Get Lost in Literature

"The dream itself had faded a little now, but it had been a memory as much as a nightmare. Me as a child, walking toward the doorway to the small kitchen of the house I had grown up in." After the death of his wife, Tom Kennedy and his son Jake move to the small town of Featherbank. They're looking for a fresh start, but it soon becomes clear they won't find it. The locals call their new home "the scary house" and Jake's imaginary friends are becoming increasingly disturbing. A child goes missing, and as police race to find the boy they discover the clues point to someone who is already in prison. The first thing that stood out to me was that we're given a collection of imperfect characters all trying to overcome some sort of loss. There's Tom who's coping with his grief by writing about his wife, and as much as he loved her, some of what he writes isn't always pleasant. His son Jake is inventing imaginary friends and getting in trouble a...

"It's almost impossible for her to believe what's happened, that she's living both a nightmare and a dream." Forensic pathologist, Dr. Kay Scarpetta has just moved her practice to Charleston, South Carolina when she gets called to help with the investigation into the grisly murder of a young tennis star.  October, for me, is all about spine-tingling literature, and I knew I had a book in my TBR-bag that was covered in blood spatter. Which brought me to the Book of the Dead.  In some respects, I wasn't disappointed. First it wasn't short on violent imagery, at times being a little too graphic... I'm not really a slasher fan so some of that was tough to get through. But the violence is what fueled the dark suspense of this mystery. It's part of what made the murders so chilling. I read this as a standalone novel and it was fine to read a such, but it's actually Book 15 in a series. The characters are solid for a serial mystery, once you accept th...

  "There was something about the release of breath as you pulled the trigger, the stillness, the quiet before the almost-welcome recoil, that soothed and comforted her." Maya Burkett's husband is murdered and a few days after his funeral he appears on her new nanny cam. Now she must solve the mystery of what happened to her husband, who killed him and why or is he even really dead? The first sentence of the book was artfully designed to pull the reader in, and you can tell right away that when it comes to writing, Harlan Coben really knows his stuff. He created a collection of characters designed to evoke an emotional response, from our heroine newly widowed and tortured by PTSD to her deeply unlikeable babysitter. But after the plot and characters are introduced, the book slows down quite a bit. It's described as a 'thriller' but honestly, I think that word gets thrown around a little too much and sets expectation too high. For me, a thriller should be on-the...

  "What if? Maybe those two words were the first steps out of any swamp." This is the story of Dan Lambert, a Vietnam veteran, suffering from a bad combination of PTSD, poverty, and a brain tumor. When he accidentally kills a man he must go on the run, heading south he looks for a place he can disappear. He meets a women named Arden, who is desperately and obsessively searching for a faith healer. The two are pursued by the strangest of bounty hunters, parasitic twins Flint and Clint Murtaugh and their apprentice, Elvis impersonator Pelvis Eisley. I thoroughly enjoyed this from beginning to end. It reads like a mystery, but thriller is probably more accurate a description given that we already know who the killer is. It was a fast-paced adventure through the bayous, being pursued by all manner of strange and morally gray individuals, which brings us to... The characters. They were so quirky and weird, it made no sense, and yet it worked seamlessly with the plot. A parasitic t...

  "Sometimes terrible things happen, and they require terrible choices. In the end I suppose the difference between regretting those choices and finding peace with them is a matter of outcome..." Kate Alice Marshall, A Killing Cold  The story starts with Theo Scott, newly engaged, and her fiancé who is taking her to meet his family at their mountain retreat. But somebody is sending Theo threatening text messages and her soon-to-be-in-laws have secrets they'll do anything to protect. This might have a perfect beginning if, like me, you sometimes want instant gratification. There was no long-winded character intro to open the story, instead KAM throws her readers right into action, beginning with an exciting commute through the mountains. The setting is both idyllic and haunting. Imagine: a beautiful cabin in the woods, surrounded by snow... Romantic solitude. Unless of course you're being stalked, then that quiet wooded landscape becomes a hunting ground for monsters. ...

  I traditionally open each review with a quote from the book, but I regifted the book and couldn't look one up for you. I apologize for the quality of this, my last review of A-Z Challenge, but I suppose it's on par with the quality of the book. Upon reading the last few sentences of the story, I shouted aloud, "Oh, c'mon!" (I actually think I swore in my exclamation, but I try to keep this blog safe for kiddos.) The book starts great, just so you know. Pretty much as good as a murder mystery at an isolated research station could be. Paranoia, espionage, sabotage, set on the backdrop of the vicious polar landscape... Then towards the end, it's like the writer decided he doesn't really do murder mysteries anymore so here's an ending for sci-fi nerds instead... And I am a sci-fi nerd, but, c'mon.  I loved the ending in a way. I loved it in the way that I'd really love to read the beginning half of that story because, realistically, the ending ...

“Your duty is to society, and the dead have always been a part of society. How we treat the dead says much about us.” ― Alex Grecian, The Yard I know we're supposed to use a certain number of words in our A-Z Challenge blog posts, but I'm keeping this one short and sweet. There are multiple murderers on the loose and the murder squad, headed up by Detective Day, is going to put a stop to it. The writing style took a bit of getting used to, but the storytelling is on point. The characters are great, the setting is iconic for all the wrong reasons. There's a chill in the morgue...as there should be. The only thing that irritated me was the overuse of italics for a specific character... unnecessary given the number of characters involved, especially when that specific character's identity is finally revealed. I did give this a four star rating, I know it's hard to tell by my lackluster review, but I really did enjoy it and its proximity to Jack the Ripper adds an extra...

  "I'd rather face an honest skeptic than a hundred who believe they know God, but are really in thrall to their own piety."  In their latest adventure, Detectives Strike and Robin are hired by a worried father to find dirt on the Universal Humanitarian Church (cult) so his son can be freed. Robin chooses to go undercover at the local branch, Chapman Farm, subjecting herself to, and witnessing first-hand the abuses of the church. Meanwhile, Strike is trying to keep his other active cases progressing forward without the help of his trusted partner and discovers his job under threat by his usual too beautiful, scorned lovers and an incompetent surveillance team of unknown origin.    The book starts slow, with a series of letters between Strike's client, his son, and his lawyer. So slow in fact, I doubted the book would ever speed up. But speed up it does, making 900+ pages read like a hundred. I couldn't put the book down once it got rolling. The concept of a cult i...

  “Desire, love hate, fear, repulsion--you feel these things in your muscle and bones, not just in your mind. That is how this little heartbreak felt: like a physical injury, deep inside my body, an internal bleeding, a nick that would continue to seep.” One morning, a young boy is found murdered, stabbed to death in the park. It’s a horrifying crime in suburban Massachusetts, but it’s business as usual for Assistant District Attorney Andrew Barber. Andy sets out to investigate and prosecute the crime himself, but an ambitious young colleague is about to blindside him. Neal Logiudice is climbing his way to the top; he knows the case is high profile and he sees his chance to make a name for himself. Neal wants to follow the evidence straight back to Andy’s own son, Jacob. Andrew, finding himself pushed out of a job, must figure out how to save his son and hold his family together… I couldn’t put this book down. I admit it’s a slow burner; it isn’t a fast paced, overwhelmingly eventf...

  "They stepped into the chilly November afternoon, the tangerine and gold of the setting sun at odds with all the darkness in their lives." This is a story about Salem, an agoraphobic cryptoanalysist, and her best friend Bel. Their mothers Vida and Grace go missing one night, leaving behind clues as to what happened to them. It's up to Salem and Bel to crack the code and find their missing moms. The first thing that stands out to me is how fast-paced this is, unlike the few follow-the-breadcrumbs stories I've read. Salem and Bel discover a clue and immediately decode it to move onto the next. In fact, it seems almost too easy; too easy to find the clues and too easy to break them. Jess Lourey knew the story she wanted to write, but I'm not sure she made the puzzle hard enough... Or maybe the speed is a blessing, the story not taking up too much of your life to be worth reading. In between clues, the story keeps itself moving by the switching of the POVs. There...

"They’re drawn to the church, women like dat. Nearly every congregation’s got a couple. Outward observance, inward poison. They say the words, you know ‘Father forgive me, for I have sinned,’ but the Dorothys of this world, they don’t believe they can sin, not really." Troubled Blood by Robert Galbraith Strike and Robin are partners at the Detective Agency, and business is booming. They've hired subcontractors to help sort through all the work, and they need the help because they're personal lives are becoming increasingly more complicated. Robin's tied up in a toxic divorce, while Strike's father and ex-girlfriend try to suck the life out of him... And then they get contacted about a 40 year old murder of a doctor, suspected victim of a serial killer, whose body was never recovered. This was the best one yet. The author skipped the usual tedious character introductions and just went directly into storytelling. The creep factor was high and thick with suspense...

  "He left Della sitting in the darkness, a little drunk, with nothing else for company but the picture of the dead daughter she had never seen." It was tough to decide where to rate this because parts of this book were incredibly enjoyable and others not so much. Parts I enjoyed: THE WRITING. The writing is impeccable. Any English teacher would wish they wrote so well. The words are a doorway to another world and within minutes I felt like I was off on an adventure in the UK and not sitting home in my rocking chair. THE CRIMES. A crazy man is looking for justice for a child he'd seen murdered. A politician is being blackmailed by a protester, and in response he's looking for dirt on political rivals. Mysterious trespassers are on an estate in the country, but eyewitnesses are unreliable... And let's not forget a murder that looks like a suicide. CHARACTERS. There's plenty of them and they merge seamlessly into this plot. Each one a little nuttier than the las...

 The older Strike got, the more he’d come to believe that in a prosperous country, in peacetime – notwithstanding those heavy blows of fate to which nobody was immune, and those strokes of unearned luck of which Inigo, the inheritor of wealth, had clearly benefited – character was the most powerful determinant of life’s course. PI Robin Ellacott is approached by cartoonist, Edie Ledwell, who has been harassed to the brink of a nervous breakdown. Edie rose to fame when her an her boyfriend Josh Blay created The Ink Black Heart, for YouTube and it generated a massive following with a devoted fanbase, complete with overly obsessed superfans. One fan in particular, screen name Anomie, has devoted their life to ruining Edie's, harrassing her through social media and using an online game to help whip the fandom into an angry mob hell bent on punishing the cartoonist. Edie's desperate to learn Anomie's true identity. Robin turns down the case and, a few days later, Edie Ledwell is...

  The main characters of this story aren't particularly likable. Which perhaps is motivation to keep reading, that the main characters are realistically human. Tom is a bit of a narcissistic dick and his wife Abby comes off as cold and oblivious. Both parents were left broken when their daughter was kidnapped. Abby turned to the church in her time of need and Tom obsessively continued investigation into his daughter's disappearance. Overall, there was an easy flow to the writing style even as the subject matter was grim. At times I wondered if Uncle Buster was really necessary to the story, mostly he just seemed a little cliché and some of his conversations felt like a waste of time. I kept turning the page, wanting to know answers to questions like "what happens next?" and "how does it end?" so it absolutely hit its suspense quota. After four years apart, Tom finally gets what he wants: Caitlyn comes home. It's not enough. She's not the same, how co...

  "Screams, then a shout.  The sound is muffled, muted, like it's coming down a tunnel.  Then a face appears at the window, twisted in an expression of absolute terror." High up in the mountains, a tuberculosis hospital is getting a face lift. It's been transformed into a five star hotel, with a minimalist design aesthetic, that echos the clinic it used to be and creepy medical themed artwork because who doesn't want to look at anatomy diagrams and archaic surgical tools when they're vacationing on Mt. Middle of Nowhere. Elin Warner and her boyfriend Will, have just been invited to celebrate her brother Isaac's engagement to her childhood friend Laure. She hasn't seen either person in years, cutting off social ties after the death of her younger brother. After Elin's panic attacks start effecting her job performance, she takes an extended sick leave, leaving her with no excuse not to attend the engagement party.    The hotel creeps her out almost i...

  "...the right book exactly, at exactly the right time."  This story is a wonderfully lighthearted, humorously told, fast-paced adventure, fit for any bookworm who has ever dreamed of having an adventure.  Clay Jannon is deeply relatable (I too was unemployed during a recession) nerd looking for a job; he finds one at a bookstore in the shady part of town. But it's a bookstore where no one ever buys a book and the customers are asking for unusual titles with names that can't be pronounced... The terms of his employment include a promise to his boss that he will not open the books, but the best adventures start with a little rule breaking.   I spent the entire day reading this. No regrets. It's kind of odd to classify this as a fantasy, to call it just fiction is also a tad unfair. This is fantasy like a daydream is a fantasy; no spells are cast and no wild creatures frolic, but there is magic in the written word. Robin Sloan writes an atmosphere fit for a wizard ...

"'Destiny’ is the state of perfect mechanical causation in which everything is the consequence of everything else. If choice is an illusion, what’s life? Consciousness without volition."  Joe Spork has walked the straight and narrow his whole life, following in the footsteps of his grandfather, working as a clockwork repairman. He's been trying to hide from the legacy left to him by his father, Matthew, who lived his life at the head of organized crime; Joe doesn't want to be his father's son. But when a friend brings in a strange mechanical book for Joe to repair, strangers start taking an interest in the horologist. And when that mechanical book triggers a hive of mechanical bees to take flight, someone frames Joe for terrorism, making him flee from the life he's lived to the life he tried to hide from. Ever hear the expression "show, don't tell," with regards to writing? This book was fabulous, in that respect. Nick Harkaway does...

Evan Burl and the Falling (Vol. 1-4) by Justin Blaney “Not all who dream are asleep.” Evan Burl lives at Daemanhur Castle under the supervision of his evil Uncle Mazol. Evan finds a magical book belonging to Mazol and steals it; he believes Mazol has been using this book to communicate with the man he believes to be his father…His father sends a letter through the book insisting that Evan will grow to be the most powerful and evil Sapient (wizard) that the world has ever seen; that Evan should be destroyed before he can suffer a Falling and change the world for the worse. Determined to prove the letter wrong, Evan dedicates himself to two things: 1. refusing to use Sapience and 2. protecting the Roslings. The Roslings are 12 little girls who are sent to Daemanhur through the sky inside of caskets -- who aren’t allowed to eat, who can’t get sick, and who can’t die -- and are forced into slavery. When the seemingly impervious Roslings start to fall ill and die, Evan is forc...

“My darkness is squatting like a demon, right around the next corner, lurking in every shadow, just waiting for me to slip. And when I do it’s gonna grab me, Vince, and I don’t know if I can fight my way free the next time it does.” Maggie’s Shayne’s   The Gingerbread Man , opens with Vince O’Mally, a smart detective who has trouble separating himself from his victims. He’s haunted by Sara Prague, a mother who is determined not to let the cop forget her missing kids, and makes him promise her that he won’t rest until they’re found. Vince O’Mally does the unthinkable; he promises her that everything will be alright. When it turns out to be a promise he can’t keep, he gets forced into a 30 day leave and finds himself following leads on his own time. Holly Newman is a cleric at the Dilmun Police Department; Dilmun is a small town in New York where the community is tight and nothing bad ever happens. She suffers from OCD and panic attacks brought on by PTSD, brought on by the ...

“Desire, love hate, fear, repulsion--you feel these things in your muscle and bones, not just in your mind. That is how this little heartbreak felt: like a physical injury, deep inside my body, an internal bleeding, a nick that would continue to seep.” One morning, a young boy is found murdered, stabbed to death in the park. It’s a horrifying crime in suburban Massachusetts, but it’s business as usual for Assistant District Attorney Andrew Barber. Andy sets out to investigate and prosecute the crime himself, but an ambitious young colleague, is about to blindside him. Neal Logiudice is climbing his way to the top; he knows the case is high profile and he sees his chance to make a name for himself. Neal wants to follow the evidence straight back to Andy’s own son, Jacob. Andrew, finding himself pushed out of a job, must figure out how to save his son and hold his family together… I couldn’t put this book down. I admit it’s a slow burner; it isn’t a fast paced, overwhelmingly even...