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Review – Dead Ringer – Allen Wyler

23 Nov

Dead Ringer
Author: Allen Wyler

Review Copy provided by Blue Dot Literary

Book Description:
While speaking at a Hong Kong medical conference, neurosurgeon Dr. Lucas McCrae slips the cloth off a cadaver’s head during a routine medical demonstration, and is overwhelmed with the shock by what’s staring back at him: His best friend, Andy Baer.
Stunned, McCrae races back to Seattle to discover that Andy is in fact missing and may have been murdered by a gang of body snatchers who operate a legit funeral business and make a fortune by selling recovered body parts to medical researchers.

McCrae teams up with an unlikely pair—a beautiful but hardnosed female cop and a gang member whose family was victimized by the body parts ring—to try and expose a macabre web of corruption that involves law enforcement, politicians, funeral home curators and murdered prostitutes.

Review
After reading a previous book by Allen Wyler (Dead End Deal), I was impressed by the medical technique and familiarity that he brought to the storyline. In Dead Ringer, he managed to do that once again. Reading the description of Dead Ringer, I was like, the name of the main character (Lucas McCrae) sounds familiar, and then I realized that his name had been used as a cameo in Dead End Deal – so I liked how the author was able to tie to two books together though similar characters, without making them a true series.

But this book was for me, so much freakier than Dead End Deal. I have been an organ donor since I got my license nearly 15 years ago, and while I had thought about how my organs might be used, should anything ever happen to me – the depravity of the antagonist opened my eyes. I had read/heard about bad market deals with organs, so it didn’t really surprise me that there were ones for dead bodies as well – but wow, that’s about all I can say. I think that the author managed to walk the fine line between being dramatic, and cheesy – although, there were a few moments where I was like, uhhh ok…and personally, I felt that everything tied up in a pretty bow almost too easy…but I’m sure others would disagree with me.

I’m definitely interested in seeing more of what he writes in the future. Overall 3.5 stars.

Purchase from Amazon here: Dead Ringer (Print) or Dead Ringer (Kindle)

 
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Posted by on November 23, 2012 in Book Review

 

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Review – A Thousand Lives – Julia Scheeres

10 Nov

A Thousand Lives: The Untold Story of Hope, Deception, and Survival at Jonestown
Author: Julia Scheeres

Book Description:
In 1954, a pastor named Jim Jones opened a church in Indianapolis called People’s Temple Full Gospel Church. He was a charismatic preacher with idealistic beliefs, and he quickly filled his pews with an audience eager to hear his sermons on social justice. After Jones moved his church to Northern California in 1965, he became a major player in Northern California politics; he provided vital support in electing friendly political candidates to office, and they in turn offered him a protective shield that kept stories of abuse and fraud out of the papers. Even as Jones’s behavior became erratic and his message more ominous, his followers found it increasingly difficult to pull away from the church. By the time Jones relocated the Peoples Temple a final time to a remote jungle in Guyana and the U.S. Government decided to investigate allegations of abuse and false imprisonment in Jonestown, it was too late.

Review:
I have often heard the term “drinking the koolaid” and have even said it a time or two, but until I finished this book, I didn’t know the originals of the saying. Not growing up or attending school in the United States means that things many people learned in their history classes, I am clueless about (and don’t even get my started on my lack of knowledge of politics)…but when I was listening to Ice Cold (Tess Gerritsen), the Jonestown cult and massacre was mentioned and I was intrigued. And funnily enough, I was talking to some coworkers at the same time I was reading this and one of them mentioned the phrase and I was then about to put two and two together to understand. I then found out about this book while I was trying to find a book set in Guyana for my Around the World reading challenge – so it was like hitting two birds with one stone.

I loved how the author was able to use various documents that had been released by the FBI to develop the picture of what happened – since there is very little eye-witness testimony and most of the people who did survive (not that there were many of them) have since died. I was actually surprised to see the amount of information that had been recovered from the camp after the massacre was discovered. I found that the author did a good job of weaving the tale to make it interesting, I wanted to know about what happened. It wasn’t like a normal NF book where I can read bits and pieces and be ok with stopped, in the end, I think I read this in about 3 days, which is significantly less time than most non-fiction books that I read. I will definately be looking for her other book to read and will be interested to see what more she writes in the future. 3.5 stars.

 
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Posted by on November 10, 2012 in Book Review

 

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Classics Challenge Review – The Chocolate War – Robert Cormier

29 Oct

The Chocolate War
Author: Robert Cormier

Narrator: Frank Muller
Run Time:5hrs and 34 minutes

Book Description:
Jerry Renault ponders the question on the poster in his locker: Do I dare disturb the universe? Refusing to sell chocolates in the annual Trinity school fund-raiser may not seem like a radical thing to do. But when Jerry challenges a secret school society called The Vigils, his defiant act turns into an all-out war. Now the only question is: Who will survive?

Review
When I originally picked The Chocolate War by Robert Cormier to read for my 50 classics in 5 years challenge, I thought that it was because I had read it as a teen and wanted to re-read it to see how my opinion of it had changed over the years. However, I soon discovered that it wasn’t the book that I thought it was…(and unfortunately, I still haven’t figured out what that damn book it yet!!). But at the same time, I am glad that I chose to read/listen to it, but have decided that I need to pick up the second one (Beyond the Chocolate War), because I wasn’t all that impressed with the ending – it was too vague and unfinished for me.

However, the quote that continually shows up through the book – “dare I disturb the universe” is key to the events that unfolded through-out the course of the book. It is a question that so many people who engage in social protest ask themselves – is that one small action I might engage in, worth it. Will I succeed in what I am about to do? What are the consequences for me engaging in this action? It was interesting to hear, in the authors own words, how he came up with the idea for the book (his son who refused to sell school chocolates) and how his various what-if scenarios played out in the development of the various characters. Not only does the theme of social protest appear through-out but the idea of the role of bullying in society.

It was bullying by the group called the Vigils that started the chain of events that led to the events that occurred in the books; it was the bullying of Brother Leon of many of the students at the school that led to the culture where the Vigils flourished and were allowed to behave as they did. Like i mentioned above however, my main problem with how the book finished was that there was no real ending – the good guy (in this case, Jerry) didn’t prevail, we were kind of left wondering what happened or worse yet, left with the impression that evil will prevail and that it will beat good out every time. So I am curious to see what happens in the second book.

I found the narration by Frank Muller interesting – it seemed much more like a performance than the straight reading of a book. This isn’t something that I often run into when listening, so it was interesting. At first it was weird, but it kind of grew on me as the book progressed. He did have a good ability to have some fear inspiring voices like his rendition of Brother Leon. i have to say though, that since the entire cast of characters are male, there was really no way for me to judge how his female voices would sound – so I would be curious to listen to other narrations by him to find out how he renders those.

If the other books in my classics challenge are as thought provoking as this one, I look forward to reading more.

 
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Posted by on October 29, 2012 in Audiobook Review, classics challenge

 

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Review – Warrior’s Last Gift – Melissa Mayhue

17 Oct

Warrior’s Last Gift
Author: Melissa Mayhue
Series: 1.5 in the Warrior Series
Publisher: Pocket Star Books

Thanks to Pocket Star Books and Edelweiss for providing the e-copy of this book

Book Description
When Jeanne MacGhie had nowhere to turn, Eymer Horvesson stepped in with an offer of marriage. He asked for only one favor in return…and now that he’s dead, Jeanne will stop at nothing to keep her promise to the young warrior—even though it means turning to the one man she swore she’d never speak to again.

Eric MacNicol never expected a cavalier refusal to wed would result in his losing the one thing he truly wanted in life. When a warrior’s final request forces him on a cross-country quest with the widow, he must battle his inner demons to make the right decision this time. Only one last gift from a fallen warrior can offer them both a second chance at true love….

Review
Since I re-discovered Melissa Mayhue’s books above a month ago, I have been slowly but steadily working my way through her Daughters of the Glen series. However, when I was browsing Edelweiss not long ago, I saw that she had a second series out, again with Highlanders and I was all over it. Warrior’s Last Gift is the bridging book between the first and second books in the series, and while short (only about 70 pages), I felt that she was able to develop the characters into people I would like to get to know more of and hopefully they will appear in later books (pretty please!)

As with all books there was some stuff that I really enjoyed and others that I didn’t. I liked how you could tell that the author had done her research in various Norse traditions – it was reflected in the substance. However, at the same time, there was also a common romance trope that I’m not a fan of (involving babies), which was kind of disappointing. I can see why it was in there, but I don’t know, it just felt a bit too cliched’

I’m really looking forward to reading the other books in this series, especially with the Norse mythology that is featured in them, as well as the time travel. I would give Warrior’s Last Gift 3.5 stars for being a short cute read and I am looking forward to reading more.

 
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Posted by on October 17, 2012 in Book Review

 

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Review – Highland Guardian – Melissa Mayhue

27 Sep

Highland Guardian
Author: Melissa Mayhue
Series: #2 in the Daughters of the Glen series

Book Description:
Ian McCullough is neck-deep in his own trouble. A half-mortal descendant of Faeries, he’s been a Guardian for more than six hundred years, but he’s never encountered a woman like Sarah. Assigned to protect her, he finds the job tougher than he could have imagined. Oh, he can handle the stalker, and even the renegade Faeries trying to kidnap her. But falling in love means forsaking his role as Guardian — which is some-thing he could never do.

But there is no denying the passion that exists between two souls fated to be together.

Review:
Sometimes when you dig through your ancient purchases file you find a good read – I think I bought this book like 3 years ago not long after I got my kindle and I went crazy buying books. Then I promptly forgot about it until recently when I came across a recommendation for the first book in the series and I remembered that I had enjoyed the first book in the series, and had bought at least the next few to read. So I dug it out. Overall, I was pleasantly surprised with how much I enjoyed the read. Fae’s in general are a favorite paranormal creature of mine to show up in books and are often overlooked in the craze of vampires and werewolves that seems to dominate paranormal romance currently.

In terms of character development, I liked Sarah the main female character, but there was just something about Ian that irked me – its hard to describe – maybe it was because he was fae and had that immortality thing going on – but I’m not sure. The cast of secondary characters were also fun and I can’t wait to read later books in the series to see if they re-appear. I have a feeling (although its been a while since I read the first book) that the characters in that one did make an appearance in this one – but I can’t remember…(whoops)…

Overall, cute read if you like paranormal romance and are looking for something new to try out. If you like the Fae storyline, you could also check out Karen Marie Moning’s Highlander series (Paranormal Romance) or Fever Series (Urban Fantasy) or the first book in Charlotte Featherstone’s Sins and Virtues series – Lust. I’d give Highland Guardian 3.5 stars.

 
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Posted by on September 27, 2012 in Book Review

 

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Review – Nice Girls Don’t Have Fangs – Molly Harper

06 Sep

Nice Girls Don’t Have Fangs
Author: Molly Harper
Series: #1 in the Jane Jameson series

Narrator: Amanda Ronconi
Run Time: 9 hours and 24 minutes.

Book Description:
Maybe it was the Shenanigans gift certificate that put her over the edge. When children’s librarian and self-professed nice girl Jane Jameson is fired by her beastly boss and handed twenty-five dollars in potato skins instead of a severance check, she goes on a bender that’s sure to become Half Moon Hollow legend. On her way home, she’s mistaken for a deer, shot, and left for dead. And thanks to the mysterious stranger she met while chugging neon-colored cocktails, she wakes up with a decidedly unladylike thirst for blood.

Jane is now the latest recipient of a gift basket from the Newly Undead Welcoming Committee, and her life-after-lifestyle is taking some getting used to. Her recently deceased favorite aunt is now her ghostly roommate. She has to fake breathing and endure daytime hours to avoid coming out of the coffin to her family. She’s forced to forgo her favorite down-home Southern cooking for bags of O negative. Her relationship with her sexy, mercurial vampire sire keeps running hot and cold. And if all that wasn’t enough, it looks like someone in Half Moon Hollow is trying to frame her for a series of vampire murders. What’s a nice undead girl to do?

Review
I’m going to preface this review by saying I came to Molly Harper’s writing later than many other people who have read her stuff. And, I read/listened to her Naked Werewolf series prior to listening to Jane Jamison which were her earlier works. So I think I went into Nice Girls with higher expectations because I had previous enjoyed her works. Don’t get me wrong, I liked it, I just didn’t love it like I was expecting to.

From the get-go you could tell that this was one of her earlier works and if you read later books, you can see how her writing style has improved (it is still the same quirky that I enjoy, but the Naked Werewolf books were a bit tighter writing, which made them flow better). However, I did enjoy Jane’s antics (because there really is no other way to describe them). Although, I did solve the mystery element fairly early on (or rather, I had a pretty solid idea of who is was, so the reveal didn’t add that much to the story for me). But I will be looking forward to checking in on Jane again in the future (and luckily for me, I have 5 other books in the series to read!)

Amanda Ronconi, the narrator, is probably one of my top 5 that I have discovered in the last year, along with Xe Sands. I know immediately picking up anything narrated by her, that she is going to hit on the quirky/humorous nature of the writing without too much difficulty. While her male voices, are occasionally, only so-so (but they grow on you), I love her female ones and feel that she had a good range to work with. I’ll be watching for more stuff narrated by her in the future.

Nice Girls Don’t Have Fangs (Paperback)
Nice Girls Don’t Have Fangs (Kindle)

 
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Posted by on September 6, 2012 in Book Review

 

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Review – Pearl Harbor: FDR Leads the Nation Into War – Steven M. Gillon

03 Sep

Pearl Harbor: FDR Leads the Nation Into War
Author: Steven M. Gillon

Narrator: John Pruden
Run Time: 6 hours and 40 minutes

Book Description:
Franklin D. Roosevelt famously called December 7, 1941, a date which will live in infamy.” History would prove him correct; the events of that day—when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor—ended the Great Depression, changed the course of FDR’s presidency, and swept America into World War II. In Pearl Harbor, acclaimed historian Steven M. Gillon provides a vivid, minute-by-minute account of Roosevelt’s skillful leadership in the wake of the most devastating military assault in American history. FDR proved both decisive and deceptive, inspiring the nation while keeping the real facts of the attack a secret from congressional leaders and the public. Pearl Harbor explores the anxious and emotional events surrounding the attack on Pearl Harbor, showing how the president and the American public responded in the pivotal twenty-four hours that followed, a period in which America burst from precarious peace into total war.

Review:
I don’t typically listen to non-fiction audiobooks, but I was looking for something different and this one caught my eye. Having studied history in college, I found that WW2 was definitely a period that interested me – although the European theater was more to my liking than the Pacific theater or the homefront. But any historian knows FDR’s famous words just a day after the attack on Pearl Harbor – so seeing the lead up to how that speech came to be in the hours following the attack was intriguing.

I found Pruden’s narration to be spot on for the topic and the genre. There was really no need for multiple voices in a non-fiction book, although I would be curious to hear him narrator a fiction book to see his range…I know that I will be on the look-out for more books narrated by him in the future. I’ll also be seeking out more books written by Gillon, as he had a way of bringing a well known time period in history to life, with the minor details that likely are never studied by historians. It is those time periods that bring history to life.

 
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Posted by on September 3, 2012 in Book Review

 

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Review – Cold Comfort – Quentin Bates (@graskeggur)

28 Aug

Cold Comfort
Author: Quentin Bates
Series: #2 in the Gunnhilder Mystery

Narrator: Davina Porter
Run Time: 12 hours, 12 min

Review Copy Provided by AudiobookJukebox Solid Gold Reviewer program

Book Description:
Officer Gunnhildur, recently promoted from her post in rural Iceland to Reykjavík’s Serious Crime Unit, is tasked with hunting down escaped convict Long Ommi, who has embarked on a spree of violent score-settling in and around the city. Meanwhile, she’s also investigating the murder of a fitness guru in her own city-center apartment. As Gunna delves into the cases, she unearths some unwelcome secrets and influential friends shared by both guru and convict. Set in an Iceland plagued by an ongoing financial crisis, Gunna has to take stock of the whirlwind changes that have swept through the country—and the fact that at the highest levels of power, the system’s endemic corruption still leads, inevitably, to murder.

Review:
I have to admit after reading the first book in the series, I wasn’t sure if I was going to continue. The author provided an interesting look into the world of financial crime, but for some reason it just didn’t really work for me. It wasn’t in the writing style, but rather the subject. However, I typically have a rule of trying at least 2 books in any series before deciding one way or another whether I’ll continue or not. So when the second book showed up as a review copy, I jumped on the chance to listen to it, and see if maybe that changed my level of enjoyment of the series (as it has been known to before – either for the good or the bad). And I was pleasantly surprised.

Cold Comfort pick up a few months after the events of Frozen Assets, and for me, it was like seeing into the lives of Gunnhildur and her family and friends. When it came to character development, I found that this installment had much more description and I felt like I got to know them. Having the narration of Davina Porter also helped, because I can only assume that she received training in how to say certain names and words in Icelandic – although since I don’t speak the language, i can’t say so for sure…The mystery is the story kept me guessing until the very end and the person who did it, wasn’t the one that I expected it to be.

I’ll have to admit that i have a certain bias when it comes to Davina Porter’s narration – to me, she is the epitome of an audiobook narrator and I judge many of the other books that I listen to against my experiences listening to her. And her narration of Cold Comfort didn’t disappoint. For a non-Icelandic speaker, the pronunciation of certain names/words sounded authentic (although, I would love to hear the authors take on that) and it helped me be able to visualize in my head how to sound them out in the future. Although Icelandic, Finnish or another Scandinavian language is on my to-learn pile for sometime in the future. Although I have to admit that a few times while I was listening, I thought that I picked up on more of an English accent than what I assume an Icelandic one would be – but it wasn’t enough to distract me from the narration.

I have been impressed with previous audiobooks released by AudioGO in the past and this one was no exception. I’ll definitely continue to look to them for more audiobooks in the future. All in all, I have to say that I was glad I continued with the series and hope to see book 3 in the near future (the author has the title posted to his website, so I can only hope). I would recommend this series to people who like the slower pace of Henning Mankell, vice the faster Steig Larsson, as well as anyone who likes James Thompson, although Bates isn’t quite as dark.

You can purchase the book from Amazon Cold Comfort: An Officer Gunnhildur Mystery (Officer Gunnhildur Mysteries) (Hardcover), Cold Comfort: An Officer Gunnhildur Mystery (Officer Gunnhildur Mysteries) (Kindle) or Cold Comfort: An Officer Gunnhildur Mystery (Audiobook). If can also be purchased from audible.com (account required).

 
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Posted by on August 28, 2012 in Book Review

 

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Review – The Missing – Chris Mooney

31 Jul

The Missing
Author: Chris Mooney
Series: Book 1 in the Darby McCormick series

Narrator: Bernadette Dunne
Run Time: 8hrs 23 minutes

Book Description:
Darby McCormack was in high school when she first encountered the killer: someone murdered a woman in the woods where Darby and her two best friends were partying. His race to silence the witnesses was sure-footed and violent – but somehow Darby survived.
Twenty-five years later, Darby is a crime-scene investigator for the Boston Police Department, and a chilling case – a woman’s late-night abduction – has her uncovering strange leads to missing women, past and present. As forensic clues lead her closer to a psychopath called the Traveler, Darby must finally resolve the nightmare of her past and come face-to-face with a killer who is determined to keep the missing – and the horrors they endured at his hands – from ever coming to light.

Review
I likely never would have picked up this book if I hadn’t been playing around with a book recommendation book online. The Missing showed up as a book that readers who enjoyed Shadow Man by Cody MacFayden and since I enjoyed that one, I figured that I would try it. It also worked well because I am making it a goal of mine to try a wider range of audiobook narrators rather than sticking to my tried and true favorites and I had never listened to the narrator before.

Similar to Shadow Man, The Missing focuses on a female mc who has suffered a tragedy in her life – this one when she was a teenager. (But as a random thought, why is it that so many female main characters in these mystery/thriller/suspense books have suffered some kind of massive tragedy that makes them a crusader for good, why can’t they just choose to do that…but that is a thought for another time). Anyways, back to the book – Darby is now a crime scene investigator and solving current crimes as well as the one from her past.

At first I thought I had figured out who the bad guy was going to be, but I completely discounted the person who it turned out to be – you know, one of these days, i’ll start listening to the little voice on my shoulder. I am kind of tempted to re-listen in the future and see if I feel differently.

This was the first time that I had listened to Bernadette Dunne as a narrator and it likely won’t be the last. I felt that she had a good range of vocal inflections for the various voices – but at the same time – the cast of the book was rather limited as compared to other ones I have listened to, so I don’t know how she would have done with a wider range of characters, but I’ll be looking out for more done narrated by her in the future.

 
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Posted by on July 31, 2012 in Book Review

 

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