Ashley

BLUF: I didn't find the main character appealing.

I feel guilty writing reviews of books that were written in the late ‘80s, early ‘90s. It was a whole different world back then. I would love to get into some of these popular author's books, but they seem to be mostly in series from this time and I just don't know where to start.

Rules of Prey follows “maddog”, a serial rapist/murderer who is obsessive about leaving no traces at his crime scenes with the exception to his own notes – each of which lists a rule that he keeps in order to ensure he doesn't get caught. Lucas Davenport, a playboy detective, will do anything to catch this killer – including feeding lies to the media, setting up unsuspecting victims, and withholding information from his station.

Rules of Prey introduces us to the murderer from the beginning. There isn't any mystery in who he is or his motives, but rather, when the police will uncover these truths. He's described as highly intelligent, but never shows this trait. Rather he is a player who enjoys the game he creates between him and the police.

Another individual described as intelligent is Lucas Davenport. I'm not buying it. I know it's indicative of the times, but I just can't respect a man who uses women as if they aren't worth anything ESPECIALLY a man who chooses to act this way after finding out one of the women, who he actually likes as a person, is pregnant. Talk about chauvinistic.. but hey, he only sleeps with smart women – maybe he hopes they'll rub off on him.

“You know enough of [the women that I have dated] to see the pattern,” he said. “I don't go out with dummies.”

It takes 8 hours and 52 minutes into the audiobook before any sort of action happens.

aka..

if you like to hear each passenger's back story and clothes they wore that last day, this book is for you.

This lift-the-flap book follows Little Blue Truck as he picks up his friends to the Halloween party. They are all dressed up when he picks each up so the question is.. Under the mask, who do you see? (Baa says the Sheep, it's me, it's me!)

I love that this takes the kids through the farm animals because it reinforces the association between the farm animal and the sound that animal makes. Between the lift-the-flaps, the animal sounds, and their general love for Halloween, the kids love this so much that we hit the re-read maximum log on Goodreads (which is 25).

The small thing that bugs me is that the first flaps cover the text so the first read or two was frustrating because I had to have the kids put the flap back down in order for me to read it. The small thing that bugs the kids is that the last page doesn't follow the same pattern, so they request that I use the same phrasing there as the rest of the book.

I do not understand the appeal of these books, but the kids like them enough to read twice and that's what really matters.

The kids were gifted the Amazon Kids thing where they have free access to games and books. When this popped up, I wasn't excited, but I like reading so we went with it.. I really couldn't have expected anything else, but now I can share, for certain, that dinosaurs having diarrhea all the way home from outer space is not something I enjoy. Thankfully, the kids didn't either. But... if this is you/your kids thing, you do you.