Category: Read in 2009

5/5, Alex Cross, AUTHOR, Book Review, Fiction, P, RATING, Read in 2009, READING CHALLENGES 2009, SERIES

REVIEW: Pop Goes the Weasel by James Patterson

Tara

Pop Goes the Weasel
by James Patterson

Copyright: 1999
Pages: 461
Rating: 5/5
Read: Oct. 14-18, 2009
Challenge:  2009 100+ Reading Challenge ; RYOB 2009
Yearly Count: 54

First Line: Geoffrey Shafer, dashingly outfitted in a single-breasted blue blazer, white shirt, striped tie, and narrow gray trousers from H. Huntsman & Sons, walked out of his town house at seven-thirty in the morning and climbed into a black Jaguar XJ12.

Alex Cross is back! In this installment of the Cross series, Alex is up against a guy that no one is looking for. Jane Does are being murdered in the Southeast. No one seems to care. No one seems to see a connection. Except for Alex Cross. He cares. He sees a connection with these Jane Does. He spends his off-duty time investigating these murders. But his supervisor pulls him off the case. There are more important cases in his opinion than a case that really doesn’t exist within the department. But when Alex’s fiancee is kidnapped, Alex doesn’t know what to do. As time goes on, he moves on. He dives right back into his work on the Jane Doe murder cases. He dubs the killer “The Weasel”. But when he finally catches up to the Weasel he gets the shock of a lifetime – the Weasel has diplomatic immunity. But instead of invoking his immunity, he waives it in order to try and beat Alex Cross. This puts Alex up against his most interesting character yet.

I just love this series! It is so much better than his Women’s Murder Club books are. This one was a really good installment though. It was full of twists and turns and I loved the character that Patterson created in Shafer aka The Weasel. I personally thought that he was a creepier villain than Gary Sonjei was. As a reader, I really felt Alex’s pain when his fiancee went missing. I really feel a connection with Cross’s character, and I just love his Nana’s character!! I look forward to getting around to the next one in this series to see how Alex’s relationship with Christine continues to develop. I highly recommend this series to anyone, and I felt like this was another strong book in the series.

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

REVIEW: A Bone to Pick by Charlaine Harris

Tara

A Bone to Pick
by Charlaine Harris

Copyright: 1995
Pages: 262
Rating: 4/5
Read: Oct. 10-13, 2009
Challenge:  2009 100+ Reading Challenge ; RYOB 2009;
Yearly Count: 53

First Line: In less than a year, I went to three weddings and one funeral.

Roe Teagarden has had an interesting year. After her crime discussion group disbanded, it seems like life has been a roller coaster – with her personal life on a permanent downfall. But her life will be turned upside down when she is told that she has inherited everything that Jane Engle owned. Jane was a member of the abovementioned discussion group but it wasn’t like she was Roe’s best friend. So why would Jane leave her everything? Roe is unsure but she is impressed by the inheritance. But when she finds a skull in Jane’s window seat she is completely baffled. Knowing Jane, Roe is positive that she had not killed somebody, but why on earth would Jane Engle have a skull in her house? She finally realizes that Jane would have wanted Roe to figure out the puzzle that Jane left behind. But Roe begins to suspect that one of her new seemingly ordinary neighbors is a cold-blooded murderer.

I recently read the first in this series, Real Murders and was not very impressed overall. This one was a lot better. But my one main complaint is that halfway through the book it’s like the mystery part of the book was thrown out. On the positive side there was a lot of character development in this installment, but the actual murder mystery part of this book was kind of sporadic. Overall it’s a good story and it was a quick and enjoyable read, but I felt like there could have been a lot more to the actually mystery part of this book.

4/5, AUTHOR, Book Review, Fiction, G, Kinsey Millhone, RATING, Read in 2009, READING CHALLENGES 2009, SERIES

REVIEW: ‘D’ is for Deadbeat by Sue Grafton

Tara

‘D’ is for Deadbeat
by Sue Grafton

Copyright: 1987
Pages: 240
Rating: 4/5
Read: Oct. 6-10, 2009
Challenge:  2009 100+ Reading Challenge; A Well-Rounded Challenge 2009 ;2009 Celebrate the Author Challenge; RYOB 2009; 2009 What’s in a Name Challenge
Yearly Count: 52

First Line: Later, I found out his name was John Daggett, but that’s not how he introduced himself the day he walked into my office.

Kinsey Millhone figures her latest job will be an easy one. All she has to do is deliver a $25,000 check to a fifteen-year-old boy. She was a little leery of Alvin Limardo, but she took the job, and his retainer check. But when the check bounced, she knew that something wasn’t quite right. Trying to track Alvin down, she finds out that Alvin is actually John Daggett, a drunk who was just released from prison. But by the time Kinsey tracks him down again, he’s dead. And unfortunately there is a very long list of people who was more than happy to see him end up dead. So how does a private investigator get a dead man to pay up?

This is the fourth installment in the Kinsey Millhone series. I found this book to be slow to start, but it had a really great middle and then a below-par ending. It really is kind of unbelievable in regards to all the trouble that Kinsey manages to find. But I like her character. This one was definitely better than the first three books in this series were. I guess she was still developing as an author back then. But I’m going to repeat something that I know that I mentioned in my reviews of the first three in this series: it’s hard to pack a really great action-filled story into 240 pages. I know that as this series progresses, the books become longer in length, and I hope that that’s due to Grafton being able to develop the characters a little bit more. That’s something that I really look for in a series, but I haven’t seen much development so far.

5/5, AUTHOR, Book Review, Fiction, G, Jane Rizzoli, RATING, Read in 2009, READING CHALLENGES 2009, SERIES

REVIEW: The Surgeon by Tess Gerritsen

Tara

The Surgeon
by Tess Gerritsen

Copyright: 2001
Pages: 359
Rating: 5/5
Read: Oct. 3-5, 2009
Challenge:  2009 100+ Reading Challenge; 2009 Celebrate the Author Challenge; 2010 Countdown Challenge; RYOB 2009
Yearly Count: 51

First Line: Today they will find her body.

He is dubbed The Surgeon. He slips into women’s homes unnoticed and does horrendous things to their bodies. Things that are so precise, it indicates that he is a man of medicine. The only clue is another surgeon, Dr. Catherine Cordell. Two years ago she was attacked and fought back and ultimately killed her attacker. But everything Cordell has worked to build will come crashing down when The Surgeon begins to do his work in Boston – he will re-create almost identically the ordeal that Cordell went through.

Okay, so I’ve read a later book in this series, Vanish, a couple of years ago and I really enjoyed it. I’ve had this one on my shelf for over a year now and finally picked it up! And I am definitely glad that I did pick this one up, I was really surprised by it. I loved it! I am not one who normally reads and/or likes medical type books. But this one was a little different than your typical medical thriller. There was an actual story kind of outside of the hospital to this book. Sure, there was a distinct medical aspect to the book, but as the reader I was not bogged down with a lot of medical terminology. I found it to be a really easy read and very suspenseful! Highly recommended!

3/5, AUTHOR, Book Review, Fiction, P, RATING, Read in 2009, READING CHALLENGES 2009

REVIEW: The Godwulf Manuscript by Robert B. Parker

Tara

The Godwulf Manuscript
by Robert B. Parker

Copyright: 1973
Pages: 204
Rating: 3/5
Read: Sept. 28-29, 2009
Challenge:  2009 100+ Reading Challenge; 2009 1st in a Series Challenge; 2009 Celebrate the Author Challenge; Random Reading Challenge; RYOB 2009
Yearly Count: 50

First Line: The office of the university president looked like the front parlor of a successful Victorian whorehouse.

Spenser, a private detective, is hired by a local university to find a rare manuscript that has been stolen. But when a body shows up, the cops are ready to throw the book at the dead man’s girlfriend. But Spenser has a feeling that the dead man and the missing manuscript are connected. But when people start to tell Spenser to back off from this case, that only makes him want to solve it even more.

Okay, so this was a weird book. It’s been on my shelf for a little bit and it sounded interesting. But it just wasn’t my thing. First of all, I really didn’t take to Spenser’s character. I mean, I guess he was okay, he had some witty remarks here and there, but overall his character did nothing to endear me. I also felt like the plotline was a little lacking in places. It was just an okay book honestly. I suppose I will eventually read the second in this series, but if it doesn’t improve I probably won’t continue.

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.

5/5, Alex Delaware, AUTHOR, Book Review, Fiction, K, RATING, Read in 2009, READING CHALLENGES 2009, SERIES

REVIEW: When the Bough Breaks by Jonathan Kellerman

Tara

When the Bough Breaks
by Jonathan Kellerman

Copyright: 1985
Pages: 351
Rating: 5/5
Read: Sept. 14-17, 2009
Challenge:  2009 100+ Reading Challenge; 2009 1st in a Series Challenge; A Well-Rounded Challenge; 2009 Celebrate the Author; RYOB 2009
Yearly Count: 47

First Line: It was shaping up as a beautiful morning.

Alex Delaware is a well-known and established child psychologist when he burns out at the age of thirty-two. But he gets involved when his friend, LA police detective Milo Sturgis, enlists his help as a “consultant” with the department. Charged with helping a terrified seven-year-old girl who might have seen the perpertrators of a horrific murder, he is intrigued with the entire case whereas the police seem less impassioned about it. Determined to get to the bottom of the case, he is caught up in a web of unimaginable evil and a forty-year-old secret.

I have read a few of the more recent Alex Delaware novels and have enjoyed them, so I was really excited to finally read the first in this series. I learned so much about who Alex and Milo really are that I had missed out on in the later books. I was so intrigued by all the twists and turns. Kellerman really wrote a great story with this one. I’m probably like the last person on earth to have read this book, but if you haven’t read this one before I highly recommend this one.

3/5, AUTHOR, Book Review, Fiction, H, RATING, Read in 2009, READING CHALLENGES 2009

REVIEW: Real Murders by Charlaine Harris

Tara

Real Murders
by Charlaine Harris

Copyright: 1990
Pages: 175
Rating: 3/5
Read: Sept. 2-6, 2009
Challenge:  2009 100+ Reading Challenge; 2009 1st in a Series Challenge; A Well-Rounded Challenge
Yearly Count: 46

First Line: “Tonight I want to tell you about that most fascinating of murder mysteries, the Wallace case,” I told my mirror Enthusiastically.

Aurora “Roe” Teagarden is a small-town librarian. Nothing much really happens in her town of Lawrenceton. The peak of her excitement comes from her monthly meetings with her group “Real Murders.” They are just a group of people who share an interest in past murder cases. But when one of the members turns up dead at one of their meetings, with her murder scene looking suspcisiously like that of a murder case from the past that Roe recognizes. As time goes on, others in this small town turn up dead, also seemingly patterned after other famous murder cases. Roe can’t help but wonder who is at the heart of these murders – it almost has to be a member of Real Murders … but who could it be?

Okay, so I love the Harper Connelly series and was looking forward to giving this series a try. I liked it to a degree, however there were numerous spelling errors in this book (which really irritates me to no end). But for some reason I didn’t immediately take to this book. I mean it was okay in the end, but I felt as if it was missing something, I don’t really know how to describe my feelings though. It had a slow start. And I felt as if the character development lacked a little bit. But overall it was a decent book and I will probably continue on with this series, I just don’t know if I’ll be rushing to continue it.

4/5, AUTHOR, Book Review, Nonfiction, RATING, Read in 2009, READING CHALLENGES 2009, S

REVIEW: sTORItelling by Tori Spelling

Tara

sTORItelling
by Tori Spelling

Copyright: 2008
Pages: 271
Rating: 4/5
Read: Aug. 31-Sept. 1, 2009
Challenge:  2009 100+ Reading Challenge
Yearly Count: 45

First Line: When you’re a kid, you don’t worry about what anyone thinks.

Tori Spelling … her name along can evoke a lot of different ideas in one’s head. Donna Martin – America’s Virgin. Aaron Spelling’s daughter. Well-known feud with her mother. So I guess people either love or hate her. Me, I had no real opinion about her going into this book. There was a lot in here that I didn’t know much about to be honest. I knew that she had been raised in an unimaginably huge house (not quite accurate) and her father had bought her a white Christmas one year with the help of a snow machine (accurate) and that she had played Donna Martin, America’s favorite virgin on 90210 (accurate) and that she had been married in a fairy-tale wedding (it was someone’s fairy tale, just not hers) and that she divorced abruptly and remarried in the blink of an eye (fairly accurate) oh and now she has two kids. Okay, so that pretty much summed up what I knew about Tori Spelling. But this book really opened up her world. Tori came across as a girl who had grown up with everything but then didn’t understand when she had to actually work for everything once she turned 16. She seemed to want nothing more than acceptance and love and it didn’t come easy to her. Her life is full of disappointments and sometimes regrets. But you know what, that makes her like every other person. She really proves that life isn’t fair to Tori Spelling. I mean, take for example the fact that her father was reportedly worth $500 million dollars upon his death, all she got out of the will was $800,000 BEFORE taxes … she had to pay rent to her mother for the condo that she lived in for 10 years … she was in debt before she realized what had happened. I guess some people might see this book as nothing more than a sob story, but I really found it enlightening. Sure, she seems to have had a pretty screwed up childhood, but I think that after she met Dean maybe she finally did find what she was looking for in life. Regardless of whatever preconceived notions you have about her, I really do recommend giving this book a shot … if nothing else, it definitely has some hilarious moments like this one:

Dad told me that in order to earn my allowance, I’d have to help out around the house, so he gave me a job and said he’d do it with me. Every weekend we’d go out into the yard to scoop up dog poo and rake leaves. That’s right, every weekend TV mogul Aaron Spelling, net worth equivalent to some small island nation, went out and scooped poo with his daughter (p. 12).

Oh yeah – and her first kiss was with Screech!