. The story itself was very profound and had potential, but its illegibility made it just impossible.
I found myself rooting for Kyle because he seems like such a kind, generous man, which I am sure he is. His life is an amazing one, and I really enjoyed reading about his struggles -- and what he went through to overcome them. However, he seriously needs an editor. I know he has a follow-up memoir coming out called What I Did Under the Sun, that will detail on what happened after he gained custody of his daughters from his malicious ex-wife, so I look forward to reading that.

Stephanie Loves: "What I Learned Under the Sun is people come into your life [and] leave a lot of happy memories that last forever."

Where Stephanie Got It: LibraryThing for review.

Radical Rating: 5 hearts- Satisfying for a first read, but I'm not going back. ♥♥♥♥♥ ( )

I almost don't know where to begin. This was a tough read for me. Usually when I get an advance reader copy, the book has at least been edited to the point that the plot makes sense, the grammar makes sense, and there are maybe one or two spelling errors. But this was something else. This book (already published, by the way, not a regular unproofed copy) doesn't look like an editor has even glanced at it and, if they have, they should be fired from whatever position they hold.

I don't want to come across as a snob - it's obvious (from Mr. Coon's retaliatory comments towards his wife about his being able to "spel") that the author's priority is not the spelling or the grammar, or even the preservation of tense from clause to clause. His goal in writing this was not to put out a superb piece of literature, but to share his story in the best way he knew how, with as many people as possible, as quickly as possible.

But when you remove the constructs that support language, you also remove support for the story - just like when I've looked for an apartment in the past - I only responded to ads and emails where they bothered to put some grammatical effort in - these things lend credit to the writer. Sentences like "One VP they had, I was forced to take to a meeting with me because she had a title of VP and smarter than me!" (pg 104) do not lend credit. And so I am of the opinion that Mr. Coon's work could greatly benefit from an editor who would not only take grammar and the tense in-hand, but who would also make note of extraneous commentary (probably half of the book could have been glossed over in a page or two, and would have made the rest of the book worthwhile rather than monotonous), inconsistencies (i.e. on page 33 he says he and his wife got married on September 5, 1993 but at the end he makes this big deal about numbers as signs and says that they were married on September 9, 1993) and repetition (i.e. pages 84 and 91 have 2 paragraphs on each page that are essentially the same exact information).

The other thing that made this a difficult read was that the author doesn't really make room for alternate viewpoints - in fiction we would call him an unreliable narrator, but since it is his book and he is claiming it to be a true account of his life story, I don't necessarily see him so much as unreliable as passionate. A lot of the accounts read like diary entries - flipping back and forth in time, going off on tangents that aren't always related to the subject at hand, and very very emotional. But in that emotion, he blinds the reader to any other perspective but his own, and I have to wonder if, in his emotive passion, he has blinded himself as well.

Mr. Coon is very enamored of his Bible, and he staunchly believes himself to be "of the light," you might say, and those who turn against him are sinners - guilty of lust, pride, bribery, greed and malice. Towards the end of the book he says that you are either one or the other - of the light, or of the dark. Perhaps in that strict dichotomy he has erased the middle ground where the changes of heart (in his bosses, in his wife, etc.) occurred.

The book is not without its moving moments: when, for example, he describes his children visiting at Christmas, I even teared up a little. But without the necessary viewpoints of the people around him, it makes his arguments feel cheap. If the events contained in this story are all true, then I feel truly bad for him and I wish him the best of luck - but it's important to note that there is always more than one side to every story, and Coon's lack of consistency as well as his insistence that those who oppose him are, necessarily, sinners...that makes me want to hear the other side as well.

Lauren Cartelli
www.theliterarygothamite.com ( )