Category: C

4/5, AUTHOR, Book Review, C, Fiction, Kay Scarpetta, RATING, Read in 2010, READING CHALLENGES 2010, SERIES

REVIEW: Body of Evidence by Patricia Cornwell

Tara

Body of Evidence
by Patricia Cornwell

Copyright: 1991
Pages: 403
Rating: 4/5
Read: Feb. 20 – 23, 2010
Challenge:  2010 100+ Reading Challenge; Random Reading Challenge; RYOB 2010
Yearly Count: 9

First Line: Dear M, Thirty days have passed in measured shades of sunlit color and changes in the wind. I think too much and do not dream.

When reclusive author Beryl Madison is found brutally murdered in her own home, Kay Scarpetta is on the case. Kay knows that Beryl has been having some issues with some menacing phone calls. In fact, Beryl had escaped Virginia altogether in order to get away from the harassment. While away Beryl is thought to have been writing a tell-all memoir about her life and her relationship to another reclusive author. But Kay also knows that that is a book that there are more than a few people who do not want it to ever hit the presses. While trying to track down the only known copy of the book Kay finds herself mixed up with a man from her past as well as the same stalker that Beryl was dealing with.

I read the first book in this series last year and was not real impressed by it. So I wasn’t in much of a hurry to get around to this one. But I have to tell you – I am glad I did read it! This book was so much better than the first one. The story was better, the writing was better, everything was better. It has definitely made me look forward to reading the third in this series. As a side note to this review, I just saw on CNN that it has been confirmed that Angelina Jolie has been cast to play Kay Scarpetta in an upcoming movie based on this series. I have to say – this is really wrong! From the descriptions that I get from reading the first two books, Ms. Jolie is too young, too tall, too skinny, just too wrong to play this character. That’s just my two cents on the matter. You can read about this here. (Of course I also didn’t like Denzel Washington as Lincoln Rhyme either….)

5/5, AUTHOR, Book Review, C, Fiction, RATING, Read in 2010, READING CHALLENGES 2010

REVIEW: Hold Tight by Harlan Coben

Tara

Hold Tight
by Harlan Coben

Copyright: 2008
Pages: 477
Rating: 5/5
Read: Jan. 1-6, 2010
Challenge:  2010 100+ Reading Challenge; 2010 Celebrate the Author Challenge; Countdown Challenge 2010; RYOB 2010
Yearly Count: 1

First Line: Marianne nursed her third shot of Cuervo, marveling at her endless capacity to destroy any good in her pathetic life, when the man next to her shouted, “Listen up, sweetcakes: Creationism and evolution are totally compatible.”

Mike and Tia Baye know that they are losing touch with their teenage son, Adam. After losing his best friend to suicide, Adam has become more and more withdrawn. He spends all his time in his room on the computer. They decide that their best option to finding out what is going on with their son is to install some software on his computer that will tell them every website that he visits and logs all of his e-mails and instant messages. But what they end up finding and what it implies and eventually leads to is beyond anything that either Mike or Tia would ever have thought possible. Adam is in over his head and what he is involved with could end up taking the whole family down in the end.

I always love Harlan Coben’s books. They are always fast paced and enjoyable. This one was definitely no exception. There were many twists and turns, and even at the end I was kind of surprised by what really started everything that happened in motion. I think a lot of parents today can relate to how their children spend so much time on the internet and they don’t really know what’s going on at all. I personally liked how Mr. Coben made it really obvious that a lot of people don’t really understand how quickly children are growing up nowadays, but with Adam’s sister, Jill’s character, he really made it obvious. I’m a huge Harlan Coben fan, so it’s hard for me to not to rave about every book of his I read (although I do prefer is stand-alones to his Myron Bolitar series).

3.5/5, AUTHOR, Book Review, C, Nonfiction, RATING, Read in 2009, READING CHALLENGES 2009

REVIEW: Decoding the Lost Symbol by Simon Cox

Tara

Decoding the Lost Symbol
by Simon Cox

Copyright: 2009
Pages: 221
Rating: 3.5/5
Read: Dec. 17-23, 2009
Challenge:  2009 100+ Reading Challenge; 2010 Countdown Challenge
Yearly Count: 69

I was contacted by Anna Suknov at FSB Associates about reading and reviewing this book. First of all, it hurt that I have not read The Lost Symbol yet (But I did see the movie). I guess it never occurred to me that I would need to read the book before I read this “Unauthorized expert guide to the facts behind the fiction.” Now that is not to say that I didn’t enjoy this book. It was pretty good. However, it would help if you read The Lost Symbol before reading this one (OOPS! LOL) I learned some new things. Actually, I learned a lot of new things. I have previously read (and loved) The Da Vinci Code but I never thought to look into just how much of a stretch Dan Brown took when writing it. But after reading this one, I realized that Brown probably stretched quite a bit to make his fiction so enjoyable. On the flip side, it was nice to read this book before reading The Lost Symbol so that I would have a clearer picture of what is what in regards to fiction and fact. So all in all, if you want to know what is fact and what is fiction in The Lost Symbol this is a great resource to begin with! Mr. Cox makes great use of numerous sources and really helped me to understand certain aspects about the book that I never would have understood had I not read this one.

5/5, AUTHOR, Book Review, C, Fiction, RATING, Read in 2009, READING CHALLENGES 2009

REVIEW: No Place Like Home by Mary Higgins Clark

Tara

No Place Like Home
by Mary Higgins Clark

Copyright: 2005
Pages: 472
Rating: 5/5
Read: Dec. 14-19, 2009
Challenge:  2009 100+ Reading Challenge; 2009 Celebrate the Author Challenge;  RYOB 2009; 2009 What’s in a Name 2; 2010 Countdown Challenge
Yearly Count: 66

First Line: Ten-year-old Liza was dreaming her favorite dream, the one about the day when she was six years old, and she and Daddy were at the beach, in New Jersey, at Spring Lake.

When Liza Barton was ten years old she accidentally shot her mother while trying to protect her from her stepfather. Although the shooting was ruled an accident, and Liza was let off the hook, the papers and the people in the area all compared Liza to Lizzie Borden. But Liza’s adoptive parents change her name to Celia and tries to forget the past. Widowed with a young son, Celia remarries and is perfectly happy. That is right up until her wonderful new husband surprises her with a house for her birthday. The same house that just happens to be the one that she killed her mother in so many years before. Since her new husband does not know the story of her childhood, he is baffled by his new wife’s response to this wonderful birthday gift. But then strange things start happening – the house is vandalized and people start getting murdered. Unforunately for Celia, someone in her old hometown has recognized her as Liza because she starts getting tormented and set up for murder. Although a suspect for murder once again, Celia has to be strong for herself and her son, for they are actually the ones being stalked by the real murderer.

I simply love Mary Higgins Clark. She just writes wonderful books! How on earth she is able to come up with new ideas is beyond me. But I guess that’s why she’s the author and I’m the reader 🙂 Either way, this book was exceptionally good. The twists and turns were really interesting. I had no idea what was really going on and who the real killer (or killers) were until the very ending when they were revealed. I felt sorry for Celia because she seemed to have really bad luck to have her husband buy the same house she accidentally shot her mother in. Clark really formulated some really mean characters in this book also. She had some really good villains in my opinion. I really can’t think of anything bad about this book, it was wonderfully written with a great storyline. I highly recommend this book!

4/5, AUTHOR, Book Review, C, Fiction, RATING, Read in 2009, READING CHALLENGES 2009

The Aztec Heresy by Paul Christopher

Tara

The Aztec Heresy
by Paul Christopher

Copyright: 2008
Pages: 346
Rating: 4/5
Read: Dec. 3 – 11, 2009
Challenge:  2009 100+ Reading Challenge; Countdown Challenge 2010; RYOB 2009
Yearly Count: 64

First Line: Friar Bartolome de las Casas of the Ordo fratrum Praedicatorum, the Order of St. Dominic, heard the giant wave before he saw it.

In search of a Spanish galleon, Finn Ryan and Lord Billy Pilgrim, find evidence of the lost Aztec Codex. This book is said to reveal the location of Cortez’s lost City of Gold. But Finn and Billy are not the only ones on the hunt for the Codex and the City of Gold. However, in while in search of the Codex, they stumble upon something much bigger. Secrets worth killing over are at stake, and Finn and Billy must find their way through the jungles of the Yucatan to the Sonoran Desert.

This is the fourth in this series. Usually I do not like to skip books in a series (and I really regreted it after I started the book, too) but I had to because a Yahoo group buddy requested this book from me. Either way, this was a good book. Life got in the way and it took me like forever to finish it, but it’s a really good read. I personally think that Michelangelo’s Notebook, the first in this series, was better than this one. But I did enjoy it. However, I don’t really recommend reading this series out of order. There were small references to previous books scattered throughout the pages, but it wasn’t impossible to follow. Overall a good book.

4/5, AUTHOR, Book Review, C, Fiction, RATING, Read in 2009, READING CHALLENGES 2009

REVIEW: Michelangelo’s Notebook by Paul Christopher

Tara

Michelangelo’s Notebook
by Paul Christopher

Copyright: 2005
Pages: 355
Rating: 4/5
Read: Sept. 23-27, 2009
Challenge:  2009 100+ Reading Challenge; 2009 1st in a Series Challenge; 2010 Countdown Challenge; RYOB 2009
Yearly Count: 49

First Line: Maggiore Tiberio Bertoglio, wearing the uniform of one of the Mussolini Black Brigades – complete with ebony shoulder boards, bloodred-and-silver double-M collar tabs and a silver-and-black skull-and-crossbones insignia on the forepeak of his regulation bustina – sat in the backseat of the dusty Lancia staff car, arms crossed over his ches Il Duce-style, not feeling half as grand as he looked.

Beautiful art history student Finn Ryan is just an intern when she discovers something amazing: a Michelangelo drawing that has been mislabeled and seemingly forgotten about. But this is no ordinary Michelangelo. Finn is pretty certain that it is from Michelangelo’s missing notebook. After a confrontation with her immediate supervisor, Finn is fired from her intern position and her boyfriend is killed that same night, stealing the sketches that she had made of that drawing. Not knowing what is going on, Finn flees while she still can, to the address that her mother gave her before she moved to NYC. It brings her face to face with an antiquarian book dealer, Michael Valentine. Together, they will unravel the mystery of this Michelangelo and try and discover a secret that has been well-kept since the final days of World War II … a secret that has ties to the Vatican … a secret that could get Finn and Valentine killed.

This book starts out really good. It has a lot of fast paced action. But then at times it’s also kind of confusing because it flashes back and forth between the present day with Finn and Valentine and the last days of World War II. It took me quite some time to even begin to figure out what was going on and why the flashbacks kept happening, but overall I thought that this was a good book. I have the other three books in the Finn Ryan series and I’m definitely looking forward to getting to them. I will say that I gave this book a 4 overall simply because it was a little hard to follow in places. So overall this is a great book that I highly recommend.

5/5, Archie and Gretchen, AUTHOR, Book Review, C, Fiction, RATING, Read in 2009, READING CHALLENGES 2009, SERIES

REVIEW: Evil at Heart by Chelsea Cain

Tara

Evil at Heart
by Chelsea Cain

Copyright: 2009
Pages: 306
Rating: 4/5
Read: Sept. 17-22, 2009
Challenge:  2009 100+ Reading Challenge; 2009 Celebrate the Author; 2010 Countdown Challenge
Yearly Count: 48

First Line: The rest stop off I-84 on the Oregon side of the Columbia River was vile, even by rest-stop standards.

Gretchen Lowell is still on the loose. And she has become somewhat of a celebrity, with fan websites, fan fiction, her image on t-shirts, in magazines, there’s even a tour that people can take for $35 that will take them to the sites of her murders. But no one knows where she is. Archie Sheridan, the man who she let live for unknown reasons, is still in the hospital … the psych ward to be precise. When they last parted they made a deal – Archie agreed not to kill himself if she agreed not to kill anyone else. But it seems as if Gretchen has reneged on her end of the deal. When some pretty gruesome evidence is found, it all seems to point back to Gretchen. This gets Archie back into action. He is determined not to let Gretchen harm anyone else. But is The Beauty Killer back in action or has the whole obsessiveness around Gretchen turned into something more evil?

Let’s see, I didn’t care for Heartsick. I LOVED Sweetheart. This one was pretty good. It was a quick and easy read. But my main disappointment in this book is that it seemed to have so little of Gretchen in it. This installment was more about Archie. Which is fine and it was interesting, but Ms. Cain – Gretchen is the meat of your story! However, the door was definitely left open for a fourth book in this series, which I will most definitely read if it does come to be.

AUTHOR, Book Review, C, FBI Thriller, Fiction, Read in 2009, SERIES

The Maze by Catherine Coulter

Tara

The Mazee
by Catherine Coulter

Copyright: 1997
Pages: 268
Rating: 4.5/5
Read: July 4-11, 2009
Challenge:  2009 100+ Reading Challenge
Yearly Count: 34

First Line: It wouldn’t stop, ever.

Agent Lacey Sherlock is fresh out of the FBI Academy when Special Agent Dillon Savich chooses her to be included in his new unit. They’ve met once before, when Sherlock took down Savich in Hogan’s Alley – the famed FBI training town. But neither one of them is prepared to have sparks fly between them while trying to track down serial killers. Sherlock has joined the FBI in the hopes that it would allow her to catch the madman that killed her sister, Belinda, and six other women in her hometown. But she’s not prepared for what she learns about her sister and the killer.

This is the second in Coulter’s FBI Thriller series. I really am glad that I picked up The Beginning at the library, which is essentially both The Cove and The Maze in one book. I really don’t know why it took me so long to get around to reading this series. I guess I was putting it off because of the romance angle for so long, but really it’s not the meat of the story in these two books. I’m definitely looking forward to seeing Savich and Sherlock grow old together (and hopefully we can see more of Sally & James Quinlan too!)

AUTHOR, Book Review, C, FBI Thriller, Fiction, Read in 2009, SERIES

The Cove by Catherine Coulter

Tara

The Cove
by Catherine Coulter

Copyright: 1996
Pages: 262
Rating: 4.5/5
Read: July 1-4, 2009
Challenge:  2009 100+ Reading Challenge; 1st in a Series Challenge
Yearly Count: 33

First Line: Someone was watching her.

The daughter of a murdered high-powered lawyer is on the run. She can’t remember the murder of her father, but she fears that she is at fault. She ends up in a quaint little town on the doorstep of her aunt’s house. However, an FBI agent is hot on her trail. In fact, he’s followed her to The Cove. But what they find out about The Cove is chilling, it’s not as quaint a town as the residents would like outsiders to believe. In fact, there’s evil residing here and it will be up to Sally and the FBI agent, James Quinlan to figure out what is going on in The Cove while simultaneously trying to figure out what happened to Sally’s father.

Okay, so I’ve had numerous Catherine Coulterbooks on my shelves for years. (Of course this was not one of them, this was a library book, lol). I have to say that after a slow start I really enjoyed this book! However, the whole whirlwind romance of Sally and James was a little unbelievable (they met, fell in love and got engaged in about the blink of an eye). Other than that, I thought the suspense was great, I couldn’t figure out what was going on in The Cove, but I knew something was! If you’ve never given this series a try, I definitely recommend this book!!!

AUTHOR, Book Review, C, Fiction, Read in 2009, SERIES

Snagged by Carol Higgins Clark

Tara

Snagged
by Carol Higgins Clark

Copyright: 1993
Pages: 306
Rating: 4.5/5
Read: June 13-14, 2009
Challenge:  2009 100+ Reading Challenge; RYOB 2009
Yearly Count: 29

First Line: Richie Blossom tumbled from the side of his bed as he bent over in an awkward attempt to pull on his brand-new pair of panty hose.

In Miami for a wedding, Regan Reilly meets the bride’s Uncle Richie. He has produced seemingly indestructible panty hose. With the panty hose convention in town, he has plans to sell his invention to the highest bidder. But panty hose manufacturers will do nearly anything to keep Uncle Richie from putting these on the market – perhaps even kill. So after two attempts on his life are made, Regan finds herself surrounded by numerous suspects while trying to keep an eye on Uncle Richie.

Okay, so I read the first Regan Reilly book, Decked, two years ago. I enjoyed it. But this one was really good! There was just enough humor sprinkled throughout the mystery that it was a really good mix. To be honest, I was surprised at the ending of it – I had no idea who the killer really was – and it was a pleasant shock! Overall I liked this book and will definitely look forward to continuing this series.