theblackdog

In a single sentence, Crooked Little Lies is like a soap opera. You could make each chapter into a daily episode and you would have a month long story arc to work with. Thankfully despite the drama that occurs, it is paced well.
Lauren is an easy character to want to hate at first. She had what seemed to be the perfect life until a nasty accident and subsequent painkiller addiction created a mess of everything. However, we get a very distinct sense of how hard she is struggling to make things right again, even though she still suffers from memory loss. However, if it wasn't for her chance encounter with Bo Laughlin, she probably would have been worse off by the end of the book.

Annie is definitely the kind of person who just wants to take care of the ones she loves, including Bo, so I can see why she takes it so hard when he goes missing. She has had her share of heartaches and maybe that's why she has a problem with accepting help from others or even trusting them. Yet it does seem to help her in the end, even with facing another potential tragedy.

The plot itself can get pretty twisted, hence why I called it a soap opera. When Lauren suspects her husband is having an affair, you can't really blame her for wondering. I suspected the same thing. Jeff clearly had something to hide, but I didn't expect the eventual rabbit hole to go as deep as it went. No one is the same at the end of the book, and that's how it should be.

For never having read the Jake Lassiter series, it didn't feel like I was missing much in the way of backstory. I was able to follow along and get into the action. The beginning of the story started out well, a lawyer is accused of a murder and Lassiter has been hired to defend him. As Jake and Victoria try to find the truth behind what happened, they find the rabbit hole goes much deeper.

I found the early story action was good, but then it starts to slow down towards the end before the courtroom scenes. It seems like this would fit as an episode of Miami Vice or a similar show.

The major complaint I have was chapter 40. The entire narrative has been told from a first-person view, then it abruptly switches to third-person view, but only for this chapter. Then it is back to first-person view. It took me out of the story for a bit because I was trying to figure out why that happened. If it was supposed to be because the characters were being spied on, there were no context clues to suggest it. I also think part of the ending was abrupt as there wasn't a gokd reason given for Jake to change his mind about his possible retirement.

I would say that this makes for good beach reading if that is what you are looking for.

It's a good quick read that is like an average person re-telling a series of events that happened to them. If I have one criticism it is that the chapters with the main character's brother felt like they were filler and his part ends abruptly. I am going to assume he survived if our narrator is able to tell about what happened to him during the Martian invasion.

Ultimately this book is very fitting for its time and I enjoy the use of the storyteller style of narrator.

I picked this up on Kindle First based on a friends recommendation and he did not steer me wrong.

Lex is a well thought out character who has an interesting past and her world is about to get much bigger. After being in the right place at the right time to save her niece she by all means should be dead, but isn't. What follows is finding out that she has powers, but so does her niece, and others want her for their own agendas. From there it's Lex tracing just who wanted Charlie and why, while discovering what she is capable of.

Thankfully when it comes to the Old World that she is about to discover, vampires, witches, and werewolves are real, but they're realistic. They also don't really get along with one another. Some of it is centuries of politics, some of it is because they can physically affect one another. It's refreshing to see a different take on supernatural beings

There were so many nuances and things that had to be mentioned about Lex that at first I was afraid Olson had introduced too many threads that would need to be wrapped up. Thankfully any that didn't seem to drive the plot have been resolved now, but we have one major thread about her sister that I have a feeling is going to weave itself throughout the series.

Another thing I liked about this book was that we didn't get a ton of info dumping to explain Lex, it just appeared as it was needed, especially when it came to her sister.

Overall, I thoroughly enjoyed this book and I look forward to the next one.

The book doesn't quite suffer from being boring because now all the initial action happened in the first book, but events must be set up for the third book so nothing happens here. However, it does seem like Lyra was dumbed down because she makes some decisions that I don't think she would have made. I never understood why she actually bothers to get in the car with Sir Charles, who randomly spoke to her at the museum. Yes, I get it she was running from the “police” and may have thought she wanted to get away but she wasn't that trusting of people in The Golden Compass. That's another thing; there are two guys specifically after Will and the letters from his father, and then they just kind of vanish after they almost catch Lyra at Oxford. It seems like they were working for Mrs. Coulter or Sir Charles, so I would have expected to see them show up in one of the other worlds. Also how does Mrs. Coulter suddenly have such a command of the specters that she can make them do things that they never did before? They did not take to the air until “she made them forget they were bound to the earth” and now they can conveniently attack the witches? That seems to be lazy way of creating a new problem for characters who didn't have to face the a problem before.

Pullman also seems to like killing characters once their “task” is done, and it feels a bit unnecessary. Scoresby leads Grumman to a mountain to meet with the knife bearer, now let's kill him. Grumman meets Will and helps him, oops, time to die now. At least the death of Sir Charles actually fits the plot and most of the character motivations.

Here's hoping the third book is better.

This was another fun tale from The Hangman's Daughter series that doesn't take place entirely in Schongau, but in the city of Regensburg. Here we finally get to see more of Jakob's past during the war and an event that will come back to haunt him nearly 25 years later. Of course Simon and Magdalena get tangled up in what happens to Jakob in Regensburg without even trying, but the action gets interesting, and there's a lot you have to pay attention to. Of course you might be able to figure out who the real bad guys are early on, but you still want to know what they are up to. I think one part of the ending was wrapped up a little too neatly, but in a historical context it makes sense. Still, I wouldn't have minded it going another way.

The series still seems to be going strong, so I am curious how the next book will hold up.

I remember all of the hype around the movie and I started to read this book years ago but never got through it. Now with a little more time and understanding I can appreciate it better.

Lyra is a well written character. It's too bad I can't say the same about her uncle (Lord Asriel). You think he's an honorable guy, but really he turns out to be a jerk with his own agenda. Mrs. Coulter shows some vulnerability towards the end but it is clear where her alliances lie.

I do like the witches and the gyptians. They help keep the flow of the story gong and make some of the scenes more exciting. I think Pullman mught have used the witches a bit better towards the end of the book because they started to become the ones to swoop in and save Lyra when she got in trouble.

The ending is not going to be satisfying, only because it was clearly written to be a series. There are plenty of questions left for the reader, including the nature of Dust and why everyone is so afraid of it. Actually in writing this I now have a guess about Lord Asriel's motivations. I will see if I am right in the future books.

Its a good read, hopefully the next books are just as good.

This is one of those stories that reminds me of an episode of Are You Afraid of the Dark? except it wouldn't fit into a 24 minute show. This would need to be several episodes.

Harvey is an easy character to connect with. Haven't we all been that 10 year old kid in February who hates the dreary gray days of winter and it is going to be forever before spring break gets here? Once you hear of an opportunity to do something fun, you're going to jump all over it, even if you don't realize there is a catch until much later.

It was hard for me to put this book down once I started, though it's a short read. There are a few elements of horror but nothing overly scary, and thankfully Barker did not only use a trope of “the power of love” as the way for the evil to be defeated. It is more of seeking actual justice and exposing what is really going on.

Still, the Holiday House sounds like a fun place to visit. At least until you learn the price of your stay.

I really wish my high school had assigned this book rather than crap like Ayn Rand's The Fountainhead.

Wow, I grabbed this on Kindle First and it was worthwhile. The plot has good twists and turns and you have those moments where it looks like everything is about to go wrong but an appropriate rabdom event changrs everything. They weren't lazy plot events either, such as a neighbor showing up because he hears the fight between Zoe and “Tally man” in her apartment because that would actually happen.

Zoe extremely believable as a character. She escapes traumatic harm but it has fundamentally changed her, and not all in good ways. She struggles with guilt and a loss of self, while putting herself in harms way again so that she can actually “win” this time. Even so, you see some growth with her as she tries to track down what happened to her and to also find the man who would have killed her.

This is a book that is hard to put down, even during some of the slower parts of the plot, such as being reminded that police work is not kicking down doors all the time. You find it will pick back up rather quickly.

If you're hoping to get a detailed look at why Beck is so twisted, a la Red Dragon by Thomas Harris, you won't find that here. It is explained towards the end but even then it is left up to the readers imagination. Still, he's not a deep character, you just know he has a twisted idea of justice.

I found the book very enjoyable and I will definitely read it again

This is a story that takes a number of twists and turns. If you're a fan of mysteries you will figure some of them out, but others will come out of nowhere.

What I found was I liked Beatrice and Max much more than I liked Iris. Actually I am not sure you are supposed to entirely be rooting for Iris in this. She's bored at her job because they aren't using her talents effectively and then she gets this assignment to map out an abandoned bank building. However, she loves to drink and isn't the most punctual so you do see she is a flawed character, maybe too flawed. I wonder if Pulley was trying to avoid creating a Mary Sue character and she just went a bit too far in the other direction. Still, she manages to stay realistically smart, and there isn't an over the top deus ex machina character to come save her at the end. Iris does what she could but maybe if she hadn't been as utterly bored as she was at first, she wouldn't have gotten in as deep as she does later on.

Despite this, the plot is fun to read and there is a lot that happens. It does get tied up pretty well at the end, though you will not get a fully fleshed out ending. The fate of some characters have been left up to our imaginations. Part of me wonders if one of the major characters ended up connecting with a minor character that turns out to have more of a role than you think.

Overall it was a good read and I probably will read this again.

This is a darker book than I am used to reading. Poor Adrienne can't catch a break at all and that really makes her character development suffer. I know some other reviews have said she wasn't that interesting of a character, but I would argue that the plot as written never really allowed her to develop. This story is more about Marie and how much of a terror she is, and well, she won't end up redeeming herself st the end. None of the characters do, really.

I ended up cringing at Julien's secret not just because of what it was, but because it seemed way too convenient to throw in there to make him a bad guy. It wasn't until the prologue where I was reminded these were based on actual people and the man who Julien is based on might have actually done what he is accused of.

I think more could have been done with this book or it could have been given a more coherent backstory that was better paced. There is a lot of nothing happens and then suddenly several events occur at once.

Overall I found the book decent, but a little more cleaning and work on pacing would have made it better.

Things are changing for Jack as he comes out of his mourning for his sister Kate. He starts out bored at a party and then he is led to a house of a medium where strange things happen immediately after walking over the threshold.

This is a very good continuation of the Repairman Jack series, though it is less of a standalone than previous books. There is a major callback to The Tomb, and now Jack's past fixes are tying more and more into current events so the reader will need to read the past books or at least get familiar with the universe.

There is more character development of Gia in this book and it takes an interesting turn. She is more involved with a fix than in previous books, and we find that she is less content with sitting on the sidelines waiting for Jack. I don't know if this will continue or if she would rather stay out after what happens here.

Overall this stands strong, but there is also setup for potential events in the next book as there are a few major loose threads for Jack that will need to be resolved. Then again, Wilson has set up this series to have the larger story arc which shows no signs of finishing just yet.

I found that this book is good if you're the kind of person who likes action movies for the action and couldn't care less about the plot or character depth. Lowell Ransom is bored with being a social worker in Baltimore so he decides to become a Private Investigator. His first call is from a woman named Doris who wants to see if her husband is cheating on her. Instead he finds the husband is involved with secret work with his employer, and from there it gets into a whole mess of discovering politics and backdoor dealings.
Lowell is just way too lucky as a character, things that should have gone horribly wrong or been a major obstacle end up working out because either he knows someone (thanks to being a former Vietnam vet) who can get him exactly what he needs (weapons, equipment, etc.), or someone else shows up at exactly the right time to save him when he's about to end up with a bullet in his brain. Never mind that he was lucky to manage to get his very first case to be one that ends up paying off very handsomely in the end so that his wife now has no reason to complain about his change in career. That's the factor that makes him less interesting, he's a beginning PI who only has his Army training from 20 years ago and not only manages to land a big case on the first try, but his plans almost never go wrong.
Really, this book is good for a quick read on the beach, and at least the descriptions of Baltimore and Washington DC are accurate for the time, but it's the kind of read where you don't really have to think about the plot, you just want to see some explosions.

This is a fun collection of short stories and it's hard to pick a favorite one, though the closest one at the top involves a young woman being escorted to what will be her destiny, and the love her protector has for her despite having to let her go. It's hard to get bored with this anthology because there are a number of different story styles to explore. You have fantasy, true life, surreal, action, romance, it's all there. If there is a downside, it's that some of these stories left me wanting to read more about this character or to see their story continue. Yet, that's not such a bad thing. I hope some of the authors have continued with these stories and characters, and it has gotten me more interested in them.