AUTHOR, Book Review, Fiction, P, Read in 2009

REVIEW: Sail by James Patterson

Sail
by James Patterson

Copyright: 2008
Pages: 414
Rating: 5/5
Read: July 15-19, 2009
Challenge:  2009 100+ Reading Challenge; 2009 RYOB
Yearly Count: 35

First Line: Easing through the marina’s sapphire-blue water at a leisurely three-knot clip, Captain Stephen Preston took a long pull off his Marlboro Red, casually flicking the ash into the cool island breeze.

The Dunne family is out on a summer vacation sailboat trip. For mother Katherine, this is a time to really re-connect with her three children, Carrie, Mark, and Ernie after really losing touch with them for the past four years after the loss of their father. Carrie and Mark, both older teenagers, want no part of this get-away, but they go along because their mother and Uncle Jake really want them to. Ten-year-old Ernie is still at an age where he doesn’t mind going. But what awaits the Dunne family out on the open water will surprise all of them. None of them are really ready for their boat to explode, leaving them stranded in the middle of the ocean with only a life raft and a little bit of water and crackers. But eventually they float over to a deserted island, where they will wait patiently for the Coast Guard to come get them – hopefully. What the Dunne’s don’t realize is that the Coast Guard fear the worst for them. They are unable to find their boat (or what’s left of it actually) and when they finally do come upon the wreckage, they call off the search, essentially declaring the Dunne family dead. But the Dunne’s are made of tougher stuff than that! When a bottle with a message from Ernie finds its way to land, the search for the Dunne’s is back on. But there is only one problem … there is someone out there that wants to make sure that the Dunne family doesn’t come back alive from that boating trip.

If I’m ever in a reading slump, I can almost always count on being able to pick up a James Patterson book and flying through it. This one was no exception. Although it took me a little longer than normal to read it, it wasn’t because it was not a good book. In fact, it was a really good book. I would have to say that out of all the James Patterson books that I have read to date, this one is really high up on my list of favorites. I guess after being so burned out and slightly disappointed in the Women’s Murder Club books this one was a real treat for me. It felt more like a normal Patterson book for me. I enjoyed the suspense. I actually felt for the characters. At one point in the book, while on the deserted island, Katherine has an unfortunate encounter with a rather large snake … I felt myself shuddering right along with Katherine while reading about the ordeal. I was glad to see Carrie pull out of her funk because of what she went through with her family. I felt relieved at the end because Peter really did end up getting what he deserved. The characters were just believable, which to me is an all-important part of any book. I can’t say enough good things about this book. If you haven’t picked it up, I really hope that you give it a try if you run across it somewhere – it’s that good of a book in my opinion.

Booking Through Thursday, Meme

Booking Through Thursday, July 16, 2009 – TBR

Booking Through Thursday

Question:

Follow-up to last week’s question:

Do you keep all your unread books together, like books in a waiting room? Or are they scattered throughout your shelves, mingling like party-goers waiting for the host to come along?

Okay … so it’s been forever since I last did a BTT, and I’m looking forward to getting back into doing memes 🙂 So my unread books. Well, they’re all over the house haha! I have two main book cases upstairs. One in the empty spare bedroom that houses the books in my personal collection as well as books that are on my TBR but are not high up on it. Then I have the other one in our bedroom. It holds my TBR books that I want to get to as quickly as possible (which is not so quickly here lately). Then there’s always books in little piles in random places throughout the house. Right now I have about 20 new acquisitions that I’ve gotten in the mail sitting in a corner downstairs (they have yet to make the long trek up the staircase, lol … even though I go up every night for bed! LAZY TARA!!) I wish I was a little more organized than I am. But I just don’t seem to have the time to devote to organizing anymore. I’m usually kind of anal about my books and the way they are placed on my shelves and whatnot. But here lately with work, a long commute, our dog Buster, well the books have been getting neglected here recently. Eventually I’ll get my act in gear and get everything re-sorted to my liking.

Mailbox Monday, Meme

Mailbox Monday, July 13, 2009

Mailbox Monday

Mailbox Mondays

Before I begin – I must say that this week was a wonderful week for my mailbox after nothing in it last week 🙂

Monday, July 6

The Lost Hours by Karen White The Lost Hours by Karen White

Surviving the tragic accident that killed her parents has always made Piper Mills feel invincible. That is, until fate strikes again and a near-fatal fall from a horse destroys her dreams of becoming an Olympic equestrian. Feeling more fragile than ever, Piper returns to Savannah, and to the home she inherited from her grandparents to retreat, recover, and reflect on all that she has lost. It’s during her recuperation that Piper discovers a secret room and torn pages from an old scrapbook that allude to a tragedy in her grandmother’s past. Determined to untangle the mystery, Piper tracks down her grandmother’s childhood friend, a woman named Lily, who clearly knows the truth – and the dark secrets hidden in the house. But Lily has secrets of her own – secrets she believes are better left forgotten. And for Piper to unearth the truth, she will have to be willing to open her heart to new relationships, heal the heartaches of the past, and find the courage to embrace the future.

I received this one from a fellow member of the Yahoo group ReadNSwap. I think it sounds like a good read. Plus I have been really kind of interested in reading more of what I would consider to be women’s literature rather than just straight mystery/thrillers/suspense (although that will always be my favorite!)

Friday, July 10

Venom by Jeffery Ames Venom by Jeffrey Ames

To those hunting him, he is the Fiddleback – an inhuman predator with a taste for human prey and an appetite for torture. To his victims, he is a nightmare come to life at the moment of death. His motive is his madness. His madness has no method. His methods hold no mercy. The one person who can stop him: Dallas cop Courtney Bedell, the only person who has seen the killer and survived. Now, to save herself ad those she loves, Courtney must match wits with a madman unlike any ever known – and lure the Fiddleback into a web of her own desgn ….

I also received this one from a fellow member of ReadNSwap (different member). I don’t really know what it was about this title, but it really drew me to requesting this book. I’m definitely looking forward to it!

Killing Orders by Sara Paretsky Killing Orders by Sara Paretsky

V.I. Warshawski’s latest case had alreadyopned up old wounds. But when a silk voice on the phone threatened to throw acid into her eyes, V.I. knew this one could finish her off with some brand-new ones. The sour-faced old aunt she had agreed to help was accused of stealing millions in stock certificates from a pious order of Dominican brothers. V.I. knew the woman was a witch, not a thief, and she soon smelled something rotten in the sanctum sanctorum of Chicago’s most powerful movers and shakers – the Church and the Mob. Now someone wanted to see V.I. burn in hell. But this tough cookie of a private eye had her back up, a brand-new Smith & Wesson, and a daring plan to make the bad guys go to the devil first.

This one I received as a birthday book from a fellow member at the Yahoo group MysteryBookSwap. I had had my eye on this one over at PBS for quite some time, but I was just unsure about spending a credit on it and I never could find a Boxer that would swap for it. So I was very glad to see Kathy had this one on her list.

Denial by Keith Ablow Denial by Keith Ablow

Frank Clevenger is a forensic psychiatrist who hates authority, fears intimacy, uses sex as an anesthetic, is tortured by his professional mistakes, and can’t free himself from the shadows of a brutal, alcoholic father and an absent, unfeeling mother. But it is precisely this injured psyche that allows him to understand the deranged behavior of the mental and emotional outcasts who cross his professional path. When a young woman is discovered brutally murdered, her body mutilated, Clevenger is shocked to discover that he knows the woman, she is a close friend of his girlfriend, and that the police department’s main suspect, a schizophrenic homeless man, cannot have committed the crime. As evidence of more shocking murders begins to mount over the next seventy-two hours, Clevenger must race to stop the senseless, horrific murders in the fight of his life against a brutal killer with a horrific trademark and his own howling demons of sexual compulsion, self-destruction, and …. DENIAL

I received this one as part of a three-book swap on PBS. I have seen this one pop up randomly in places and have been mildly interested in it and figured it would be something worth trying, so I’m looking forward to it!

The Dying Game by Beverly Barton The Dying Game by Beverly Barton

It’s the ultimate game – the adrenaline surge of the hunt, the thrill of victory, the agony of defeat. For in this game, the rules are simple: To wn, you only have to kill. To lose, you will have to die…. The victims are former beauty queens found with a single rose beside their bodies. Lindsay McAllister has seen this signature before, when she was a rookie detective with the Chattanooga PD investigating the death of Judd Walker’s wife, a murder that sent the handsome lawyer off the deep end. Now, Lindsay has the brutal task of telling Judd that his wife’s killer has struck again, and she’s going to need his help to outplay their opponent – because the killer is getting bolder, faster, and more ruthless. The game is escalating, and no one is safe. Now as the body count rises, the rules are changing. A killer will do anything to win. And the only way for Lindsay to stop a madman’s twisted game is to play it herself…

This is the second book of the three book swap from PBS. I have only read one Beverly Barton book but I absolutely adored it! So I was pleased to see this one available and am definitely looking forward to reading it! I hope it’s as good as it sounds!!!

Silent Partner by Jonathan Kellerman Silent Partner by Jonathan Kellerman

At a party for a controversial Los Angeles sex therapist, Alex Delaware encounters a face from his own past – Sharon Ransom, an exquisite, alluring lover who left him abruptly more than a decade earlier. Sharon now hints that she desperately needs help, but Alex evades her. The next day she is dead, an apparent suicide. Driven by guilt and sadness, Alex plunges into the maze of Sharon’s life – a journey that will take him through the pleasure palaces of California’s ultrarich, into the alleyways of the mind, where childhood terrors still hold sway.

This was the last book in the three book swap from PBS. I am trying to gather all the books in the Alex Delaware series so that I can read them and was glad to see this one available. I hope to start reading When the Bough Breaks soon so that I can really get into this series from the start!

Announcements

Changes?

Okay, so I’m not even sure about how many people actually follow this blog. However, I’ve been thinking about making some changes. I have tried to keep this blog strictly for book related things. However, the more I browse other people’s blogs (and see them in my Google Reader) I realize that there’s more to life than just the book reviews. I always love to read little updates about what people are doing in life, whether it be a little post celebrating their pets birthday, or vacation photos, or whatever. But I’ve tried to really keep that stuff to a minimum on this blog. I guess that’s because I was really trying to be anonymous on here (my husband is the only person I know in real life that even knows I have a blog, and he’s only seen it a few rare times). So I’m going to be imposing a few changes around here and wanted to let everyone know what’s up….

  1. I will be probably be posting random life posts. If I have a bad day at work, you might read about it. If I have a super cute picture of our puppy, Buster, you’ll probably see it. If you don’t like this, I’m sorry. But don’t fret, I probably won’t be going post crazy with this stuff.
  2. From now on, to keep things neat and tidy, all my review posts will begin with “REVIEW” That way people can scroll through quickly in their reader and be able to quickly pick out the reviews.
  3. I’m also going to be fiddling with my categories/tags. I’m not really pleased with how they’re set up, so bear with me on that.
  4. I’m also going to start working on my indexing around here. I like the Pages options of WordPress, and I’m going to really start to play around with them and get it set up the way I really want it done.
  5. I’m going to make an effort to do some more weekly memes. I currently am only doing Mailbox Monday (which is really helping me keep track of the books that are coming in the house). I’ve done Friday Fill Ins and Booking Through Thursday in the past. You might see me doing some more of those.
  6. I’m also going to be doing some tweaking to the way I format my reviews. I know that it’s minimalistic but I would like to really work on expanding my opinions of the book. Rather than stating “I really liked this one” I want to be a little more involved in my review. Who knows what I’ll come up with, but keep in mind that it’s going to be a work in progress for a while.
  7. I’ve decided that I really want to spend some time reading books in the series that I’ve got going on right now. If you see my page about the book series I’m reading, you’d be amazed at how many I’ve got going. Well, for some reason I’m really on a series kick, plus I’m not really all that interested in some of my reading challenges, so who knows where my reading is going to take me, but you might see me not mentioning any new challenges for quite some time because right now it’s not where my interest is.

So that’s what I’ve thought up so far. Who knows what other changes you’re going to be seeing around here. Who knows how many people could actually care, lol. I sometimes feel like I’m neglecting this blog. And I really am proud of it, I’ve been blogging since January 1st of 2008 and I feel like I really need to make some changes in the way that I read, blog and review. So please bear with me in the future 🙂

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

The Maze by Catherine Coulter

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

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!!!

Monthly Wrap Up

June 2009 Wrap-Up

June 2009 Wrap-Up

Here’s my end of the month wrap-up:

  1. Steve Berry, The Templar Legacy
  2. Fran Rizer, A Tisket, a Tasket, a Fancy Stolen Casket
  3. Carol Higgins Clark, Snagged
  4. Larry Watson, In a Dark Time
  5. The Goldman Family, If I Did It
  6. Charlaine Harris, Grave Surprise

Here are some statistics in regards to my reading:

  • Books read: 6
  • Pages read: 1803
  • New Authors: 3
  • Fiction: 5
  • Nonfiction: 1
  • Read for Challenges: 6
Mailbox Monday, Meme

Mailbox Monday, June 29, 2009

Mailbox Monday

Mailbox Mondays

Tuesday, June 23
No One Lives Forever by Jordan Dane
No One Lives Forever by Jordan Dane

Born to a childhood pitted by violence, Christian Delacorte is desperate for peace when he embarks on a new life with the woman he loves, Detective Raven Mackenzie. But soon his old life comes calling – in the tempting form of a mysterious woman assassin. Jasmine Lee is determined to collect an old marker from Christian. He owes her – big time – and she needs his help freeing her kidnapped lover, Nicholas Charboneau – a powerful mogul linked to Chicago’s underworld. Christian doesn’t trust her, but Jasmine entices him to leave Raven behind when she reveals his shocking connection to Charboneau. Christian has seven days to attempt an impossible rescue of the father he never knew. And when a woman assassin with ulterior motives makes a lousy ally, Christian is alone to face the stark reality that no one lives forever … and he might be the next to die.

AUTHOR, Book Review, Fiction, H, Harper Connelly, Read in 2009, SERIES

Grave Surprise by Charlaine Harris

Grave Surprise
by Charlaine Harris

Copyright: 2006
Pages: 295
Rating: 4/5
Read: June 20-24, 2009
Challenge:  2009 100+ Reading Challenge; Countdown Challenge
Yearly Count: 32

First Line: I didn’t like Clyde Nunley the first time I met him face-to-face in the old cemetery.

Harper Connelly is back in this second installment. This time around, she finds herself in Memphis, Tennessee. She has been called in by Professor Clyde Nunley to demonstrate her ability for his Occult Studies class. They end up in an old cemetery on campus where Harper goes to work identifying the people in the old graves as well as what they died from. But she finds someone she never expected to be there – a little girl that she had failed to find the previous year. Now Harper and her step-brother Tolliver set out to find out how Tabitha got where she was and how it could not possibly be a coincidence that Harper ended up finding her in the end.

I really enjoyed this book. I really think that this is a fun and interesting series. I have really taken to Harper as a character, I think that she’s believable even with her strange ability. I am definitely looking forward to reading the third in this series as soon as it comes available at my library, as well as the long-awaited fourth book which is due out later this year.

AUTHOR, Book Review, G, Nonfiction, Read in 2009

If I Did It by the Goldman Family

If I Did It: Confessions of the Killer
by The Goldman Family

Copyright: 2006
Pages: 202
Rating: 4/5
Read: June 17-22, 2009
Challenge:  2009 100+ Reading Challenge
Yearly Count: 31

First Line: I’m going to tell you a story you’ve never heard before, because no one knows this story the way I know it.

Unless you were living under a rock in 1994, you know this story. Nicole Brown Simpson & Ron Goldman were brutally murdered one night in June. Her ex-husband, the famous O.J. Simpson was the assumed killer. Practically everyone thought he had done it … but he walked away a free man. Although the Goldman family won in a civil trial, they never got the money out of Simpson that they were awarded. Until one day in 2006 when it came out that O.J. was going to write a book, a so-called confession. They fought him on it, they didn’t want something like that in print. But then they realized that maybe it should be published, but that they wanted the rights to it. Well, they eventually won and the book was published.

Okay, so I was a little young in 1994 … I’m going to out my age here, I was 9. However, I remember the trial in 1995. I remember specifically that I was at Walt Disney World with my grandparents and we could hardly pull my grandfather away from the TV to go to the park because he was glued to the trial. I was obviously too young to really know what was going on. But as I grew up and really got interested in true crime stories I saw many TV specials and books on the trial. I formed an opinion based on what I read. When this book came out a few years ago, I have to admit, I was intrigued. A confession? Really?! But I didn’t really want to buy it. So when I saw it in the library last week I snatched it up knowing now would be a great time to read it. And I have to say, the actual original manuscript written by the ghostwriter after extensive interviews with O.J., it was chilling. It sure seemed more of a confession rather than a “If I had done it, this is how I would have done it.” Whatever your opinion on whether or not O.J. did it, this book is a must-read for anyone interested in this trial.