Kari
With each book we're getting a bit more info on the family history. We met Karin's grandmother on her father's side and learned how her parents met. I would like a little more about Kenta's backstory. Hopefully that will come soon!
Ugh. Worst series ever. I gave Kay Scarpetta a heroic try, dragging myself through 6 awful books waiting for things to get better, but they never did. At least the boring Temple Gault (horrendous name by the way) is over and done with. I have so many gripes about this series it's hard to know where to begin.
First off, isn't she the medical examiner? Shouldn't she be doing more corpse examining? Why is she always running off somewhere to go investigate? I understand the consultant forensic pathologist role for the FBI, but she doesn't just lend her knowledge about the body she has to try to be a profiler and an investigator too. I don't know why the FBI has Benton or Marino when they could just keep Scarpetta full time.
Second, the characters suck. There is not one likeable person in this whole series. NOT ONE.
-Kay Scarpetta, rages and whines all day long about everything under the sun. Is snooty and moody, bitches about everything and puts herself in the dumbest situations I have ever read a main character doing. It is unbelievable to me that a medical examiner would have to kill so many people within their career much less in 6 years.
-Lucy, the niece. Totally gets her moodiness & bitchiness from her aunt. Her smart ass attitude and Kay's bragging about her genius (which only works for computers because in commonsense that girl is a dud - also something she inherited from her aunt) is tiresome. And of course, she must be a lesbian because her mother is an asshole. eye roll
-Marino, grumpy, overweight, overprotective and unattractive. ‘Nuff said.
-Wesley Benton, emotionless adulterer who not only cheats on his wife (who is friends with Kay also) but cheats on his wife with his dead best friend's lover.
Thirdly (is that a word?), the stories all get so boring and long winded. There's so much talking about what they're going to do that when it finally happens it takes about 5 paragraphs and the whole thing is over. The books end so abruptly and begin the same way I always have to double check that I didn't miss a book in the series.
All in all I am done with this series for awhile, if not forever. I would much rather read Kathy Reichs. At least some of her characters are decent human beings.
For a doctor-lawyer Kay Scarpetta is one of the dumbest characters I have ever come across. She knows who the killer is and just does really ridiculous things that end up putting her in bad situations. It's definitely not the first time I've wanted to scream ‘what the heck are you doing?!?!'
I love Kathy Griffin. And I loved her book. I laughed at her self-deprecating humor, her honesty and brashness and I cried when she spoke of David Strickland and Phil Hartman (full disclosure, I cry whenever someone talks about Phil Hartman). She talks about her time with The Groundlings and Suddenly Susan. Bad comedic choices she made and her successes as well. Her parents feature largely and she even speaks of her brother that she suspected was a pedophile. And not in a funny way. She is both at times brutally honest and serious and then brutally honest and hilarious.
David Baldacci has written one of my favorite series and my favorite characters in the Camel Club series and I've pretty much loved anything I've read that he's written, but this time, True Blue was the exception to the rule.
After finishing her two sentence for armed robbery, Mace Perry is determined to clear her name and rejoin the police force, the only place she feels she belongs. When her sister Beth, D.C.'s chief of police is called to the scene of a murder Mace begs to tag along.
Knowing there's very little chance that she'll ever discover and expose the people who framed her Mace believes that if she can solve a case she'll get her shield back.
Let me go on record by saying that Mace is probably my least favorite character from Baldacci's roll call. I don't even know why. She just annoys me. I'm thinking this might turn into a series due to the completely unsatisfactory ending! I'd really be really excited to read another book if Beth Perry is the focus, otherwise I might just skip out on it.
Who am I kidding? When have I ever quit reading a series? Um ... Never.
http://knowitnotsomuch.blogspot.com/2011/02/truly-not-my-thing.html
I went back and forth between being invested and being bored by this book. It started to really get good and could have been a 4 star book, but waiting for Cordelia to piece everything together when she was being handed the information was painful and that just about ruined the book for me.
It will come as no surprise to anyone that I did no research before starting this. I didn't know it was an incomplete trilogy! This took a long time to set up the story, very similar to The Guardians Trilogy, but I'm invested in the lost brides!
This was mostly boring until about 2/3rds of the way through when Opaline made her way back to the bookshop. But otherwise, it was confusing and full of plot holes.
A little like Melissa de la Cruz's Van Alen books and a little like Alyson Noel's Immortals series, but much much better. The characters are all mysterious and while you feel like you might have an idea about what the story is about the ending is still a surprise. Although seemingly rushed near the end and slightly disappointed to find this is first in a series it was still a good read!
I really just can't get into these books! I don't know what it is about them. Maybe there's just not quite enough going on for me.
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.
I don't know where to begin with this one. So very well written, so very dark and sad and hopeful. Throughout the book I was not a fan of Sam. I didn't think she deserved to die, but I wouldn't want to be friends with her. However, at some point near the end I found myself loving her, rooting for her, feeling her pain & confusion. I wish that Oliver had developed Juliet a little more and maybe Lindsay a little less, but this book shook me.
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.
Rose was starting to get on my nerves a bit this book. She was slightly crazy and quite selfish & more irrational than usual. There was less vulnerability there than the last books. But there was a lot going on this time and it ended on quite the cliffhanger!
I'm was really surprised at how much I enjoyed this trilogy. Ehwa was so sweet, but she could be a little brat sometimes. She grew up and learned more, but retained that innocence and sweetness. I think near the end of this one I started to relate more when Ehwa's mother realized how soon Ehwa would be leaving her behind to get married. The whole sadness of having an empty nest, of ‘losing' your daughter to someone else was so very sad.
This review is for books 1-5.
This is what one might call the graphic novel for book lovers. The whole idea is that books fuel the world. That people can come together to all love a book, think about a book and that will fuel the magic that the world is lacking yet needs. But there's this group of people who age incredibly slowly and they control the world by controlling the literature that the world is exposed to and they'll do whatever it takes to get that control.
I think.
These books have a lot going on and mostly at times I feel slightly confused. Still, they are exciting and, well, graphic. The only one I had a hard time with was Leviathan. All that Moby Dick talk bored the heck out of me. Not a fan.
But if you love books this could possibly be the best series of graphic novels you've ever read.
I loved this. I loved how I doubted myself throughout the book and HATED Katherine. This had my emotions all over the place and I loved it. And it was fucking gory as all get out.
This was not what I expected at all, but I really liked it. It was a bit more serious than other witch mysteries I've read and there wasn't much police presence. It was all very different!
I was thinking that the more times a murder happens in Three Pines the more unrealistic things will get. The smaller the victim and suspect pool gets and I began to worry that someone I liked would fall into one of those categories. It's interesting how things turn out.
How suddenly, a character you liked before becomes someone completely different. I really, really can't say much about this book because it's so easily given away, but I will say if you are reading this series you're already invested and this will just sink you in deeper. And while the book ends it doesn't feel concluded. Maybe it's just wishful thinking, but I don't think this story is finished. I'm immediately picking up the next book to see if it does continue in any way.
But I will say this book changed the way I saw Three Pines and the people who were once so lovely.
I picked this book up because I started watching the show Shetland on Netflix and discovered it was based on this series. I only watched the first episode, but from what I remember the only things that were the same as the book were Jimmy Perez and the island.
Nonetheless, this was certainly worth the read! The murders were mysterious and mind-boggling and the suspects never seem to narrow. I loved the way she wrote and I was extremely satisfied with the ending!
I've fallen out of like with most of the characters now. Dakota was annoyingly selfish and spoiled, Anita was wishy-washy and spineless and everyone else just seemed whiny!
I hate this book. Hate it. I've endured the book because I thought it had to get better, it's Dan Brown. Nope, it doesn't. I knew who the bad guy was, but I thought, it couldn't possibly be that simple. Oh. It was. The twist is revealed about two-thirds of the way through the book, the bad guy revealed and dispatched and then you're just dragged through the most boring, useless, arbitrary history lesson. Sure, Brown lectured us in Angels & Demons and in The Da Vinci Code, but that was interesting and woven throughout the story. This was just boring and frustrating. I so badly wanted the book to be over. These are some other things that annoyed me.
1. Robert Langdon. He was just annoying.
2. The absurd repetition. Explaining or describing things over and over again. It's as if Brown believes people are picking up the book at random chapters and need to be filled in along the way. I can't tell you how many times Mal'akh tattoos have been described. How many times the pyramid was described or other parts of the story repeated from albeit different characters, but not with any new information.
3. For smart people Katherine Solomon and Robert Langdon do some truly idiotic things.
4. Noetic Science is dumb. I don't need a Freemason version of ‘The Secret'.
5. Brown tries to inject suspense throughout the book by only giving some of the information then going to another chapter, leaving you wondering what was said or seen. For example, after Peter shows Robert the Ancient Mysteries Robert asks Peter to do him a favor as a friend. ‘Peter replies ‘Of course. Anything.' Langdon made his request...firmly.' But you don't know what Robert asks until the next chapter when you discover the favor was for Peter to go to the hospital. Really? That was the mystery? Get over yourself Dan Brown.
I'm pretty sure that Brown wrote this book to appease all the religious people he pissed off with his two previous novels. I'm going to have to ask him to knock that crap off.