YOU'RE NEXT by Gregg Hurwitz *****

Guy with a mysterious past finds himself being chased by people determined to eliminate him and his family. Lots of hiding, using friends to get help figuring out his past and why these people are trying to kill him. The cops are involved so he can't go there. Wife is badly injured and he has to hide his kid while he and his criminal foster brother figure out the danger and where it's coming from.

This tension is reminiscent of a combo Koontz/King story and has you pushing pages pretty fast. Liked it a lot and the premise of the thing was almost realistic so I would buy it. Good reading.

The HELP by Kathryn Stockett *****

Couldn't put it down, it was engrossing and powerful writing.

I'm not from the south, as in having grown up there but obviously the writer was deeply ingrained in living life with 'help' coming in daily to cook, clean and care for children. The 'help' seem to have done quite a bit of living with white families as workers but also it was a part of their own lives.

One of the maids is very clever in teaching a toddler from the time she can talk how it's wrong to judge people by their skin color and when reading that I wonder why ALL the 'help' weren't changing the south in the same way as a means of forwarding their own cause and to help the next generation be more tolerant. Seems simple enough to work with the children they raise to learn to love each other no matter the color. To encourage change so simply seems obvious but I suppose it would have been dangerous if they were exposed by some of the more conservative families.

I really enjoyed the book and recommend reading it.

The NIGHTMARE THIEF by Meg Gardiner ***

Where to begin. Very fast moving page turner but with lots of coincidences that I'm not happy about. This rich girl meets up with a childhood scary guy who just happens to work for EVERYbody bad in the book, even the rich girls dad. There are about 40 names you're bombarded with in about 40 pages.
There were stupid moves by smart people. No one tried to escape. I mean REALLY escape. EVER. They just hung around in one general area to get bumped off one at a time.  People have been known to hide successfully in wooded areas for weeks. It's called getting lost and no one finds them for a long long time if they're any good at it.

It's a page turner, and suspenseful but so many "wow I can't believe HE showed up THERE". It's sort of suspend your disbelief for the entire book and don't get analytical and maybe you'll like it. I'm way to saavy a reader to put up with the coincidences and stupidity of the supposed smart people.

What it's about: rich girl has party about being kidnapped or something and meets her personal nightmare bad cowboy (who coincidently works for EVERYONE) the ending is supposed to be the  kids are successful and happy. Someone in dads old employ has a score to settle so he and some buds of his decide to kidnap the entire party for real during the fake kidnapping. Then the kids coincidently run into 2 sort of special ops people to help save them. Meanwhile lots of the little tweenies are killed. Most of the bad guys get what they deserve but you'll need to read it yourself and decide how out of this world it is.

BURIED PREY by John Sandford *****

Great reading yet again. Murder happened to two girls about 20 yrs ago and Davenport is back on the case when the bodies are found buried under a building complex being torn down. Got some return to the past events, then back to the future chasing of the perp.

Descriptions are good, I have read so many Lucas Davenport stories and Virgil Flowers that I feel like I know them already. Bad guy got what he needed at the end, esp. since he killed cops during his flight. Needed a little more pain for the vic..like tell me how bad his wound was and how much it hurt and what he was doing while they were hunting him down. Would have liked more of that. How he's scared the cops are getting closer etc. That part was ignored too much for my taste but otherwise you are getting what you pay for-a well written, page turning Sandford novel.

CHARADE by Sandra Brown ****

I would give another star if it wasn't such a sexually explicit romance. There was a lot of intrigue, lots of red herrings, tons of people. Very long involved story line with at least strong women characters-some were at least. Some were weak or stereotypical man chasers. I didn't hate it, I kept turning pages and read it between the other book I had so much trouble reading.

If you're into a complicated heart transplant story with more than a few victims, suspects and love interests you'll like the book. I don't really like the disgusting 'opening her labia and getting his tongue involved' sort of low brand writing. Too much information. And somewhat voyeuristic. Gross.

EXPIRATION DATE by Sherril Jaffe **

I was bored to tears. Not my kind of reading at all. Some old bats, mostly related, a mom, her daughter and maybe another daughter all contemplating old age and their aches and pains.
Somehow they find men to date. One thinks she had a dream that she was going to die on her 60th birthday, that's the premise of the book. I really hated it. I had to read other books in between this one so I could continue on about wealthy old biddies and their bridge games. There isn't any defining feature of any character. They could all be the same person. Nothing stands out to separate them mentally at all. Just so much wandering boring idle thoughts.
Just happy it's OVER.

TRIAL by Larry D. Thompson****

Story about families, how they interact with each other and how they react to a bad illness brought about by taking a drug approved by the FDA because the FDA and drug companies have hands in each other's pockets.
Some courtroom stuff, at home family stuff beginning with childhood of the victim and on to adulthood which seems a little over the top. The whole time I was wondering why I care about this girl and had to know her entire life story and teenager mishaps until she takes the trial drug. That's about where the story  should have started, IMO.
So a drama family style to beat a large drug conglomerate. Well written, good library find.

DOUBLE DEXTER by Jeff Lindsay *****

What's better than curling up in a dark house, little flashlight in bed reading a Dexter novel? huh? I gotta say not much can beat that. There's a little business he takes care of in the beginning and then his mixed up crazy life takes over for awhile, he gets suspended while they investigate a murder he certainly didn't commit while the wife is house hunting and distracting him from his work. She's such a ditz.

All that and little Astor gets her hands wet as Dexter deals with his newest stalker. Makes one embarrassed to live in Florida, but otherwise; killer stuff here!

BLACK LIGHT by 3 guys Melton, Dunstan, Romano

Wow really don't get it at all. I think it's about a guy; Buck, who sees ghosts, or travels to their world.  Or swallows them and regurgitates them or all three. So unsure because this book has so much rambling nonsense it's unreadable.

He meets spirits who know his mom/dad and comes out of it with no information about them whatsoever. Found roaming a desert....WTF? A child dies without much of a story to go with it. Short and meaningless. He has a girlfriend he doesn't even care about. WHY? What's the point? Don't even mention her then.

Gangs want a "piece of his action" (whatever his action is) and somehow he avoids that. Some half ghost living-dead arrangement named Darby protects Buck after Buck kills him. WTF? No explanation.

I'm only up to page 61 and that's all folks! Miserable rambling pointless waste of paper brought to you by the last writers of the SAW series, not the good ones with some humor, but the last 3 or 4 of them that sort of sucked. I would have my author pic in the dark shadows too if I wrote this shit.

GHOSTING by David Poyer **

I'm not and never will be a fan of people who are being tortured throughout a movie or book by bad guys. The entire story ends for me at the beginning. Most everyone dies cept maybe one survivor so why bother wasting my time. It also frustrates me how stupid the author turns people. Like a brilliant brain surgeon would NOT behave like this one. He would of course research boating, take boating lessons even with family members, know which boat to buy for his needs, know everything there is to know about sailing before throwing his family aboard one and heading out to Burmuda. When a more experienced boater friend (in his own boat)  says a storm is ahead and he is cutting the trip short this brilliant surgeon would NOT risk his nor his family's life by continuing on. Not reality.

But say I believed that. What is stopping him from telling his friend later approaching his boat about the killers on his boat and to turn around and get the hell away from there no matter what he thinks he can do to help. Gonna die anyway, scream at them to leave. Instead he got another family murdered. He was a wasteful hunk of flesh during the entire novel and if that's what the author thinks a 'man' is I hope he's wrong. Especially I believe the author had fun kicking the doctor's ass because he's a weekend sailor, I'm sure Mr. author is a proficient boater but no doctor, no man would be as wimpy and pathetic as the one described in this story. Only an alcoholic idiot would behave like the coward the doctor is portrayed as.

I guess the authors' vision of naked women submitting (or not) to drunk asshole kidnappers is a fun chapter or two, and was his big thrill. The killers were disgusting, dehumanized, filthy drunks who probably couldn't even get it up. And it would be more than simple to shove each one overboard. Talk about sad stories this one is right up there.

A supposed raped and degraded teenage female isn't even smart enough to save herself. A dead corpse tells her how to sink the boat and live. So phd's are worthless as humans, women are stupid,  and only men (dead corpses) can save one. Apparently.