Book Review - The Bird Sisters

The Bird Sisters by Rebecca Rasmussen
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This is such a sad, sweet, melancholy and beautiful story. Two elderly spinsters are known in their town as the bird sisters, as they tend to injured birds with the help of an ancient medical bag and rehab the creatures with love and devotion. Few people come to their farm to visit, now, and they only have each other in the world, but it wasn't always this way.

During the summer when Millie was sixteen and Twiss fourteen, their eighteen year old cousin came to stay at their farm, where their mother reigned distractedly over the household and their father spent much time obsessing over golf. Millie had a sweetheart. The family had friends, and the possibility of a fascinating future - of travel and adventure for Twiss, marriage and children for beautiful Millie,,seemed laid out before them like a banquet. Til some letters on yellow writing paper changed everything, for everyone, for always.

I loved the authors delicate sense of style in writing. She doesn't use words clumsily or have awkward turns of phrase. Her writing is the equivalent of fine lace tablecloths and china tea sets. It's lovely. And yes, the story is sad some stories, like some lives, are. It's still pretty and humble and human, though. And that makes it wonderful.

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Book Review - Ready Player One

Ready Player One by Ernest Cline
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Wow, what a fun and suspenseful ride this book is! I just loved it!

Set in a future ravaged by energy wars and crises, global warming and overpopulation, the only escape from the horrors of life is Oasis, an immersive Virtual Reality world where you can do or be anything you can dream of. Kids now go to school there. People meet and marry there. Sports tournaments take place there. And now, the creator of Oasis has hidden an Easter egg there, and the player who finds it will inherit his vast estate, including ownership of Oasis. The game is on. But Wade is just a broke high school student. How can he compete with teams sponsored by corporate giants willing to spend millions to inherit billions?

I loved this book so much that I'm trying to get my husband to read it, too. The characters are funny and raw and real, the action, both in and out of Oasis, is exciting and the story is full of suspense.

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Book Review - Dust and Decay

Dust and Decay by Jonathan Maberry
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I like these books. Oh I really do. In fact, I realized halfway through this book that I had developed a serious book-character crush on Tom Imura, be still my little heart. He is a hero like nobody's business, and that's a good thing, because despite how dire the dangers seemed in the first book in the series, they've only gotten worse. Gameland is back in business, and with Charlie Pinkeye and Marion Hammer gone, all he'll has broken loose as other forces vie for his territory.

Benny is growing into his own as a warrior, and into his relationship with Nix, while Chong has developed a sweet, puppy dog type crush on Lilah, who has moved in with his family in the town of Mountainside. Morgie has continued to train with his friends, but doesn't share their desire to get out of town and follow the trail of the jet they've seen in the sky eastward. He, like the rest of town, has that "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" attitude that has left them living in a cage, while the others yearn for freedom. After they set out into the Rot and Ruin, however, their world tips on its axis. All the things they thought they knew about the nature of the world is called into question, and their chances for survival begin to grow smaller and smaller.

I didn't like this book quite as much as the first, but I did really enjoy some of the new characters that were introduced, and I hope we get to see more of them in the future. There wasn't a lot of movement plot wise; they didn't get very far in their journey. There was, on the other hand, lots of action. Unfortunately a lot of it was pretty bloody and gross.

As fort he ending? I was pissed. And I mean, extremely pissed. I won't spoil it for you, but I will say it was unnecessary, and if I hadn't already requested the book from the library, I probably would have stopped reading the series. It was even worse than my anger at a similar point in the Deadline series, which I also loved, probably more than these books. I yelled at the book. I shook it a little... But not too much. I was reading it on my iPad and she's named Precious for a reason. I cried.

I'm still mad at the author. He better make it up to me in the next book somehow...

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Book Review - Germ

Germ by Robert Liparulo
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

It was the cover of this book that grabbed me, as I wandered through the stacks at a newly built library in a nearby town. I'm a sucker for great cover art, and this one grabbed me right away. Simple title, simple art, and intriguing concept: a mad - as in angry, in this particular case - scientist has created a deadly designer drug that can be programmed with DNA to assassinate anyone, anywhere. It can pick you out of a crowd. It can leap from person to person. It can cross continents as quickly as the common cold. And, as the tag line of the book says, if you breathe, it will find you.

I thought this would be more of a mystery, but it's pure action from the get go. It would make a great action/thriller movie, actually. I can see Daniel Craig as the ivory doctor, Allen, and the big redheaded bearded guy from the TV series Revolution as his bearish brother Stephen. Okay, that may have been in my head the whole time. I won't lie. This May or may not have to do with the fact that imagining Daniel Craig racing naked through the woods at one point was... Well, I digress.

Ahem, back on track.

If you're into suspenseful books with lots of guns, scary immortal assassins, creepy as heck bad guys, Nazis, naked doctors running through the woods and best of all, a fantastic, strong female hero who saves the day and maybe the world, this one is for you.

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Book Review - In The Land of the Dead

In The Land Of The Dead by Jonathan Maberry
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Another short novella in the Benny Imura series, this slots in between books one and two, and is available on the Simon and Schuster website.

One of the reasons this only gets three stars is the spelling and grammar errors. I get it that this is a freebie for readers, but they couldn't find an editor - heck, even an intern - to give it a once-over with a red pen? Seriously? This is a big publishing house, surely someone could have spent an hour on this.

This seemed a little disjointed, almost as if it's parts that got sliced from the novel in the editing process. It was okay, but nothing super special.

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Book Review - Love Times Three: Our True Story of a Polygamous Marriage

Love Times Three: Our True Story of a Polygamous Marriage by Joe Darger
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I requested this book from the library because I saw it billed as the true story of the family that was the inspiration for the HBO series "Big Love". I am a huge "Big Love" fan, and a few years ago started reading plenty of books on polygamy and Mormonism because the show got me fascinated with it. How could I resist?

Maybe the charm has worn off a little.

There's nothing wrong with this book, except that it's actually a little boring. The people behind it are just so ordinary; and I do understand that is the whole point of the book. They are trying to say, "Look how regular we are! We could be your neighbours!" and they're right. They are very ordinary. They had pretty ordinary courtships, albeit in plural, and have pretty ordinary marriages, where they fight sometimes and are happy sometimes and have tragedies sometimes and go to PTA meetings and parent teacher conferences and fret over buying Christmas gifts sometimes.

In other words, it's a life just like anyone might have, except there are three wives in the marriage instead of one.


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Book Review - Pure

Pure by Julianna Baggott
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This is one of my favourite post-apocalyptic YA reads - and I've read an awful lot of them in the last few years.

Pure takes place in a post-nuclear holocaust future, where everyone who didn't make it into the security of a dome shelter either died, or suffered terrible burns and mutations as a result of the bombs falling.

I really love the world-building in this book, and if you're a fan of that kind of thing, this is worth a read. It's also absolutely fascinating where the author's mind went, in including things like nanotechnology into the scheme of things, to create the kinds of situations... well, I don't want to spoil it for you. You just have to read it.

Fabulous characters, an intriguing setting that just when you think you understand it, veers off completely from what you thought, mysterious sub-plots, a tiny twist of possible romance, and some real jump-out-of-your-skin moments.

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Book Review - 77 Shadow Street

77 Shadow Street by Dean Koontz
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I love Dean Koontz, and it's rare that I give a book of his a three-star rating, but I had so much trouble getting into this book, that I just couldn't push it any higher. I have a rule about books; I give them all a 100 page chance to suck me in. If they can manage that, I keep reading. If not, I feel no guilt for giving up.

By 100 pages I was only slightly invested in this book, and part of that had to do with cats. Koontz writes dog characters so well (his true fans will know what I'm talking about here!) that I was really curious what he would do with a pair of cats. The answer? Not much, really. They barely show up in the book. But when I checked to see if I'd made it past page 100 I was already in at 250+ and at that point decided it'd be silly to stop.

The end of this book is the best part. I just found it so disjointed at the start with introducing so very many characters at once that I had a hard time really involving myself with any of them. What I usually like best about Koontz books are how likeable the characters are and how invested I feel in their personal outcomes. There's a reason the Odd Thomas books make me cry (heck I cry every time I think about Stormy, but... yanno...). I didn't get that here, not until I was much further into the book because there are so many characters. I did wind up feeling close to a few of them by the end, but not the way I normally do in his books.

While this was a solid read, and had some really scary jumpy points in it, and some really tender sweet points in it, I wasn't quite as engaged as I usually am with books by this author, and that made me a little sad. But no less likely to read anything else he publishes, because I'm also that kind of fan.

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Book Review - What Comes Next

What Comes Next by John Katzenbach
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Never underestimate the determination of a former psychology professor, even if he has started to lose his marbles, like Adrian. He's finally gone to the doctor to see what's going on, after having a long conversation one night with s dead wife. It all seemed perfectly ordinary until she vanished, and he remembered she had run her car into a tree some time ago. After learning that he has a rare brain disease that will rob him of his faculties and replace them with hallucinations, he comes home to witness a kidnapping from his own driveway.

But what did he really see? Is the girl out three somewhere, just a runaway as the police believe? Or was she dragged into that white panel van for more nefarious purposes? Adrian is determined to find out, even if he is the only one on the case, though his time is running out, with reality being replaced by conversations with long dead loved ones more and more every day.

This is a great mystery suspense novel, complete with some heartbreak and fascinating characters. Definitely a good read.

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Book Review - The Elevator

The Elevator by Angela Elwell Hunt
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Fabulous, couldn't put it down book full of action. Three women are stuck in an elevator... Sounds boring, doesn't it? Consider that one might be a murderer, or maybe even more than one, that there is a hurricane raging outside and no one to rescue them, that one man has a chance to save them, maybe, if he can survive the storm and get to them in time, and that their lives are, quite literally, hanging in a very precarious balance. Kept me up all night!

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Book Review - Castaways

Castaways by Brian Keene
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This is a super-fast, super-horrifying read.

I love horror novels, but I kind of hate gore. I think I just like the adrenaline rush of being scared. Usually I have to skim the icky parts (kind of like how I close my eyes in horror movies when it gets too bloody). I was pleasantly surprised when I barely had to skim at all in the first half of this book.

But then, yeah, I skimmed a lot of the last half, which is probably why it was such a fast read!

Castaways is the thinly veiled story of the TV show "Survivor" if all the worst things that could happen to the cast did happen. Tropical storm? Check. Maniac cast member? Check. Crazy half-neaderthal, psychotic, smelly, hairy, underfed cannibalistic violent-killing-machine island natives? Che-what? Yep, sorry, I'm serious - Check.

It's kind of fun to root for the survivors though, and it pays off in the end. Hey, not everybody dies! That's always a plus in a horror novel.

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Book Review - Shadows

Shadows by Robin McKinley
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I was lucky enough to receive an advance reader's copy of this book through my husband's job at the local library system. Sometimes the perks, they rock.

I adored this book.

I'm a big fan of good YA literature, particularly dystopian, and this is a cross between dystopia and fantasy that lures you in with the promise of magic, a new society, and plenty of teenage angst.

Maggie lives in a world without magic. Oh, magic used to be out there and nearly destroyed the world once upon a time, but thanks to some gene-splicing and vigilant army units, the use of magic has been eradicated. Or so the happy society believes. But when her new stepdad moves in, a guy from the old world, where magic users still proliferate, Maggie starts seeing strange things.

Mostly, what she sees are shadows, demonic shapes with too many legs and too many eyes and a way of blocking out even the brightest sunlight. They cluster around her stepfather. They climb the walls of his backyard shed-turned-office. They loom over the dining table on family nights. When Maggie finally comes clean about what she sees, it's just in time for her world to be thrown into chaos. Her long-time best friend, a tall skinny Japanese import with a massive secret and her new crush, a darkly mysterious college student from the same country in the old world as her stepdad vie both for her attentions and to save her, from magic? From herself? From the new world order? Ahhh, you'll have to read it yourself to find out :)

I loved this book and highly recommend it. Couldn't put it down, super entertaining and fun.

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Book Review - Dead Air

Dead Air by Deborah Shlian
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This audiobook kept me company in the hospital until I got to disc 4. If I had downloaded this for pay I would have been furious; but this was checked out online from the library. You see, disc 4 got steadily faster and faster and no adjustments to my playback speed on my iPod could make a difference. Halfway through, I was listening to a chipmunk on speed. Much past that it wasn't understandable at all so I had to skip the rest of that disc. Whether or not that affected my enjoyment of the book and the plot I'm not certain, but I felt it best to disclose that I missed a big chunk of the middle of the book.

This mystery is a bit outdated, though it takes place on a college campus in the era during which I was in college, so I enjoyed it. I didn't realize at first that this was an older book, so I was a bit confused as to why things had to be so complicated for the main character. Couldn't she just look X up on the net? Get on Wikipedia for pete's sake! Why are you so unreachable for your boyfriend, can't he call your cell? Why is the hospital using such an outdated paging system? Hah! Once I figured it out it made much more sense. Sheesh but it was harder to solve mysteries before modern technology existed.

All in all it's a serviceable mystery with a decent plot and some good characters. That said I had the big baddie figured out from his first appearance and kind of thought the main character was a little dim for not making the connections herself. I like mysteries better when I'm surprised and this was a tad predictable. It does, however, serve up some decent entertainment as a middle of the road read. Good to kill some time with when you're bored silly.

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Book Review - The Distant Hours

The Distant Hours by Kate Morton
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This was one of those books that, once I finished it, I couldn't read anything else for a while because I was so caught up in the world of the book.

There's a creepy old gothic castle, a trio of delightfully eccentric spinsters, mysteries that date back to WWII, a fascinating bookish heroine who discovers family secrets she never dreamed of, love, deception, selfishness and generosity. And it is beautifully woven into a narrative that moves seamlessly through several different eras and the minds of many wildly different characters. I re read some passages just because I found the writing so delightful. For me, it was a vacation in a book, and a fantastic escape.

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Book Review - Hunger

Hunger by Michael Grant
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The Gone series began with the vanishing of all adults - everyone aged 15 or over - leaving behind only children, babies to be cared for, and a handful of pre-teens with sudden, unexpected responsibilities they aren't exactly ready for. When a fight broke out between the two factions in town - those from the private school on the hill, as it were, and the townies from public school - it nearly became a war. After the dust settled, the kids realized that while living on chips and candy had been fun, they'd let the fresh food rot on the shelves, and were now down to making meals out of a jar of gravy or relish.

They were hungry. And angry. And looking for someone to blame. Those who they had trusted responsibility to seemed to have disappointed them. And it was time for a rebellion.

Meanwhile, Caine had not recovered, as the ipso facto leader of the Coates Academy (private school) kids from his humiliating defeat. His time under the mine with "The Darkness" - possibly the cause of the curses these kids have had to bear - has infected him with a madness that seems unrelenting. His second, Drake, with his mutation of his whip hand, also granted by The Darkness - has only grown more evil and power hungry while Caine has been partially disabled by the invader in his mind. They hatch a plot which at first seems to be to torture the Townies (in reality, it is in service to their master, The Darkness) which Sam and Astrid will have to work hard to overcome.

This follow-up stays true to the original book; I wasn't bored at all. It's entertaining and a quick read, and again is well-written and makes you forget it's a YA book.

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Book Review - Salem Falls

Salem Falls by Jodi Picoult
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Some people have all the bad luck.

Jack seems to be one of them. Though he was born to wealth and priveledge, he was falsely accused of rape by one of his students when working as a high school teacher and soccer coach. On the advice of his lawyer, he took a plea bargain in the case, serving only eight months compared to the many years he would serve if convicted. But what he lost was formidable; his career, his best friend (the cop who arrested him), his mother (a woman's advocate who would not abide someone who would hurt women in her family), his home, and even his pride, thanks to the tougher guys in prison with him. When he gets out of prison, he picks a small town at random to start over, and things begin to look up; he finds a job, and is taken by his beautiful boss, and even makes a friend in her father.

But once word gets around town about his past, a vindictive teenager decides to do the unthinkable, and once again, Jack finds himself falsely accused.

I like Picoult as an author, and there isn't one of her books that I haven't really liked. This was no exception. While I didn't find it as absolutely riveting as some of her others, I was still drawn in and enveloped in the world she created. Like most of her books, this is very character driven, and her precisely drawn people of all sorts that populate the town will affect you; some will anger you, some make you sad, some make you reflect. The wonderful thing is, though, how very poignantly they make you feel for them, and that's the real beauty of this piece.

That, and the fun of the courtroom drama. If Picoult ever decides to go law and order, Grisham better look out!

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Book Review - The Fox Inheritance

The Fox Inheritance by Mary E. Pearson
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This was... Well, it was a book. Yeah.

It started off interesting enough. The concept, in fact, was one I found fascinating; after a serious accident, the brains of three young people were downloaded to preserve them and somehow keep them alive. One had an artificial body created for her. Two sat on a shelf for more than 200 years before someone did the same for them. The trouble is, they were awake and aware and trapped the whole time. Imagine what that might do to a mind, and how they might adjust whee given a body again?

That said, the storytelling is slow in places, trips over itself (a bot who it just said can't breathe taking a deep breath for instance) and loses all momentum about three quarters through. The characters lose focus, are not so bright for minds that are supposed to be brilliant... I just had so many problems. Everything fell apart in the second half, but three stars for a unique concept and interesting beginning.

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Book Review - Tricks

Tricks by Ellen Hopkins
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Brilliantly written with remarkable prose and a-little-too-good poetry (to believe it was written by the teens in the book, anyway!), Tricks is a dark book about the descent into prostitution as told by a varied group of young men and women who wind up on the streets of Las Vegas, with little to trade for their livlihoods other than their bodies.

Tricks exposes the dirty little secret that it isn't just bad kids from bad families who wind up on the streets. Sometimes it's good kids from good families, sometimes it's borderline kids who have a tragedy. Sometimes their parents push them out there, even if they don't want to be. Every kid's story is different, and heartbreaking, and very real.

I cried a couple of times during this book, and teared up at least a dozen times more. I got angry, and felt my heart break, and felt elation in some cases. You can't help but feel for these very poignant characters; they are so true to life, and so young that it just grabs you right around the heart.

This is a great read, but isn't for the faint of heart.

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Book Review - Heart and Soul

Heart and Soul by Maeve Binchy
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

While this book was a slow starter, it had a nice payoff in the end.

Heart and Soul centers around a Irish clinic that treats patients with heart disease, helping them to learn to live with their condition, rather than dying from it - dietician Lavender holds cooking workshops, trainer Jimmy puts them through their paces in the gym, Dr. Decklan monitoring their health, nurses Fiona and Hillary minding the patients, clerical Anya working her behind off in every way, and administrator Clara overseeing them all.

The chapters are divided into the stories of different characters, so that you are changing perspectives off and on. The book starts with Clara, and while I can't remember the exact order, I do know that I was pretty bored until Anya's story was picked up in Chapter 4. I was considering giving up on the book, to be honest, but once I got into the tale of this lovely Polish immigrant and her troubled background, I was hooked!

The story is very character driven, and there seems to be someone to relate to for everyone who might read this book. There are some hints that several characters are reappearing after being highlighted in other books Binchy has written, but I haven't read enough of her recent work to have known who they were or what the connections might have been. It didn't detract too much from the story, but did pique my curiosity. If there had been more information about the other books, I probably would have picked them up to see the background, but I can't seem to find much info on that. If you have any - let me know!

By the end, I was very wrapped up in this story and stayed up late to finish it. Though parts of the book dragged, overall I really enjoyed it.

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Book Review - The Walking Dead: The Road to Woodbury

The Walking Dead: The Road to Woodbury by Robert Kirkman
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

After recently finishing the first book in this prequel series of The Walking Dead, I was really excited to move onto the next; more learning about the history and motivation of characters, more in-depth analysis of the community at Woodbury and how exactly the people there became complacent to the horrors The Governor perpetrated.

Imagine my disappointment when this book turned out to be extra gory and extra violent with no real payoff in the character development department, leaving me with more questions than answers.

This book was okay. I liked some of the new characters that were introduced, but in the end I felt like it went in circles a little bit too much. Instead of introducing new conflicts with the new characters, there was much repetition and lots and lots of gory, zombie slaughtering scenes. I'm not sure if I'll go on to check out others in this series as now I just feel like I wasted a good lot of the time spent reading this.

Why then, does it get three stars instead of a lower rating? I still appreciate an intelligently written horror story. I liked the few surprises that I got, and really enjoyed the first 100 pages or so. At that point I was ready to go 4 star or higher. But the rest of the book left me so unsatisfied that I had to drop the overall rating to a 3.

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