The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins

Oh man, oh man.  This book really creeps up on a person.  I had heard good things from friends and it won a 2015 GoodReads award for Best Thriller so I shouldn't have been surprised.  It was a little slow going at first and the only thing that kept me going is the fact that the library waiting list was 10 months long.  But it gets to a point where you can't put it down, so not all was lost.

Rachel is an alcoholic who suffers from blackouts.  She has been having a rough couple of years.  Her husband has left her for another woman and they had a baby she desperately wanted.  She's living with a roommate that hates her drinking.  And even though Rachel lost her job, she still takes the train into the city everyday so the roommate doesn't kick her out of the house.  She is obsessed with her ex and often makes drunken phone calls, shows up at their house, etc.  Her daily ritual on the train is to look at the houses in the old neighbourhood and make up fantasies about the couple living a few doors down from her old house.  Something bad happens and fantasy wife with the perfect marriage goes missing.  Rachel knows something about that night but her blackouts make her memory spotty and untrustworthy.  The cops don't take her seriously and all she wants is a drink, back together with her ex-husband, a baby, and another drink again.

So, I think the reason I found it slow going at the first was because I didn't find these characters very likeable.  I could empathize with what Rachel and Megan were going through but it takes almost the whole book to really understand who these people are.  Once you get there, it is totally worth it.

So I guess it was a good thing that I had to wait 10 months to check this one out of the library.

Heat Wave by Richard Castle

This is mostly just a test, a test to see if I can still post to this blog. It has been forever and there really are no excuses. I wanted to blame my eyes and old age but apparently that isn’t completely the case. Or at least the eye part isn’t the problem, so says the optometrist. So I’m going to blame old age and the brain rotting power of television on my inability to finish books.


Coincidentally, the first book I’ve been able to finish in 2010 is based on the television show Castle. If you are not a fan, let me explain it a little to you. Richard Castle is an author who has used his connections to tag along with New York’s finest detectives as research for his new novel. Here he finds Detective Kate Beckett as his new muse. Each week we get a new weird murder and Castle uses his talents to help the police solve crime. So this brings us to the actual book. Turns out, if someone writes a fictional book based on a book that was fictionally created in a fictional universe…. I MUST HAVE IT. I must buy it, no matter how it makes me hate myself, just a little bit.

The book runs just like the show. Murder, suspect, suspect, interrogation, murder, evidence, suspect, alibis, forensics, action, suspense, etc. All the things you need for a Who-Done-It. Especially one that reads just like it was written as a script for the show except they changed the character names. There are a few things here that you don’t get on tv, like a sex scene and the relationship that seems to have a chance in hell of actually happening in my lifetime. But then, it wouldn’t be tv if they didn’t drag that out as long as possible.

Ultimately, it is the best example ever of a guilty pleasure. Don’t like admitting that I’d read a book like this but it was fun and don’t regret it. I suspect only fans of the show would appreciate the novelty of the book and forgive it for coming off a little over-the-top. Tell me if I’m wrong. Otherwise it was just fun and if you are a fan of the show, you will likely find it was worth the price of admission.

‘Til next time.

Fool Moon: Book Two of the Dresden Files by Jim Butcher

Oh how I love reading on my vacation. If you spend a Sunday reading, you don’t feel bad about ignoring all the things you should be doing before the start of the week. Not that that has prevented me from Sunday reading in the past but you know...

Fool Moon is the second book from Jim Butcher’s Dresden Files series of books. I read book one ages ago and did a review of it on the podcast. At the time, we also reviewed the show that can currently be found on your local sci-fi channel. Love the show and sometimes get taken back a bit by the differences in the two. I love the ghost like character, Bob, who is played by an actor you can see. Whereas in the book, he is a disembodied voice who lives in a skull on Dresden’s shelf and only comes out when Harry wants recipes for fun little potions or info on things like werewolves. Thankfully, television being a visual medium, they made him slightly more corporeal with a body we can see and with slightly more impact on the plot.

In Fool’s Moon, werewolves are afoot and in this little world, we don’t just have one set design for the wolves. That has to be the strongest selling point for the book. Typically, an author will take a look at past werewolf legends, pick a few characteristics they like, mix together and viola! They have their own creative spin on the monster legend. Butcher takes the time to incorporate four or five different types into his story and this allows for some interesting plot twists. Some are turned when they wear a magical belt, some turn when they chant some magic, some are cursed, etc.

Also, I noticed a big jump in writing quality when it came to this book in comparison to the first book in the series. The first one, the plot was so painfully obvious but he had created an interesting enough world that it made you want to keep reading. Here, you weren’t quite sure where it was going to go and he set up Dresden with enough obstacles that you couldn’t be sure if he could make it out alive. Granted, there are at least four more books in the series so I wasn’t all that worried but if the story is good enough, you can find yourself forgetting that little bit of info for awhile.

So, I’ll continue to read these books. They are fun and a nice break from reality every once in awhile.

Fell, Vol. 1: “Feral City” by Warren Ellis, Illustrated by Ben Templesmith

You can thank my local crack dealer for this one. Well, not really a crack dealer, he sells comics. Comics have become my new little addiction and it can give me the same zone out brainspace I usually can only achieve with stupid movies or sci-fi television. Anyway, I was in the local comic store when I spotted Fell issue 8 and picked it up. I was standing there, all bummed that I had missed out on the early issue of this series when the comic store guy hands me this volume of the first eight stories all so sweetly bound in a hardcopy edition. That guy is so evil.

Fell is about Detective Richard Fell who has been transferred to the bad side of the river for reasons that have yet to be determined. Snowtown is the demon child of urban decay. It is a city in fear; crime is so rampant that the police force has little effect to stamp it out. Most crimes go unreported and the ones that do, go mostly unsolved. Criminals are not afraid of the police as they are understaffed, burned out, and generally insane in some fashion. It is sort of like Gotham City but without the superheroes to get in the way. The only monsters in this story are the human ones. Fell is a good detective who can talk a bomber out of blowing up a building or get a confession out of someone who knows that they don’t have any evidence to convict. He uses logic to create order out of a world that only knows chaos. It all your favourite crime dramas and film noirs and urban decay stories all rolled up into one.

The art in this series deserves a paragraph all of its own. I could spend hours just absorbing the artwork of Ben Templesmith. There no smooth lines or perfect glossy finishes in this book. The lines have a frenetic energy that tell you that this is not a simple, colouring inside the lines, type of world. It is dirty, it is messy, and very human in its lowest form. The boy has talent.

All I can say is that I think this is the best series I’ve read since Sandman sucked me into this medium. It is the type that wants you to tell all your friends about it and make them read it just so that you can have someone to share it with. It is the type that makes you want to devour each chapter but also, you force yourself to enjoy it slowly because you know that once you finish the eighth chapter, you won’t have anymore until they print volume two. There better be a second volume.

The Pact by Jennifer Sturman

I really should have written this one up days ago but a friend gave me a book that is so nicely sordid that it hard to put down. More about that in the next review. Besides, I have a new cat and Simon prefers that I read than use the computer because it makes my lap more comfortable to sleep in. Oh, if only I had the life of my cat...

Well, since nothing of that has anything to do with the book I'm currently reviewing, this will be a very crude transition. The Pact is yet another in the series of borrowed books from the women at work. Just a couple more to go and I'll be free. We can only hope.

This one is chicklit goes Nancy Drew. It is a murder mystery and typically I don't do murder mysteries. They are okay 'n all but I get way too wound up trying to figure out who did it and I can't sit back and just enjoy it. As much as I love engaging literature, extra stress in my life is not what I'm looking for. Granted, this one doesn't rate higher than the Mickey Mouse Mystery Club so the valium prescription isn't required.

This book's Velma/Daphne is Rachel. Her old college roommate is getting married and she is playing the role of the maid of honor even though she hates the groom. So when Richard is found floating in the family swimming pool on the day of the wedding, she isn't all that grief-stricken. While the police are giving their all investigating the crime, the family and wedding party have been asked to stay at the house until they have it all figured out. As we soon learn, everyone has a motive to want him dead, even the best man whom Rachel has her sights on as prime boyfriend material. She plays Miss Marple and works to solve who did the dirty deed.

Anyway, it was an okay book. It felt very Murder She Wrote with a bit of “Voted Most Likely to Be Cancelled after Three Episodes” type of writing. Not necessarily horrible but I don't think I'll be admitting to anyone that I'd read this one. It would have been easier to live with if the characters had been stronger and not so caricature. You never get a scene with the vile Richard to see how vile he really is. We just have to trust this is the case via story recounts from the other characters. Even the detectives, who could have been interesting, were booted so very far into the background. They are almost non-entities and were really only a plot device. Oh well. If you like chicklit and some lite mystery, you might like this... I not so much.

A Telling of Stars by Caitlin Sweet

Review by Greta Dean

I stumbled upon this book entirely by accident. Most books I read tend to be the high recommendation of a friend/acquaintance/family member, but this one is entirely my fault. A Telling of Stars is about the journey of a girl, Jaele, on the cusp of womanhood to avenge the murder of her family. It is a coming of age story tinged with blood-rage.

Through her travels, Jaele meets a series of people who seem to want neither to help nor hinder her, although most of them try to persuade her that revenge killing is not a good idea. The characters range from the normal human variety to such alien creatures as exiled sea people forced to live on their ravaged desert homeland, and captive, cave dwelling, horned and taloned Iben, to whom the story is being told.

All in all, it was a good book, although the style was sluggish at times. It had the feel of a book written for teens (and for all I know, it was) and still trying to be enchanting to a more "mature" reading group. I recommend it on the sole basis that it is not set in some mid-western one-horse town that is visited by a big city kid, or vice versa.

And that is all I have to say about this...