Kari

I really enjoyed the first few novels in the Anita Blake series, before everything became a love triangle and boring sameness. So having the graphic novels of the first few books is exciting. The graphic novel so far is pretty much just an illustrated version of the novel and that is fantastic. It would be have been annoying if they changed it around. It's fun to have faces to add to the ideas you have in your head of what characters in the book should look like. The illustrations are brilliant & translation from novel to graphic novel is seamless.

There was some pretty dark topics for a cozy mystery here! I'm still not sure about this series though. The antiquated ideas that Lucy needs to have dinner on the table for her husband and when she leaves the kids with him he's babysitting set my teeth on edge. And her doctor scolding her for gaining weight while pregnant! Gah!

Not a fan.

Maybe reading so many English translated mangas has spoiled me, but this just seemed to fall flat. Nicole is not endearing, her friend Sarah has no depth and Josh is just a desperate weirdo. The only real interesting thing is the dream that Nicole has and continues to write about. I thought there would be more to that, but the whole story dragged on about Josh trying to get Nicole to go out with him.

I know this is part one of a two part series, but I wasn't left with a feeling of needing to know what becomes of the characters. Even Ellon being left in the lurch isn't interesting enough for me.

Too bad.

Liked the story, it was sweet and sad. Loved the art. Whimsical and for some reason the sepia really worked for me.

Another great volume in a superb series.

http://knowitnotsomuch.blogspot.com/2013/01/locke-key-crown-of-shadows.html

This was a fun little twisty-turny mystery. I always love reading these cozy mysteries that have something to do with knitting or crocheting, but I swear every time I do I itch to start a new project and end up with a few more patterns than I did before I started!

It most definitely a book I could curl up and read. While it's a murder mystery there's certainly something comforting about it.

There was so much going on in this book it gave me a headache. So many names, so many bodies and it was truly just too much of a stretch that everything was related.

You can't just skim over stuff in the book, otherwise you'll find yourself completely lost. There's so much information and so much of it technical that I swear I'm at least 10 IQ points higher than I was when I started. While I like learning the ins and outs of forensic anthropology this one started to lose me after a bit.

I did like the human interest part of it. Lily & Katy were a breath of fresh air, but Tempe's hesitation with Ryan and Charlie is starting to get kind of old. There was a Patricia Cornwell moment that I hope never happens again. At a climactic part of the book Tempe runs out to help and I have to wonder, what does an intelligent woman think she's going to accomplish out there? She's unarmed, untrained and unnecessary. All she would do is become a distraction and a liability. It was a bizarre way to keep eyes on the action since the story is told from her point of view I suppose, but it read as ‘Tempe is an idiot' to me.

This review is for 4 of Rick Geary's Victorian Murder Books: The Borden Tragedy, The Case of Madeleine Smith, The Beast of Chicago, and The Saga of the Bloody Benders.

Dry, fact-based accounts of some of the more notorious murderers in history. They read almost like textbooks. There is no creative license taken in any of these. While interesting, some get downright boring. The Bloody Benders was spent going on a history lesson of Kansas and of the guesstimations of where the Benders might have relocated. Very little was spent on the family itself because it seems very little is known of the family, which begs the questions why include them in this series?

I found The Borden Tragedy most interesting because out of the four I read it had the markings of a true whodunit. By all accounts it would seem that Lizzie Borden was innocent. So who then, murdered her father and step-mother?

Madeleine Smith was also an intriguing because it seemed only she could be the culprit and if so she got away with murder to live a long and fulfilling life.

The Beast of Chicago was impressive mostly in how H. H. Holmes's trail of back and forth travels was kept straight!

If you're looking for no nonsense reads on murderers these are your books. If you're hoping for some entertaining read I might try elsewhere.

Whoa. This book was intense. Dealing with very psychologically disturbed children, Live to Tell doesn't pull any punches. We switch narrators between Detective D. D. Warren, Victoria, the mother of a violent son and Danielle, the only survivor of a family annihilation. That in itself sounds pretty heavy, but then you add in time spent in a children's psychiatric ward you're pretty much wrung dry.

I have very little to complain about Lisa Gardner's writing. I was at the edge of my seat, the pages flew by. I was both enthralled and horrified. But Warren was sooooo dang grumpy in this book! I truly don't remember her being this obnoxious. While the crimes were awful and she had to face them I didn't feel like she was emotionally disturbed by the crimes themselves, but more that she was pissed off that they weren't as clear cut as she thought and she was really horny and not getting any sex.

I counted the number of times she ‘scowled' at someone. It was 13. One thing that drives me nuts in books is repetitive stuff and the scowling was too much repetition for me.

But really, that was it. I loved Danielle, went back and forth with Victoria. Sometimes I felt she was an idiot, that her ex-husband was right and other times I thought she was the hero and in the end I found she was the strongest one of all.

Definitely not a story for everyone. Definitely full of stuff people don't want to think about actually existing in their world, but it was a good read if you're up for it.

Thaddeus is a brat and mostly obnoxious, but he has a point. Something strange is afoot when it comes to his baby sister. I enjoyed this one more than I thought I would. It was a fun and surprisingly sweet story of siblings.

Cute and fun. Kind of rushed through the end there once she seems the world through her mask, but still I liked it. I would have liked to see her cousin's reaction though.

While the plot is different and the characters have different names than the Mortal Instrument series it feels very similar. Which is should, I suppose, seeing how this is the prequel. Will is very much like Jace, Jem like Simon and Tessa like Clary, just slightly different roles. I enjoyed seeing Magnus Bane again though! Of course, Clare leaves on quite the cliffhanger so be prepared to be waiting on pins and needles until nearly a year when the next book comes out!

The Legend of Zelda manga series is a collection of 10 books that are written in collaboration by two women, A. Honda & S. Nagano. When they started they played all the games so they could get an idea of the story and then they sat an elaborated to create the books.

There's a great attention to detail from Link to his companions to the enemies he fights. It's so much more interesting to read the conversations and see the familiar places from the games from a different perspective.

Go get this book. Get it right now and you won't be sorry. Amazing! Read my full review here: http://knowitnotsomuch.blogspot.com/2011/04/i-havent-even-finished-yet.html, but really you should just go get the book and read it yourself!

This book did not make me happy.

The saddest of the Reacher books for me, by far.

To be honest I'm not sure how to feel about this book. It was scattered nearly all the way through, then extremely hard to get through and then terrifying and finally hopeful. I think the hopeful bit at the end is what saved the whole thing for me. Keyes doesn't stray from tough subjects and brutal writing, but I just wasn't expecting some of this.

First off, the name Haven really drives me nuts. It's the name of Ever's ex-best friend in the Immortals series (which is strangely similar to this book) and she bugs the heck out of me.

Haven is not the brightest bulb in the box and she is not very good at reading people. She makes really dumb decisions and decides to trust the wrong people with the flimsiest excuses ever.

But the story was interesting. Reincarnation, the Ouroboros Society, et al, but then Miller introduces a supernatural type and it gets a little less interesting. Still, it was a quick read and I wasn't bored!

This review is for the series as a (almost) whole, reviewing after reading books 1-10.

It took me quite some time to really get into this series. Books 2-4 were okay. They kept me entertained and curious enough to keep going, but I don't think it was really until book 5 that I really got invested in the series and Nodame and Shinichi.

I'm not a fan of classical music so some of the lingo and storylines went over my head, but I got the gist of most stuff. Shinichi finds himself stuck with Nodame no matter how mean he is to her. He tries to make her aware that he wants nothing to do with her, but when something goes wrong he is always there. When she leaves their apartment complex mysteriously for a long period of time he must know what happened and if she's okay. And Nodame loves him despite everything. Even though she's a little nutty and extremely childlike she does her best to take care of him, ultimately giving him the greatest gift she could give him and he doesn't even know it.

Unfortunately, the library only has the first 10 books so I'm on the hunt for books 11-16 which is proving to be harder than I thought. I did also find that Crackle has the anime series available to watch!

And here comes the love triangle.

This review is for the series as a (almost) whole, reviewing after reading books 1-10.

It took me quite some time to really get into this series. Books 2-4 were okay. They kept me entertained and curious enough to keep going, but I don't think it was really until book 5 that I really got invested in the series and Nodame and Shinichi.

I'm not a fan of classical music so some of the lingo and storylines went over my head, but I got the gist of most stuff. Shinichi finds himself stuck with Nodame no matter how mean he is to her. He tries to make her aware that he wants nothing to do with her, but when something goes wrong he is always there. When she leaves their apartment complex mysteriously for a long period of time he must know what happened and if she's okay. And Nodame loves him despite everything. Even though she's a little nutty and extremely childlike she does her best to take care of him, ultimately giving him the greatest gift she could give him and he doesn't even know it.

Unfortunately, the library only has the first 10 books so I'm on the hunt for books 11-16 which is proving to be harder than I thought. I did also find that Crackle has the anime series available to watch!

review for the Sookie story. I don't even know what Charlaine Harris's purpose was in writing this short story except maybe putting Sookie & Pam in a situation where they had to pole dance. It really was just silliness.

You can read my full review here: http://knowitnotsomuch.blogspot.com/2012/09/the-search.html

These are kind of starting to feel the same. Rhyme gets called in to solve a case that apparently no one else can figure out. Amelia does his bidding and Tom is his whipping boy. Rhyme drinks whiskey from a straw and Pulanski does something incredibly stupid because he is scared and then does something else stupid because he's not smart. The killer isn't the killer and there are 27 twists. We all think (we don't) Rhyme got it wrong, but surprise! (not surprised) He knew all along and (gasp) set the killer up! Case solved, 82 extra chapters and then finally, the end.

I finally sat down and read the last in the Millennium Trilogy. I'd been putting it off for some time now because I just didn't want to be done with it. Knowing that there is really no chance there will ever be another book, at least not one written by Larsson, made me drag my feet.

I suppose it was a satisfying ending to an excellent trilogy. Lisbeth is one of my favorite book characters. She's tough, yet slightly vulnerable. Incredibly smart and despite her better judgment quite moral.

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo was slow to start for me. The financial process in the beginning of the book was not only over my head, but incredibly boring and I almost put the book down. I had read the book before it became a hit so I hadn't heard anything about it yet, but I powered through it anyway. And I'm glad I did. It was a brilliant book. The characters were rich and full and the story was so mysterious and suspenseful. I loved it.

The Girl Who Played with Fire jumped right into the action, but it kind of felt like it was a filler to get to the last book. The focus on Lisbeth was gripping and frustrating and the fact that readers had to wait until the next book to get resolution was unexpected. Especially since the first book was more like a stand alone type novel.

The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest took quite some time to get going. Watching the conspiracy unfold was excruciating! I didn't really get into the book until the last third, about the time of the trial. I couldn't wait to see what everyone had up their sleeves.

There were a few things that seemed unnecessary to me. One of them being the off shoot of Berger to SMP. I thought it would somehow tie into the story as a whole, but not so much.

Still, one of the best trilogies I've ever read. It is so sad that Stieg Larsson didn't live to see his books' successes, but what a success it is.

http://knowitnotsomuch.blogspot.com/2011/02/girl-who-captivated-world.html