Elena

This book was provided to me by NetGalley for free in exchange for an honest review.

Well, I hate Jane. I went through the first part of the book basically thinking this guy is WAY overthinking everything. The whole condom debacle. Then I guess I understood where he was coming from, it was a small suspicion that came from the lie he caught her in (the fact that it was for Sarah but she only found out about the guy Sarah was dating recently). When it was revealed that it was actually true, I was just like Casper, in the sense that I was expecting it to be a mistake of some sort or that he blacked out and imagined it. This guy has clearly had it tough, and so has she but to cheat on someone 5 times that you claim to love? Les Zig did a fantastic job making us hate this woman. I gasped out-loud when he walked in on her and Kai. I was cheering when he went over to Kai's place (not the drinking and driving part though) and then was also very saddened by the fact that Jane chose this guy who lives in squalor (essentially) over him. I could sympathize with how inadequate he felt because there really didn't seem to be anything better about this guy rather than the fact that he wasn't her husband.

I'm not really sure how I feel about the end. I understand that they had been together for a very long time and that she's pregnant but I feel like they will never be able to make it work. I feel like Luke was absolutely correct about the fact that this will just eat away at him no matter how much he tries to forget it. This might just be my personal view on it as I find it would be impossible to forgive someone for not only doing it but also lying about it and letting Casper apologize for his suspicion.

In conclusion, people suck! This book was a good read though, nice and quick and of course I loved Wallace!

What else can I say besides the fact that this book was sad. There was just so much sadness that even the ending, which was I guess the silver lining, did not cheer me up even a little bit. Madhu's whole life is just a huge mess. I feel terrible for her, and I knew that one of the things this book was going to do was to try to redeem her at the end. I could not think of her as redeemed however, as I had just read 200 pages of how she psychologically breaks children into submission to prepare them for prostitution. The epilogue really shows how just a short period of time with her had messed up the girl in ways that will probably never be fixed.

I liked at least that they show just how messed up Madhu's thoughts about it are. She believes that she is doing them a favour. It becomes less of an explanation and more of her trying to convince herself that what she is doing is a gift.

I found it to be a bit slow, and going off on a lot of different tangents that were not really imperative to the story.

I think I would still recommend it, as long as you can handle a whole description of the process of her being castrated. That was quite hard to get through.

This book was provided to me by NetGalley for free in exchange for an honest review.

I really disliked this book. The main character was absolutely spineless. She was constantly putting other people first. Now don't get me wrong, with family I do that too, but some neighbours that come over to my house and won't leave? I have every right to tell them to leave. If they take it personally then that is their problem. So the daughter has ADHD. That's definitely rough, I can't imagine, but she was just so defeated and in what I assume was denial about the whole thing. Only when her 11 year old daughter asks for the medicine does she seriously consider it. She things terrible things about her daughter, like how her 11 (11!!!!) year old daughter is a fat ball of dough and how happy she is that no one will probably kidnap and rape her because shes just a fat blob. Obviously parents worry about their children and their health, but that is just horribly judgmental. I don't know if maybe the character herself had some undiagnosed mental illness and the further I read the more I thought so, though it is never addressed. She was obsessed with writing lists and would lash out almost aggressively when someone tried/did read one.

She was obviously going through a very hard time. but I still cannot understand how she could so easily just dismiss everything. She was an absolute doormat and she let everyone walk all over her which is why her daughter had no respect for her. She kept thinking of all these things of what a good parents or responsible parent would do yet she did not do any of it. Was she depressed? Does she have a mental illness? None of the story went into any of that so I am just left wondering what happened and why read this book in the first place.

This book was provided to me by NetGalley for free in exchange for an honest review.

This book started out extremely slow. The synopsis made it sound like it was going to be a thriller so I sat through the beginning thinking I was in for a treat. The first 80% of the book was essentially just Riley being paranoid. I can see how this was done to establish a baseline for just how off the rails she goes. Then suddenly we get our first dose of violence, the murder of the therapist. I read about 10 more pages before I realized that it actually happened, and not that she just heard about it on the news. Then everything else was very confusing. I get that it was supposed to be set up for shock value but I was less shocked and more just confused as to what was real or not, and not in an interesting intriguing way, but in a tedious, I have to keep re-reading, kind of way. I really liked the premise, I was ecstatic when I was approved to read this book only to be disappointed. The sister, Erin, was written as such a cliché. If you had watched any show or movie in which there is a strong female lawyer then it would just be déjà vu for you. I felt like there wasn't even really any depth to the main character. I felt like we go to know Wendy better than Riley, which is surprising as she was just a side character. Usually when action happens I have a hard time putting a book down, I just need to get through the juicy part right away. However, with this book it took me a whole day of recovery before I could go back and finish it.

I was also quite irritated that the death of the therapist was never really addressed. We don't really find out if that was actually her, and just have to assume it was, which is I feel is lazy.

This book was provided to me by NetGalley for free in exchange for an honest review.

I always like books where there are multiple generations involved. I think part of it is that I really like to see where people are coming from and to understand their actions. I read this book quite fast. I wouldn't say I read it fast because I was really enthralled by it, it was just very easy reading. Honestly after reading the newest Stephen King novel it was a nice change of pace.

I didn't really feel like there were any strong characters in this book. I also didn't feel like the ending was very satisfying. I understand that that's life and we don't always get every little detail explained to us in the end but it felt more like it was a lazy ending and that the author didn't feel like they owed us an explanation.

I think that the character I probably wanted to know more about was Gabe. We got into the past of the grandparents, which was good, as we got to see why they were having all of these problems. When it came to Gabe we saw what happened to him in his childhood and then we jumped forward to when he was getting divorced. I think I would have liked to have a little bit more of a background on how he got to be married. The only thing I really got was that he was in love with Mae and had trouble committing because of his past abuse, however we meet him after he's already been married. Obviously I wasn't looking for a whole psychological breakdown of him as a human being but it would have been nice if they touched on why they never had kids, if he felt that he was going to pass on the alcoholic and abusive tendencies to his kids and that was his fear. I think that I can just go ahead and safely assume that but I would have liked a bit more on him.

Now onto Mae. I guess she was pretty much the main character, however she felt kind of shallow as well. There was a lot about her past and her issues with her fiance, but she still seemed kind of like a blank to me.

I think the best one described was George. I understood where he was coming from and how he basically blocked out the possibility that his daughter was not in fact his by blood. I also think that it was interesting to see him basically go through a bunch of different emotions associated with what happened while also trying to grieve his wife's passing. His life was sort of thrown for a loop over something that he must have thought about over the years. He must have at some point wondered why the baby was early but not premature in any way.

Of course Bud was my favourite character.

I wish there was a little bit more meat to this book, it felt sort of shallow. Other than that I wouldn't say I didn't enjoy it, but it might keep me from reading her books in the future.

This book was provided to me by NetGalley for free in exchange for an honest review.

I am going to start off by saying that writing what happens in a teenage girls head is extremely difficult. I am sure it is the same with a young guy's but I can't say I am an expert in that. This book was extremely difficult to get through. I basically had to force myself to keep going back because everything was just so over-the-top. Obviously everyone feels differently, but I felt that it was almost insulting to teenage girls the way this girl was fawning all over this guy. Yes when I was younger, of course I liked the bad boys and wanted to “fix” them. What happened to me and all of my friends that felt like this is that eventually we matured and grew up and out of it. We realized that it was not possible or not worth our time. However, this girl would just continue to take a situation and make the stupidest decision associated with it. Hmmm I am missing the necklace, oh he must have it but I won't tell anyone because I don't want to get him in trouble. Even when they were at the POLICE STATION she still felt like she was going to get him in trouble over some stupid little misunderstanding. AND HE WAS THE EXACT SAME! He didn't want to hurt her, even if it meant ruining his whole life. It was just too much unbelievable-ness. The only part that I actually thought was well written was when he was on the ground dying after being stabbed. It felt real. Everything before and after that moment was just completely unbelievable and over-exaggerated.

This book was provided to me by NetGalley for free in exchange for an honest review.

I have to be honest when I say that I did not enjoy this book. It reeled me in by the premise and I was really looking forward to figuring out this mystery. I was extremely disappointing at how the girls ended up having different mothers but the same father. I understand that the whole idea was that the father's genes took over and that is why they were so similar. Are we to believe that the girls themselves just thought they were more similar than they really were? I know they mentioned that Valentina has almond shaped eyes and different coloured hair but that still means that they are basically the same person. I was looking forward to hearing something about how they were separated at birth, NOT switched. I found Josie to be a ridiculous door mat, which I understand was supposed to be a contrast between her and Valenitna but it was to a point where she made stupid decisions just because it was convenient for the book and not because that is something a person would do.

The texting also bothered me. I get that they were younger women but I honestly haven't met anyone who is under the age of 17 who still texts using shortened version of words, like we did when we used to use messenger in elementary school (circa early 2000s).

We were supposed to believe that Helen never at first suspected that he had another family? I know that Josie was supposed to be the naive one but Helen didn't even question the trigger fingers, even though it is something a child is born with. Do the doctors not say anything when she was taken in for an operation? Or are they in cahoots with Jerry as well?

I found Josie's and Arun's relationship to be ridiculous as well. They are together for 5 years, if I remember correctly, and he can't possibly tell her that he doesn't want Valentina around without backing it up? That is not how a healthy couple functions,. which we were lead to believe they were.

Also the fact that they are British is very played up with the “hun” etc. in the beginning but then completely disregarded for any other part of the book.

Josie's arrest made the cops look like bumbling idiots. Sure they were waiting for the DNA tests to come back, but they really could have just left her in there until after they came back. What was the point of harassing her?

I fount Brett and Lisa to be useless side characters and didn't seem to add anything to the story except for the fact that maybe Brett was super creepy towards Josie. Did he think that because they weren't really family that it was appropriate?

I just felt like the book didn't answer any questions, and it's not in the sense that we are supposed to let our mind wander and figure it out for ourselves but it was just basic questions that needed to be answered to clear up the plot.

I have to start off this review by saying that I am really not a fan of dystopian books, shows or movies so I may be a little biased.

When Wade found the first Easter Egg I was so excited. I thought “heck yes, the action is about to begin!”. Well, I was pretty disappointed to find out that the rest of the book was just going to be slow and him basically worshiping this girl who he has never met and being self-deprecating.

Another point that bothered me was that he went from being a guy who lived in the dumps to getting the most expensive hotel room and putting in these magic walls that are essentially impenetrable. I get that we are supposed to see him as scrappy due to the fact that he was still able to get to the OASIS even though he was some super poor kid but the jump just seemed very unrealistic.

Overall the story was fine, but very predictable.

This book made me angry. I do think that it was well written, and as I come from a family that was pretty poor when I was younger (not as bad as them of course) I did not feel like it was made up. I could very easily believe that everything that happened would happen with an alcoholic parent and another who clearly had some kind of mental illness.

It made me angrier and angrier as I read all of the things that kept happening. How the parents kept destroying every chance and opportunity they had. The ending made me downright furious.

I have to say that I sat down and actually read the book when I heard that the movie was coming out soon. I also found the ending to be believable (the fact that she forgave her parents) due to the fact that they basically ruined relationships for this girl. She clearly did not get what it was like to be loved and settled down with the first man who took care of her and gave her a comfortable life, later getting divorced.

As much as I really wanted to find out what happens at the end, I still felt like I didn't care much about the other children. I kept forgetting about the youngest girl altogether.

The part about Ox the piggy bank was very predictable and I was just counting down the pages until the dad stole the money to buy himself some booze. I felt that part might have been dragged out a little bit as we all (I think) knew what was coming.

This book was very difficult to get through. The first one, was amazing I read that pretty fast, the second I read basically to the very end on the edge of my seat and then stopped before finishing it a year later due to some other factors.

This one however, felt painful. Of course I wanted to know how the series ends, and what happens to everyone but it was just too long. Too much details that weren't necessary that I think were supposed to add suspense. I fell asleep reading this book way too many times. When I get really into a book nothing will keep me from finishing it, even staying up all night, but this was not the case. I hated the random little side issues with Berger, and how that was resolved. It didn't add to the story at all. Her leaving Millennium and then coming back at the end of the book felt useless to be honest. We could have been just fine without any Berger in this book. I understand that part of it was to make Blomkvist become less of a womanizer and the way to do that would be for him to reject her once he starts dating Figuerola but honestly at that point I really didn't care about his personal life and wanted to see what happens to Lisbeth and the trial and Niedermann.

Overall I felt that at least it wrapped up most things so I wasn't left annoyed and wanting more but not actually wanting to read anymore.

This book was provided to me by NetGalley for free in exchange for an honest review.

I am a big fan of these types of mysteries. I read this book quite quickly because I really wanted to know what happened. There were lots of twists and turns which I thought would annoy me, to be perfectly honest, but they were done so well that it really just added to the story more.

There were things happening on the side as well that I found very interesting and wanted to know what happened instead of just skimming through it to get to the main parts.

The only complaint I have really is how often it is described how people touch each other, like on the arm, where on the arm and how hard. I understand it was necessary when someone was grabbing someone but it honestly felt kind if out of place.

This book was intense maybe in the last 100 pages. The rest of it was basically just build up. I figured the Magda character would play a bigger role, because there was lots of time spent on describing her and the other women who were obsessed with Ben.

I hated Patty. I found her absolutely spineless. She just seemed to buckle anytime anything got hard. It may sound harsh but I am not surprised that she was losing the farm as she couldn't fix ANY problems she had. She would brush anything and everything under the carpet pretending everything is fine. I realize that she was young when she married Runner but that was her first stupid decision and everything seemed to just get worse after that. Not using condoms because she “didn't want to nag” was just unbelievably stupid.

I liked how the story jumped back and forth in time, I understand that the point was to build up the tension but I think that it maybe should have started a little bit later. Every chapter just seemed to drag on with useless details.

I found Libby to be a whiner as well. You would think that what would drive her to find out about her family was to “get some peace” as she tells Ben but she does it for money.

I think I would have liked it better had the killer been Runner but they made him out way too stupid so I never thought it was him.

Overall not bad, but I think it could have been less draggy.

I honestly don't see what all the fuss was about. I felt like it took me way too long to get through. I get that it's scary because it can actually happen but I just found the whole thing kind of boring.

I feel like the ending was like a quick little patch job to cover any criticisms that people might have. Like “Oh you didn't think that was believable? Well it's just one woman's account of what happened, so of course there will be tons of questions.”

I hated the lack of quotation marks during speech, which I guess again is “explained” by the fact that this was a recording but it really made some of the dialogue hard to follow.

I found that I really couldn't feel bad for the character and there wasn't really that much back story to her so I couldn't really get attached to her so I didn't care much about what happened to her at the end. Overall I was happy that it was over.

This book was provided to me by NetGalley for free in exchange for an honest review.

Wow I thoroughly enjoyed this book. It took me a little while longer than usual to get through it but that's only because I was savouring it. I was so curious how it was going to come together at the end and i have to say it was done very well. Everything I was curious about got covered very well.

I have to say that I kind of wish at the end that his daughter died. Not that I am a horrible person who wants to read about people's suffering but I feel like it would have had more of a gut punch. This mad did everything he could including killing someone to get his daughter back only to have her be killed anyway, it would have been more shocking. Nevertheless I still do like my happy endings, even though let's be honest, that poor girl's life will never be the same.

My only complaint about the writing was that it was written from the first person point of view in the main character's chapters but everyone else was in third person. I don't see why there needed to be this inconsistency, as we know of course that Reese is the main character and we would not feel strayed from that.

I would definitely recommend it to anyone who likes thrillers and something that is more neutral than just hero and bad guy as it delves a bit into Reese's psyche and kind of why he does the things he does.

This book was provided to me by NetGalley for free in exchange for an honest review.

This book was unbearable. I got to exactly 50%, put it down, and never picked it up again and I know I never will. Nothing about the story was interesting, I didn't feel like I cared about any of the characters or what happens to them. This guy in the story was obviously delusional if he thinks that he can get his girlfriend back by helping his brother with his mental illness. How would anyone not find that creepy? I will admit I never got to the part where she actually finds out or whether he was able to help the brother but I know that if it was realistic it would not go well.

The point is I couldn't finish it and I would not recommend this to anyone.

I liked the art a lot. Almost all of the comics are super relatable which is great but considering most of us spend a ton of time on the internet we have seen most of these before. I hope that doesn't discourage people from getting it because it was a fun quick little read but it just sort of fell flat for me.

This was my first SK experience. Reading the reviews now makes me think that I really should have read more about it before delving into it. I was hating it even 200 pages in. I thought MAYBE it will get better. I am happy to read from the negative reviews that I am not the only one who felt that this was drawn out and boring. I am also happy to read that this is not like SK's usual writing. Maybe I will try to give him another chance.

This book reads like a time capsule a lot of the time. I understand they made modern references so that when people do go and read it they can understand that it is happening in the modern world and not in some 40's setting, however if that was the plan then it just felt like it was being shoved down my throat over and over again. Mentioning celebrities or popular colognes was just completely unnecessary and took away from the story.

I could probably write a detailed paragraphs on each of the characters and what I disliked about then but I don't feel like this book even deserves that. I guess all of the characters just felt weak. There was no depth to any of them so I really had a hard time even caring about any of them surviving. Even Don Peters, who is the scum of the Earth in this book, I honestly didn't even care if he died at the end. Usually if I hate a character and they get their just desserts I would be excited and happy for all of the inmates that were assaulted by him. The ending was super predictable too. I think I would have at least found it more enjoyable if the deliberation was longer. It was just so obvious they were going to come back, even Lila, who sort of went back and forth on it immediately decided yes she is going back.

I also felt like there wasn't any explanation for the whole ordeal. Was it a test? This is also not an interested kind of wonder. It's more of a, why did I have to go through that to not get anything out of it at the end?

Hope if I ever come back to SK I will have a better experience. For now, I am going to stick with books that have less than 12 characters at a time, and less than 700 pages of boring, drawn out plot.

Might be the worst book I've read in a while. I honestly hated a few other books I read but this one I think takes the cake. What a huge waste of time. I had to keep putting it down and picking it back up and putting it down again. The characters have no depth to them, the whole thing was completely predictable. I hated the main character. She was just so messed up, I get that people don't have to have their life together but her thought process read like she was 13 years old and had not life experience what-so-ever. I could see this being targeted at maybe that tween audience but for an adult, it just made me hate myself for wasting time on it.

The story itself was just so boring and drawn out, there wasn't really anything really interesting about it at all. This was supposed to be a book about how no one's life is perfect and the struggles of this girl living in London, but then, magically, everything works out! What a miracle! Well life does NOT work that way.

Please if you haven't read it yet, don't waste your time!

DNF

I read to 1/5 of the book and I put it down and realized I would never pick it back up again. I got that far in it and realized that not much has even happened. I loved Stardust by Gaiman so I figured I would really enjoy this! I was very wrong. There was just way too much descriptions of the surroundings and seemingly useless information. I had no respect for the main character. I generally dislike when it's hard to tell what's real and what isn't and in this book I was just waiting for him to tell me that every single thing he saw was not real. It was just too difficult to continue. I was warned about this book but figured I would give it the benefit of the doubt.

Wow, this book was pretty intense. I couldn't stop reading it! I was dreading every single chapter and description but still couldn't put it down. I liked that it jumped from the past to the present, it gave you all of the details that you wanted to know, all of the questions answered, except for maybe “why?” but we really don't need to know the reason.

Very well written thriller.

I started with hating Ove. How could this man be so bitter about everything? The more I read the more I understood, and that is not to say that I felt sorry for him. It was more that I got why he was the way he was. As much as he was a gruff man to begin with it was nice to see him show his caring side. It was interesting to imagine what he would have been like had he had children. What we knew from his father was that he was just like he was even with a child, so maybe he would have been the same but we still see how he would have cared for them by the way he treated the neighbours kids.

Edit: I loved how he had an issue with his neighbour and kept bringing up the Volvo vs. Saab debate. My dad loves his Volvo but when I told him about the book he said that he can definitely appreciate a nice older Saab!

There was only about one thing I like about this book and that was the way they described the surroundings. The locations seemed beautiful and were described so well I could almost feel like I was there.

However, the rest of the book I absolutely hated. I don't know where to start. Isabelle was a horrible person. I couldn't sympathize with her. I don't think it's because I had never had a child or miscarriages but because she was clearly mentally ill. At first, I was like okay, they decided to just keep the child for a day to take care of her, okay no problem. Then I knew that she would manipulate him into keeping her. This made me sad because it was such a cop out. Emotional manipulative woman convinces her doormat of a husband to keep someone else's child even though he KNOWS that's the wrong thing to do.

When Tom started writing the notes to Hannah I actually thought that maybe it was Isabelle and that the reader was throwing us off. I thought, wow that's going to be a twist! NOPE. Just Tom and his guilty conscience, because I should have realized that when it comes to children, women would do anything to keep them safe blah blah blah. That was the reasoning that Isabelle gave. She stated that she did not want the child to go to an orphanage as her main reason. If that was the main reason, then once they find out that Hannah is alive, they should just explain everything. They would have been much less hated had that happened.

I did feel sorry for Hannah. Clearly she got dealt the worst hand. She not only got disowned by her father for marrying a German man, but she subsequently lost both her husband and her baby at the same time putting her into a what I can only describe as a catatonic state. So of course when she gets the first note everyone just thinks she is insane. I can't imagine how helpless she must have been feeling.

Back to Isabelle. Wow, what a horrible human being. The excuses can keep getting stated (her miscarriages, being lonely on the island) but I will still not feel sorry for her. She seemed to have NO remorse until the end, where it was almost too late to help Tom, and then she went in to tell the truth, but just before that she still lies to Hannah to get the child back. When she has a stillbirth she blames in on Tom, and at no point in time does she apologize for that. She also completely freaks out when she thinks that he got a doctor to come to the island to take a look at her. HOW DARE HE? HOW DARE HER LOVING HUSBAND WANT TO TAKE CARE OF HER? I know that in the end she does “the right thing” but that does not erase all the wrong she had done. I would say poor Tom, and sure he also had a crappy situation but clearly he did not do anything to get out of it. He himself could have just sent out for a boat to take the baby back on the second day but he loved his wife too much to take this child away from her.

I feel like there was way too much back story on Hannah's father. I understand that it was added so that he could relate to Lucy but in the end it did not need to be that long and detailed. I found it interesting but then at the end of the book I found myself wondering why that whole chuck was dedicated to him just to bring it back up that one time.

All in all, I loved the description of the scenery but I did not like any of the characters. I could not sympathize with any of them and found them all to be very boring.

I apologized profusely to my book club for picking this book and I don't doubt that this is the worst book they have read all year.