Month: May 2016

3/5, AUTHOR, Book Review, Fiction, RATING, Read in 2016, SERIES, Stone Barrington, U-V-W

Review: Swimming to Catalina by Stuart Woods

Tara

Swimming to Catalina
by Stuart Woods

Swimming to Catalina

Copyright: 1998

Pages: 391

Read: May 24 – 27, 2016

Rating: 3/5

Source: Paperbackswap

 

 

Blurb: Stone Barrington thought he’d heard the last of former girlfriend Arrington after she’d left him to marry Vance Calder, Hollywood’s hottest star. The last thing Stone expected was a desperate call from Calder. Arrington has vanished, and her new fiancé wants Stone to come to L.A. and find her.

In a town where the sharks drive Bentleys and no one can be trusted, Stone soon discovers he’s drowning in a sea of empty clues that take him from Bel Air to Malibu to Rodeo Drive. Running out of time and leads, he needs to keep his head above water and find Arrington fast, or end up swimming with the fishes himself.

Review: This is the 4th in the Stone Barrington series. I’m not entirely sure why I keep coming back to these books, but I do. You see, Stone’s character irritates me. It seems to me he does nothing but jump into bed with every woman who crosses his path (two in this book alone…). I just don’t like that trait. I will say, though, that this particular installment didn’t have nearly as much sex as the previous book, Dead in the Water. This book dialed it back a notch and left me wanting to actually continue on with this series.

I personally felt like the storyline of this book was especially good. I found it much more interesting than the first three books. It was a fast paced book that I read in a few days’ time. I think what keeps drawing me to this series is really that they’re just fun, fast reads.

Overall, not a bad book and I look forward to continuing on with this series after this one.

5/5, AUTHOR, Book Review, RATING, Read in 2016, Review Book, S

Review: Pretty Girls by Karin Slaughter

Tara

Pretty Girls
by Karin Slaughter

Pretty Girls

Copyright: 2015

Pages: 573

Read: May 15 – 23, 2016

Rating: 5/5

Source: Publicist for Review

 

 

Blurb: It’s been more than twenty years since Claire and Lydia last spoke. Claire is the glamorous trophy wife of an Atlanta millionaire; Lydia, a single mother dating an ex-con, struggles to make ends meet. But neither has recovered from the disappearance of their sister Julia two decades earlier – and the shocking murder of Claire’s husband brings the horror and heartbreak of the past roaring back into their lives.

The vanishing of a teenage girl and the killing of a middle-aged man, almost a quarter-century apart: What could connect them? As they form a wary truce, the surviving sisters unearth the secrets that destroyed their family all those years ago … and find the astonishing truth where they least expected it.

Review: Oh for the love of everything holy, this book is one hell of a ride! I read Julia’s story, Blonde Hair, Blue Eyes last year and loved it. So when I was given the opportunity to read this one, I knew I had to know what happened to Julia!

Let me just preface this with the fact that this book is gruesome. I mean, gruesome. It’s not for the faint of heart. That being said, I loved every deliciously disgusting moment of it! It sucked me in and spit me back out at the end. It was one heck of a ride. And can I just say that I was chugging along nicely and about the halfway mark the reader is thrown a curve ball that I never saw coming and hit me like a Mack truck. From that moment on I had to know what happened. I had to know how this ended up. It was just that good!

The characters are enjoyable, and some of them will surprise you in the end. You see a lot of growth in them throughout the book. You see a family torn apart come together. You see what a madman can do to one family. The plot is so intricate it’s amazing. Everything is woven together so perfectly. One little thing mentioned could mean something big later on in the book. It’s not a book to skim through, it’s one to devour. It’s just such a great book I don’t know how much more gushing I can possibly do.

This book will definitely be one of the best ones I read all year long. It was that good in my opinion.

Read. This. Book. Now!

**I received a copy of this book for review, all opinions expressed are my own.

4/5, AUTHOR, Author Debut, Book Review, C, Fiction, Rachel Knight, RATING, Read in 2016, SERIES

Review: Guilt by Association by Marcia Clark

Tara

Guilt by Association
by Marcia Clark

Guilt by Association

Copyright: 2011

Pages: 397

Read: May 4 – 14, 2016

Rating: 4/5

Source: Purchased new

 

 

Blurb: Los Angeles DA Rachel Knight is a tenacious, wisecracking, and fiercely intelligent prosecutor in the city’s most elite division. When her colleague Jake is found dead at a grisly crime scene, Rachel is shaken to the core. She must take over his toughest case: the assault on a young woman from a prominent family.

But Rachel can’t stop herself from also digging deeper into Jake’s death, a decision that will have her risking her reputation – and her life – to find the truth.

Thoughts: I first read Marcia Clark when I read The Competition a couple of years ago. That was in 2014 – why on earth did I wait two years before picking up the first Rachel Knight book?! I wish I had a decent answer for that question. But I don’t.

This book really hits the ground running. It sucked me in almost immediately and I found myself reading 50 pages in the blink of an eye. It was a really fun, interesting book. I thoroughly enjoyed it. I really like Rachel’s character. She’s so down-to-earth and relatable. Rachel and Bailey are like two peas in a pod – they just mesh together so well as partners.

Being a backlist book, there’s not much I can say about this one that you haven’t read before. So – if you haven’t read anything by Marcia Clark yet, definitely give her a try! I don’t think you’ll be disappointed. I highly recommend this one!

3/5, AUTHOR, Book Review, F, RATING, Read in 2016, Review Book

Review: Dark Angel by Ron Felber

Tara

Dark Angel
by Ron Felber

Dark Angel

Copyright: 2016

Pages: 316

Read: April 29 – May 4, 2016

Rating: 3/5

Source: Publicist for review

 

 

Blurb: Set on Princeton University Campus in a world where money is measured in billions and success by the control one wields over entire nations, readers will encounter a Nazi geneticist, a renegade CIA operative, a trans-human serial killer, and a Hollywood starlet as deadly as she is beautiful; all gathered together for a horrifying project: the creation of the Fourth Reich.

Review: When I was first pitched this book I was first really excited and then kind of unsure. Excited because I have read and enjoyed the earlier Jack Madson books, A Man of Indeterminate Value and The Kafka Society, and was really looking forward to the final book in the trilogy. Unsure because the description didn’t necessarily grab my attention. But I prefer closure when reading series books, so I took a chance on this one.

Overall I’m a little unsure how to approach this review. The book, while not bad in any way, shape, or form, was not what I felt like was a good fit for me as a reader. I found a lot of the subject matter nearly impossible to follow. I have a history degree and have a pretty good background in the historical aspects of the Hitler era. However, science is not my strong suit at all, and I struggled with a lot of the science aspects involved in this book. I found myself completely skipping over entire sections because it was almost incomprehensible for me and honestly, just not all that interesting to me.

There were a lot of good aspects to the book that kept me reading, though. Jack’s character is a tough one to describe. He has a lot of problems, but he also has a lot of heart. So while his constant drug and alcohol use is not a positive character trait, his dedication to justice makes me keep reading. He’s also given a love interest which adds another positive aspect to his character in this book – underneath everything, he’s got a big heart.

The book moves at a great pace, and honestly if it weren’t for the science aspects that I struggled with so much, this book would have been really great. However, if you’re a science and history junkie, I think you’ll enjoy this book. There’s definitely an audience out there for this book, unfortunately it just isn’t really me. However, I am glad that I read it and finished out the trilogy. (Although I felt like the ending kind of left it open for more Jack Madson…)

Bottom Line: A decent book, one with a character who may be flawed, but is a good man underneath all his issues, but I just didn’t feel like I was the target audience for this one.

**I received a copy of this book for review, all opinions expressed are my own.