The Short Second Life of Bree Tanner - Stephenie Meyer

The Short Second Life of Bree Tanner - Stephenie Meyer

I have wanted to read this for a while and was pleased to see it was a fairly short book.  It took me one night to get through this story, and although it was short, I was definitely not disappointed by the story line.

As anyone who has read Twilight: Eclipse knows, Bree is one of the newborns in the army that goes after Bella. Unlike Bella, her ending is not as happy.  I loved the fact that Stephenie Meyer decided to tell the story from the perspective of the newborn, blood thirsty vampires that stalk Seattle.  Let's face it, we have all been salivating for another Twilight story since we finished reading Breaking Dawn, and this lovely little tale gives us great new characters and a whole new way to look at the vampire life Bella has never seen.

Bree introduces us to the suspicions and fear that this whole new world has to offer.  She also experiences a short, but meaningful, (to her) romance as well as developing a great friendship with another powerful vampire, Fred.  I would love another book where the Cullins meet up with Fred at some point.  Through the telling of Bree's story, we discover there was so much more going on in her head then we could have dreamed of in Eclipse.

I WANT MORE STEPHENIE MEYER!!!
She can write with such wonderful emotion, it leaves me spent.  I give it a 6 out of 5, off the charts!!

Fatally Frosted - Jessica Beck

Fatally Frosted by Jessica Beck

As I stated in my previous blog post, I continued to read this novel in hopes it would tie up some loose ends from the first one, Glazed Murder.  It didn't, and I was extremely disappointed.

In this book, our slightly plump heroine, Suzanne Hart, discovers a pushy local has been murdered by one of her own donuts.  In order to clear her name, she has to solve the mystery and capture the real murderer.  Once again, the similarities from the Joanne Fluke novels continue.  The relationship between Suzanne and her ex-husband, Max, is becoming more and more tense as she tries to tell him she is moving on and he should do the same.  While her new budding relationship with the police office becomes strained as she is the number #1 suspect in this most recent murder. 

The recipes embedded through out are good, however they don't have the underlying theme that the ones in the Hannah Swensen books have.  (I may be comparing these two series just a little too much, but I can't help it, they are just so similar.)  I finished this book in just one day.  It was good light reading and a nice break from the other novels that are currently on my list.

This book gets a 3.5 out of 5 for me.  It just didn't have enough meat in it to give it any more then that.

Glazed Murder - Jessica Beck

Glazed Murder by Jessica Beck

I started this book for a little light reading before I went back to the Maximum Ride series.  I have read all the Joanne Fluke novels about Hannah Swensen and the Murder She Baked series and this looked similar to those books.  I didn't know how similar they were until I started reading.

Our amateur sleuth in Glazed Murder  whose name is Suzanne Hart, owns a donut shop, Donut Hearts, in a small town in North Carolina.  A body gets dumped on her front doorstep which she witnesses and puts her and her family in danger.  She decides that the local police are not going to do everything they can to catch the murderer, so she takes it upon herself to solve the mystery in order to get herself out of danger.  She is slightly overweight, has an overbearing mother, a retired police officer helps her investigate and has a real estate broker best friend who is always there for her when she needs her. She also starts dating a State Trooper.

In this book there were so many different directions that the suspect list took Suzanne that I was struggling to keep up with plot.  I was wondering at the end if she was going to tie up loose ends in the next novel, Fatally Frosted, but i was disappointed. 

I couldn't help but notice the similarities with the Joanne Fluke novels.  I'm sure anyone who has read her books and then read the above paragraph will also notice similarities.  Joanne Fluke writes about Hannah Swenson who owns a cookie shop in a small town in Minnesota I believe.  In one of Joanne's books, Hannah is presented with some competition in the form of a southern bell from North Carolina who opens up a sweet shop down the street.  She is promptly murdered, therefore eliminating the competition.  In one of Jessica Beck's books there is an already established cookie and cake shop down the street that is threatening to make donuts as competition for Suzanne's business.  Suzanne refers to the cookies and "too bland" for her taste and quickly dismisses them as competition.

I find the references fascinating.  And to take it one step further, I will say that there are some similarities in Joanne Flukes novels to those written by Lilian Jackson Braun, or The Cat Who books.  I challenge anyone to read just one of these books by all three of the authors I've listed and not see the similarities in each.

I like Glazed Murder, but I'm not thrilled by it.  I think I like the Joanne Fluke novels better.  However I will continue to read the books by Ms. Beck just to see how the similarities progress.

I give it 4 out of 5 overall and that's mostly for the recipes.

Maximum Ride - The Angel Experiment

Maximum Ride - The Angel Experiment by James Patterson

I haven't really kept the promise I made to myself.  I wanted to write a little review about each book that I read, directly after I finish reading it, but I have read 3 books since completing this one.  I hope to do better in the future.

Alright, to get right in to it, this book REALLY freaked me out.  My husband Doug came home one day describing to me this book series from James Patterson about a bunch of kids that had wings among other powers.  The reason this freaked me out so much is, when I was 19 I had an extremely vivid dream about a group of kids that were destined to save the world.  In my dream, which extended over an 8 year period, the kids were given special powers along with instructions from unknown persons on how to defeat their evil enemies and save the world from becoming hell on earth, literally. 

I thought there was no way that James Patterson could have written about something I dreamt about 15 years ago.  That was impossible, right!?!?  Well, I started the book and discovered that they were completely different, or so I thought.  The lead character, Maximum Ride, or just Max for short, was a fourteen year old boy who was the oldest of a group of six kids who all have wings.  Well, a few chapters in I realized I was wrong, Max was a GIRL!  The same as in my dream, although I can't remember what my lead heroine's name was after all these years. Still, the similarities just kept getting weirder and weirder.

In The Angel Experiment, Max gets instructions from a voice in her head that leads her to certain discoveries about the groups past.  They are constantly being hounded (ha ha) by the Erasers, which are genetically enhances kids who can change into werewolves.  Max and her group of flyer's have adventure after adventure, trying to escape capture and imprisonment at a laboratory nicknamed "The School" while striving to discover who they are and if they have parents out there somewhere.

After the initial shock wore off, I started to wonder how James Patterson came up with the concept for the series.  I would love to contact him and ask, but I don't want to come off as a crazed fan, or worse yet, a person that thinks he stole my idea.  That would have been a nifty trick since I never told anyone but my husband.

I'm really looking forward to the rest of the books just to see if I can freak myself out some more.  I would give this book a 5 out of 5 overall.

Finished Reading Freakonomics

Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything

Oh Freakonomics.  What can I say about this book?!?  It was extremely interesting and held up to what everyone was saying about it.  I was definitely dazzled!  I mean, when you read, right in the first couple of pages, that the reason for the drop in crime in the 1990's and early 2000's was not due to innovative police tactics, but to legalized abortion, well that gets your attention!

Steven Levitt has an incredible way of looking at data and presenting it to you in way that is easy to understand.  How he compares groups is somewhat surprising, like what do real estate agents and the Ku Klux Klan have in common, and you would be shocked to realize they actually DO have something in common.  The out of the box thinking and comparing done in this book blew my mind.  I'm not sure it I truly buy into everything he says in it, but I have absolutely walked away with an open mind as far as data and the economics of things goes. 

The parts I especially liked where the ones where he asked if parents really matter, and what's in a name.  It will have everyone who reads it questioning why their parents picked the name for them, and if they made the right choice when they named their own children!

For me it was a home run, 5 out of 5 and I can't wait to ready SUPERFreakonomics!

Second Book Finished in 2011

The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest by Stieg Larsson

The third and final book in the Millennium Trilogy Series. 

Having recently suffered from a bout of insomnia, I managed to complete this book within 48 hours.  I read the first two books, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and The Girl Who Played with Fire last year as was immediately hooked on the author who unfortuanately passed before he had the opportunity to finish the series.  According to a fan website the series had initially consisted of ten books in total.  I would have loved to see what this Swedish author cranked out in the future.

The book itself tied up a number of loose ends that had been plaquing me from the beginning when I was first introduced to Lisbeth Salander, the tattooed female heroine of the series.  The reserved, anti-social nature of this computer hacker was easy for me to indentify with, but I don't think it would be a problem for most women to identify with this character.  Stieg wrote about her is such a way that she encapsolated many of the vulerabilities that plague women on a daily basis.  He did this not only with his main charater, but with all of the supporting characters as well.  I believe that most men would identifiy with the male main character, Mikael Blomkvist, who befriends Salander in the first book, is cleverly portrayed as a saviour while at the same time allowing our heroine to remain just that.

Although Stieg goes over the background of our characters from the first two books, it's probably a good idea to read those first to get a true understanding.  In the first book it took me quite a while to get into the meat of the story.  The first couple of chapters dealt with Swedish finance and business dealings that almost completely lost me.  I stuck with it though, and the payoff was spectacular!!

In the following two books, it doesn't take long for Stieg to get to the point.  In fact, at the end of the second book, we leave our heroine Salander in a pool of her own blood having been shot three times but her father, once in the shoulder, once in the hip and once in the brain!  When I read that, I just about screamed!  I couldn't believe our heroine was being killed off this way even though I knew there was a third book, I couldn't think how he was going to save her.  Surprised again! Stieg came up with not only a detailed explaination but also a plausible one.

All in all, I loved this series and am very sad that I will not get to read more.  I give this book and the Series, 5 out of 5!

First Book Read of the New Year - Sizzle

Sizzle - By Julie Garwood.  I really enjoyed this book.  A thriller, suspense mystery that wasn't too intellectual to be entertaining.  The setting in sunny California was typical and the main characters were young hard bodies who, predictably hooked up.  The sex scenes were okay, not great writing, and the ending was also predictable.

It took me about 24 hours total to get through this book, which is not a lot of time, so it was an  easy read with an easy flow, even after taking pain meds for a tonsillectomy surgery.

The only thing that left me hanging in the end was the relationship between the main character, Lyra's, parents and her grandmother was never fully resolved.  There was still a lingering conflict that I wanted to have buttoned up but it never was.  I have to wonder if Julie Garwood is planning to write a sequel or not.

All in all I would give it a 3 out of 5!

New Project, New Year

After being inspired by my step-sister who, last year read over 115 books, I have decided to keep track of my own readings. I read a TON of books. I have an e-reader that my husband got me as a Christmas present in '09 and since then you can't keep it out of my hands. To give you a rough idea of what I read last year, here's a partial list :

• Witch & Wizard
  
• The Lovely Bones
  
• The Princess Bride
  
• The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
  
• The Girl who Played with Fire
  
• Eat, Pray, Love
  
• The Da Vinci Code
  
• The Lost Symbol
  
• The Golden Compass - 1
  
• The Subtle Knife - 2
  
• The Amber Spyglass - 3
  
• 1 Chocolate Chip Cookie Murder
  
• 2 Strawberry Shortcake Murder
  
• 13 Plum Pudding Murder
  
• 7 Peach Cobbler Murder
  
• 11 Candy Cane Murder
  
• 3 Blueberry Muffin Murder
  
• 5 Fudge Cupcake Murder
  
• 4 Lemon Meringue Pie Murder
  
• 6 Sugar Cookie Murder
  
• 10 Carrot Cake Murder
  
• 9 Key Lime Pie Murder
  
• 8 Cherry Cheesecake Murder
  
• 12 Cream Puff Murder
  
• House of Night 01 - Marked
  
• House of Night 02 - Betrayed
  
• House of Night 03 - Chosen
  
• House of Night 04 - Untamed
  
• Quidditch Through The Ages
  
• The Tales of Beedle the Bard
  
• Harry Potter Prequel
  
• Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them
  
• 7 Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows
  
• Chronicles of Narnia - Complete Collection
  
• Dear John
  
• Outlander 01 - Cross Stitch
  
• Outlander 02 - Dragonfly in Amber
  
• Outlander 03 - Voyager
  
• Outlander 04 - The Drums of Autumn
  
• 1 - The Lightning Thief
  
• 2 -The Sea of Monsters
  
• 3 - The Titan's Curse
  
• 4 - The Battle of the Labyrinth
  
• 5 - The Last Olympian
  

 

As you can see, I don't really have a favorite author or topic really. I read just for the fun of reading. In this blog, I want to keep track of all of those books and post a little blurb about what they were about and how good (or bad) they were. This is mainly just a journal for me and my own entertainment! Here's hoping I can keep it going for the whole year!!