Razvan Cazacu

Read this a couple months ago and just had to get through the last couple tens of pages. The book is...a lot; you have four characters, and in the beginning it feels confusing because you can't keep track of all of them. Eventually, you keep focus on two of them, while one has episodic appearances and the other one is literally there just to design the others' apartments; I would've loved to see Malcom join the others a lot more, because otherwise this feels like a three friends and another person scenario rather than the four friends that share a deep bond type thing that the synopsis indicated. I've honestly picked up this book because I have heard many individuals talk about how this book made them bawl so hard, so I had to check it out. While the few chapters that talk about Jude's past experiences are considerably graphic and can be triggering to some individuals, I can't but feel that the author has diluted the level of seriousness that the scenes should have had; throughout the book, all the characters want to know things about Jude's past and it is always described as something horrific and gruesome, and as such, you have this sensation that the author couldn't control themselves to keep the twist and secret for the end and left little bits across the book to sort of keep you involved.
Leaving that aside, the book is realistic; the characters are vivid and their relationships are similar to those that adults have in real life. The progression is believable, and the book correctly describes how one should act and behave with a friend that has a troubled past. It might be just the fact that I have read them after a couple of months and while I was reading something completely different, but the last twenty pages really saved the book and brought it from questionably mediocre to a decent contemporary novel.

Truly, exactly what the title says it is. Nothing more, nothing less.

Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemtpion - You know the story. If you don't, I'm sorry that you haven't seen maybe the best movie ever made. Hope is a good thing, and what the story does different from the movie is that you never know the fate of Andy, or if Red made it to the pacific. Everything being related from Red's perspective makes you hope that he will get to see his friend again and shake his hand. Undiscussed 5 stars.
Apt Pupil - A brilliant and smart preadolescent boy finds out that one of his neighbours is an old nazi officer. From there the two of them develop a toxic relationship that could ruin both of their lives. Eventually everything goes downhill, as you would expect. It's the kind of story where you know the consequences will get worse progresivelly, and that's exactly what happened. At the beginning the kid was a bit too smart for his age to me but otherwise a decent read, 4 stars.
The Body - A poor copy of IT, a bunch of kids from a rural area. Due to it's small small size I felt that four characters were way too many, but eventually we lost focus on two of them and redirected our attention to the other two. Kind of a coming of age story that teaches you to look for yourself first and not to let others drag you down. 4 stars.
The Breathing Method - Nothing too exciting about this one, except the eerie feeling that the butler gave away. 3 stars.
Overall, a good collection of Stephen King stories, 4 stars.

More like 3.5

The rating is kind of small but I would still recommend reading this book, especially if you're a writer. You can probably learn a thing or two about foreshadowing and working with the reader's expectations.