In a Dark, Dark Wood by Ruth Ware
My rating: 2 of 5 stars I've been eyeing this book for months at the bookstore. I was intrigued by the tagline…"who brings a gun to a bachelorette party?" Goodreads description of the plot is this: "What should be a cozy and fun-filled weekend deep in the English countryside takes a sinister turn in Ruth Ware’s suspenseful, compulsive, and darkly twisted psychological thriller. Sometimes the only thing to fear…is yourself. When reclusive writer Leonora is invited to the English countryside for a weekend away, she reluctantly agrees to make the trip. But as the first night falls, revelations unfold among friends old and new, an unnerving memory shatters Leonora’s reserve, and a haunting realization creeps in: the party is not alone in the woods." I wasn't entirely sure how I felt about the story. The beginning starts off well-enough, giving us a decent mystery as to why Lenora is invited to this weekend away in the first place. It's a "hen party" for a former friend who she hasn't spoken to in years and it ends with murder. This book suffered in a couple of ways for me. The first is honestly, a personal irritation. The character's name is Lenora. She used to go by Lee but now she goes by Nora…oh but wait, she also had the pet name of Leo. It's simply too much. I completely understand the need to show character development by a name change from past to present, however, with the past and present people in the protagonist's life switching back and forth between all four names constantly it gets a little annoying. Then there was the jumping to and from timelines in strange places. It was almost as though the author realized she was boring everyone and threw in a juicy bit just to keep us occupied and reading until the end. The motive for murder was a little far-fetched and I didn't even have time to care about the person who died. The ancillary character development was shallow at best. I just felt as though it was half done. I didn't hate this one, but I didn't love it. It occupied my brain for a few hours, but I wouldn't really recommend it. Oh! And the woods? The dark, dark ones that are in the title? Have less than zero to do with the plot. They are barely mentioned which is moderately disappointing. View all my reviews
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Hidden Bodies by Caroline Kepnes
My rating: 3 of 5 stars In the follow up to You, Caroline Kepnes reintroduces us to our favorite murderer. Fresh off of his relationship with Beck, Joe believes that he has found true love with Amy Adam, an eclectic woman who wanders into his bookstore one day. When Amy turns out not to be who she claimed to be, Joe follows her to Los Angeles in order to exact his revenge. I wasn't as happy with this novel as I was with its predecessor. The creepy inner monologue seems to have been dampened to make way for the plot. Where You was precise and gave you a tunnel vision narrative, Hidden Bodies is broader and has a more mainstream feel to it. Joe's need to make Amy pay for what she has done gets lost in the shuffle of his new life. If the author hadn't thrown in the occasional murder, I would have forgotten that Joe was a killer in the first place. It felt like Joe, but not Joe. And maybe that was the point to it? This was Joe in LA. That was Joe in New York. Two different Joes. If that was the point then I missed it entirely. I didn't feel the same after having read Hidden Bodies. This is not to say that Hidden Bodies isn't a decent enough novel. The plot is well conceived, each character is well thought out and rendered. The only part that seemed out of place was the protagonist. He didn't fit. It's still a worthwhile read. Kepnes definitely has the flair for fiction and I look forward to reading whatever she's got coming up next. View all my reviews
Midnight at the Bright Ideas Bookstore by Matthew J. Sullivan
My rating: 3 of 5 stars As I have mentioned on multiple occasions, I'm a sucker for any book that appears to be about a bookstore. This one held an interesting premise, a mysterious girl with a hidden past struggles with the death of someone in the bookstore where she works. As the story progresses we learn about her past and also dive into the past of the young man who died. I listened to this book as an audiobook and where I usually feel like having it read to me adds to the story, in this case it did not. While this book had an interesting premise, it suffered from a lack of depth and entirely too many mysteries. Mystery One: Who is Lydia and what is she hiding? Mystery Two: Who is the Hammer Killer? Mystery Three: Why did Joey kill himself? Mystery Four: What doesn't Lydia speak to her father? Mystery Five: Who is Joey really? Mystery Six: Why do we abandon the bookstore concept half way through the book? The first part of the book spends a lot of time building the bookstore and the characters who run it in your mind. It starts to dig in deep and then poof! Everyone is basically forgotten in favor of the new mysteries and storylines that are being added. The second part of the book struggles to wrap everything in a nice little bow but suffers since the author spent so much time in the second half worrying about one mystery that they let the depth of the others remain on the surface only. I had the Hammer Killer figured relatively quickly, but I didn't guess the motivation. The catalyst for the murder even seemed a tad farfetched to me. I found the epilogue also completely useless. Funny, I started this review more or less liking the book. Now that I've typed everything out, I realize that I actually didn't care for it. View all my reviews |