“I’m forty two years old. And I became a psychotherapist because I was fucked-up. That’s the truth – though it’s not what I said during the interview when the question was put to me.”
This is the kind of book that might be better read than listened to. The narrations were great, no complaints there, whatsoever, and I had no trouble following it or remembering all of the characters, but I wish I was able to page through from the beginning to relive all of the clues and get a better handle on it all.
**Spoiler**
Especially the dual timelines. That was surprising, and a bit of a cheat. Were there any clues in the text, that it wasn’t a chronological story? I think it was signaled right from the beginning that there is something wrong with Theo and he is not a good person. Also that Gabriel was not the paragon that Alicia thought he was. The difference between what Alicia says about him versus how he acts on the page stands out. Theo’s crude language and anger was a giveaway for me. I really thought Alicia was innocent though. It seems like the police would have seen the marks of the wires on her wrists and ankles and figured out that there was more to the story of Alicia tying him up and shooting him.
**end spoilers**
There were a lot of red herrings that were very well done.
You got hickory with you, you got a piece of the world that’s normal. It’s so normal it’ll cancel out some of the weirdness. You follow?” Clearly I was losing my mind, because that actually made a kind of sense. I went back to the house with a hickory rosary and a bag of dried roots draped around my neck.
I struggle between 3 and 4 stars for this one. I am going with 4 because of the entertaining humor and likability of our heroine, Mouse. Not to mention her cohort, Foxy. It also has one of the most adorable dogs I have ever read about, Bongo.
I have no idea what he’d actually do if he caught a possum—lick it to death, probably. Coonhounds usually get dumped when they turn out not to be very good hunters. Bongo is an excellent watchdog, by which I mean that he will watch very alertly as the serial killer breaks into the house and skins me.
Yep. 4 stars for this triumvirate. The story itself is not my cup of tea. I do love an occasional horror book and/or movie, but this folk-horror genre is not for me I guess. It was not scary, but bizarre and kind of nuts. I am glad I familiarized myself with The White People and Other Weird Stories by Arthur Machen of which this book is a kind of a sequel. What other reviewers found tedious in its exploration of Cotgrave’s journal, I found very interesting.
“I can’t help thinking it’s a shame he’s such a sadistic bastard, because he has wonderful manners.”
**This whole review is one giant spoiler*** I haven’t read very many psychological suspense thrillers, domestic or not, that are so popular right now, but I was more than entertained with this one. I couldn’t put it down and read it in one day. It’s not 5 stars because there were too many holes and weaknesses in the plot. There were two main ones. First, why did Jack risk pushing Millie down the stairs and possibly killing her, when the whole reason for his evil plan was to get his hands on her? Second, I loved the justice of his ultimate fate, but Grace took too many chances to accomplish it. Making sure he suffered in the basement jeopardized her successful escape, to begin with. It also practically ensured that an autopsy and investigation would be done. Once law enforcement got a hold of those bars on the windows, her cell, all of the fingerprints, the steel shutters, the forensic evidence in her cell, etc. Etc., the jig would be up. No jury would convict her, ultimately, but what about Millie? Too risky. It comes as a shock to her and (kinda) to the reader, that she is rescued from any suspicion and probable further investigation at the last minute. There are quite a few other quibbles I had with the plausibility of all the goings on, but I won’t pile on.
Other problems? The Molly episode was too disturbing. The ending was too abrupt for me, though I realize it is probably a great way to end it literarily. I wanted more background on Esther. Why was she the one who suspected it was all a charade? What gave her that special insight? She was a great character and I would have loved to see more of her. I would have loved to see the happenings from her point of view. Of course, the wonderful Milly, who was so underestimated.
Overall though it was a well-written page-turner. I loved the “happy” ending, and had no problems at all with Grace, as many of the critical reviewers had.
Burn For Me was such a good book in so many ways. I loved Nevada, the heroine, and her snarky humor. I loved her family: They were all interesting and likable and they were all devoted to each other despite the normal family tensions. They also were funny, as was the book. And not that fake funny either. I was genuinely amused many many times. The action sequences were well done and exciting. The antagonists were hateable and scary. It was a page-turner that kept me very intrigued and involved throughout. I have never read an “urban fantasy” book before that I know of, so I found the world-building and premises creative and fascinating and entertaining. Mr./Ms Andrews does what I need in a good writer: They establish an intimate easy rapport with the reader making you part of the story rather than an outsider looking in. Yes, Ilona Andrews is a good writer. I had a lot of fun. And that makes the two things I did not like overlook-able. Number one is I hated the hero and love interest, Mad Rogan. I will just say that he was a horrible human being. He was not a good man and he was controlling and abusive to our heroine, who was a very very good person.
“You have no regard for human life,” I said. “You saved the city, but I don’t think you did it because you genuinely cared about all those people. I think you did it because Adam Pierce got under your skin. You hire desperate soldiers, but you don’t do it to save them either. You do it because they offer you unquestioning loyalty. You rescued your cousin, but you had been content to ignore the existence of that whole branch of your family. Had you stepped into Gavin’s life earlier, perhaps he would’ve never met Adam Pierce. …You don’t seem to feel bad about things, and you offer gratitude only when you need to overcome some hurdle. I think you might be a psychopath. “I can’t be with you, no matter how crazy you make me, because you have no empathy, Rogan. The gulf between us, both financially and socially, is too great. So no, I won’t go away with you. I want to be with someone who would if not love, then genuinely care, for me. You are not that man.”
She really nailed it there. Sadly, although she stands up to him in this book and pulls no punches with him throughout, I see the handwriting on the wall. I will probably keep reading at least one more in this series in hopes that she whips him into shape as far as being a decent citizen and person is concerned, or at least gives him justification and a path to redemption in future books. The only reason I could tolerate his nonsense was that Nevada does not cave in mentally or emotionally. I’m pretty sure true love will be his salvation, but he needs to be humbled with some serious groveling on the side.
The other bad mark against this book was the author’s constant and repetitive obsession with worshipping at the altar of Mad Rogan’s looks and power. She/he won’t shut up about his godlike awesomeness, and Nevada’s unwilling attraction and physical response to him. I mean we got it the first dozen times, Ilona. Good Job. Now move on! I guess some readers like this type of over the top horny/sexy writing, but it’s not for me. But like I said, the positives greatly outweigh these annoying negatives.
I’ve learned to be very suspicious about authors who seem to produce more than 1 or so books a year and write exclusively series. Well, Ilona Andrews really churns them out, for sure, but if her/his books are this good, I will have been proven wrong in my prejudice. If they all show the same talent this book does, the more the merrier. And I have a lot of catching up to do.
There’s a Cherokee legend. An elder tells his grandson about the battle that rages inside every person.” “The two wolves.” “That’s right. One wolf is anger and fear and paranoia and cruelty. The other is kindness, humility, compassion, serenity. And the boy asks his grandfather, ‘Which wolf wins?’ You remember the answer?” “‘The one you feed.’” “That’s right. Our challenge?” Jack folds his cloth napkin, wipes a smudge of Alfredo from the edge of his plate. Then he looks directly into Evan’s eyes. “Feed both.”
Excellent thriller along the lines of the movies John Wick, The Equalizer, and the Bournes. It also reminded me of Trevanian’s great Shibumi. Lots of twists and turns, action, shocking developments, and a hero you like, admire, and root for. And not only for his physical survival but for his emotional development as well. It has lots of other things including humor (a bit). The ending promises a return of many characters both good and evil in subsequent books. I guarantee I will be reading on.
“You want to hear a story? One I’ve never told anybody? I should warn you, it’s a weird one. If you think the shining begins and ends with paltry shit like telepathy, you’re way short.” He paused. “There are other worlds than these.”
Dan had no problem with the Higher Power thing, because he had a bit of inside information. God remained an unproven hypothesis, but he knew there really was another plane of existence. Like Abra, Dan had seen the ghostie people. So sure, God was possible. Given his glimpses of the world beyond the world, Dan thought it even likely . . . although what kind of God only sat by while shit like this played out? As if you’re the first one to ask that question, he thought.
If The Shining was Stephen King’s exploration of alcoholism, Doctor Sleep is his unblushing love-letter to Alcoholics Anonymous. For anyone with an interest in this organization, I would highly recommend this book, which provides the reader with the inside scoop on its culture. Although always appreciative and respectful, it is affectionately irreverent as well. And because of that, it is even more effective an endorsement of its methods and procedures.
In addition, it’s also a great yarn. To me though, it wasn’t really a thriller, because I never really feared for Abra, the young prey of the despicable “True Knot.”
**spoiler**
It becomes pretty obvious well before everything comes to a head that Abra, along with Dan, are just too powerful a force to be reckoned with. And the predators are in a much-weakened condition during the final confrontation. My main fear, that Abra’s friends and relatives might be collateral damage, was abated by the fact that they were far far away for most of the book. My enjoyment came not from white knuckle suspense, but reveling in the take-down of such evil. We hate them for a particularly heinous murder that is very hard to read about but comes back to take a very large bite out of them. And there are some interesting twists. I’ve read that the final pages of the story are too happy for some people, but after everything they went through, they couldn’t be happy enough for me. **end spoiler**
Another big source of fascination and enjoyment for me is King’s apparent belief in the afterlife and how this book addresses it. I fancy atheists or other cynics might be very turned off by this book.
“I’m not scared of hell. I lived a decent life, and I don’t think there is such a place, anyway. I’m scared there’s nothing.” He struggled for breath. … “There was nothing before, we all know that, so doesn’t it stand to reason that there’s nothing after?” “But there is.” Dan wiped Charlie’s face with the damp cloth. “We never really end, Charlie. I don’t know how that can be, or what it means, I only know that it is.”
“We’ll tell you what we know, and what the orderlies and techs tell us, but I got an idea that most of it’s lies. George feels the same. Iris, now . . .” Kalisha laughed. “She’s like Agent Mulder on that X-Files show. She wants to believe.” “Believe what?” The look she gave him—both wise and sad—again made her look more like a grownup than a kid. “That this is just a little detour on the great highway of life, and everything’s going to come out all right in the end, like on Scooby-Doo.”
The Institute is one of the best books I have read in a long time. It was good to get a break from the “women’s fiction” that I have been favoring for years now. (Lately, with an occasional break with a domestic thriller!) I have read several Stephen King books, but definitely going to read more soon.Doctor Sleep is next up. This book is a typical example of what Stephen King is brilliant at: Kids in peril, tense action relieved by humor, baddies you love to hate, Stephen King’s own perspicacious insights on various and sundry interjected here and there.
As they went down the hall, Luke thought about his researches into Maureen’s problem. One horrifying statistic in particular stuck out: Americans owed over twelve trillion dollars. Money spent but not earned, just promised. A paradox only an accountant could love. While much of that debt had to do with mortgages on homes and businesses, an appreciable amount led back to those little plastic rectangles everyone kept in their purses and wallets: the oxycodone of American consumers.
And some wonderful secondary characters. In this one, Orphan Annie, Sheriff John, and to a certain extent, Deputy Wendy, stand front and center in a whole host of them. Not even including the kids.
Also, a lot of it was set in South Carolina, my home state. Although rife with southern stereotypes, it was a relief to have my state and it’s small-town residents portrayed in an overall positive light.
“Do it fast,” Annie said, “or you’re dead. This isn’t playin, boys. You’re in the south now.” They looked at each other, then put the autos carefully down on the pavement.
Yeah, I know, a bit cheesy. But I loved it.
In a nutshell, the plot is about a mysterious “Institute” where the powers in charge kidnap children who have shown some signs of Telekinesis and/or Telepathy in order to harness their powers for what they believe is a noble cause. It’s a classic case of the end justifying the means. Except the means are cruel and evil and the end is shown to be a load of bull in the end. Unfortunately for their cause, when they kidnapped Luke, our co-hero, they kidnapped the wrong boy. Because Luke is smart. Really smart.
What, exactly, was that understanding? Why, that aside from having a yard of guts, the kid also happened to be a genuine bottled-in-bond genius. These Institute thugs had taken him to obtain a talent that was (at least before its enhancement) little more than a parlor trick. They considered his brilliance a mere adjunct to what they were really after, making them like poachers willing to slaughter a twelve-thousand-pound elephant to get ninety pounds of ivory.
There are fears, cheers, and tears. Not everyone gets out unscathed or even gets out, but the ending was satisfactory. And I loved the promising ending of the first of our heroes to be introduced.
People say, I don’t know how she lives with herself, but every single one of them was living with their own worst thing, just fine. No one walks around holding their ugliest sin in the palm of their hand, staring at it. Our hurts are heavy, and we let them sink. Every day they drift lower, settling in murky places where the light can’t reach. All I had to do was wait. My bad would fall down into darkness again, because the bad things always do.
Excellent and suspenseful domestic thriller. I didn’t see the final twist in the end ahead of time, and the mid-book twist, I also didn’t see coming. A few twists I anticipated did not occur.
**spoiler**
I thought Tig would somehow turn out to be a bad guy and maybe in cahoots with Roux from the beginning. Mainly though, I thought that it would turn out that Davis and/or Charlotte knew her deep dark secret all of the time. I had hoped her family and Charlotte, would have had a chance to step up and show their love and support for Amy even knowing the truth. I wanted them to have hidden depths and never had needed Amy’s “protection” after all. I would have loved to see Davis and/or Charlotte be more involved in this way. Or at least have Amy tell them the truth. Her story is very forgivable after all, given all of the circumstances. Especially how she overcame her childhood challenges and forged a good life. **End Spoiler**
Because of this main point, I felt a little dissatisfaction with how it all played out at the end. Just a bit, which kept it from 5 stars. I liked the way Amy really had to struggle with her moral and ethical choices and her food issues. I didn’t always like and approve of her. It made it a more complex book and threw some doubt into the outcome.
So I shall tell you, but there will be a price. From this moment onwards, Gina, your childhood is over. You are now an adult, and you will never again live as other children do. I am going to place my life, and yours, and that of many other people, in your hands…Can you be true to your word, even when you feel you can bear it no longer?” “I shall be true,” Gina replied.
As the story of a young privileged and coddled teenage girl’s challenges in adapting to the alien environment of a strict girls boarding school, this book would be entertaining enough. But it is also the story of the adults around her. What makes it special, is that we only see those adults through the shallow perspective of the 14-year-old teenage girl brain. Magda Szabo provides the reader plenty of insights and clues into who the adults in the story really are, their feelings, characters, and their secrets. But they are hidden very effectively from our heroine, Gina, as intelligent as she is, until the end. We must always separate Gina’s viewpoint to figure out the truth and this provides a wonderful tension throughout the book. Of course, her relationship with the other girls is developed as well. Gina behaves badly in her pride and arrogance and their revenge is cruel and implacable but strangely just. Will she be welcomed back into the fold? What will soften their hearts? But childhood games and conflicts take second stage as Gina’s growth progresses. It is 1944 and we are in Nazi-occupied Hungary. There is darkness and horror beyond the gates.
It is a coming of age story. She makes a great leap in maturity especially after her father is forced to reveal why he has separated himself from his beloved daughter and put her in such a harsh and strict environment. Even the reader, unless he read the prologue (which should have come with a spoiler alert,) doesn’t fully understand completely. It is somewhat of a mystery. There are a number of mysteries but it is also a thriller, a historical drama, and a bit of a romance. Is it a fantasy as well? Well, that is one of the mysteries.**5 out of 5 stars**
“Can I say something?” he says. “I know you love your sister, but…” He shakes his head, sighs. “Something isn’t right about her.”
**spoilers**Seriously, don’t read this review unless you’ve already read the book, or have no plans to read it.
I don’t understand why all of the descriptions and promotional material for this book tout that there are two unreliable narrators in this psychological thriller about two twin sisters. Rose starts out portrayed as the caring, protective sister. She is telling her side of the story through a journal that her therapist has suggested she write to heal from the childhood abuse that she suffered at the hands of her cruel sadistic mother. Fern is a librarian with sensory processing issues. She finds loud noises, bright lights, and people being too close very uncomfortable. She does not pick up on social cues and takes people’s words literally. She is very awkward and sometimes embarrassing in her interactions with others, much to the readers’ entertainment. she reminded me a lot of Eleanor in Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine.
Although there was a niggling doubt (solely because of the “two unreliable narrators” reviews), I was pretty well convinced who the good sister and who the bad sister was was about a fifth of the way through. The first thing that tipped me off was that at one juncture, early on, Rose refers to “you”, a reader of what is supposed to be her private journal. If she’s expecting someone to read the journal, she must have an ulterior motive outside of self-therapy. Around that time, there is a suggestion that Rose might be gaslighting Fern over not feeding Rose’s dog while Rose is in London. Finally, we realize that the target of the mother’s abuse was always Rose, and hardly ever Fern. No person could emerge undamaged from being targeted like Rose supposedly was. Thus, Rose is outed whether she is telling the truth or telling lies. We only have Rose’s and the trusting Fern’s words to know Rose, while we come to see how Fern interacts with and how she is thought of by dozens of objective “outsiders.”
But even without that Fern is just totally lovable and responsible for a lot of humor in the book. The characters in the book respect and even love her or learn to love her despite her eccentric behavior. She also has a love story. The love interest is Rocco, who Fern calls “Wally” because he looked like the “Where’s Waldo” character when she first meets him. He is another one of Fern’s friends and advocates who endears himself to the reader right from the beginning. We learn very early on that he is much more than whom he seems on the surface.
Well before the halfway point all but the most oblivious reader will pretty much have come to some correct conclusions about Rose. The evidence has been building and continues to build. From there it starts to turn from a mystery into a thriller when we realize that Fern is in some kind of grave danger from her sister. There are no twists towards the end of the story, it’s just that the whole truth is revealed a layer at a time. We don’t understand until the concluding pages just how evil and mad Rose has been all of her life.
I really loved this page-turner for the suspense and tension, the humor, the growth that we see Fern achieve, and the sweet love story. I admire the portrayal of the sisters and the gradual reveal of their characters. We learn that part of Rose’s personality is Narcissism. The crowning revelation is the last entry in Rose’s journal which comes as a bombshell as to just how narcissistic and delusional she really is.**5 stars out of 5**
