HUMAN REMAINS by Elizabeth Haynes ***

I thought it was a pretty good story but could tell throughout that it was a Brit writer, just the general tone and some words that seemed outdated or used oddly.

So a guy named Colin goes around finding depressed people and talks them into committing suicide (supposedly in the double figures, some still not discovered). He tried it on the main character Annabel and she couldn't remember anything he told her. Not one bloody word. So you have this mysterious way of talking people into committing death but aren't allowed to know how it's done. I think it was implied by hypnosis or coercion but no one ever really tells you much of anything except Colin is innocent of anything (as far as police are concerned) more than chatting up some girls who decide to kill themselves without provocation. Yeah ok sure. How about conspiracy to commit a crime?

The premise of the story was unreal but reading it as a simple story without questioning anything it went along pretty well, you kept wanting to know more, like what the fuck Annabel's job is all about. Who ever even heard of a civilian looking crap up for the PD and being paid? IDK. Sounds idiotic to me, she should either be part of the PD or get a real job.

Anyway those are some of the obstacles you need to leap your faith over and read for the sake of wasting your time reading. I found it absorbing because you kept waiting to see what Colin was doing which you never got an answer so it really was a waste of my time.

INFERNO by Dan Brown *****

This is a typical Langdon run thru the streets to beat a mysterious person trying to tamper with genetics or unleash a genetic disease upon mankind. The brilliant but obsessed with Dante's Inferno guy kills himself about when Langdon wakes up from amnesia in Italy. He has no idea how he got there or why is there. And so the chase begins. In the hospital he's told he was struck by a bullet and watches as his doctor is gunned down in front of him, he's grabbed by a student doctor Sienna and off they go together following clues from the bad guy.

Lots of descriptive passages about Italy the art and statues and each painter, sort of a history lesson from a professor, I kinda skipped over that crap it bored me, esp. since there was so much of it.

A guy on a boat finds out his client is the brilliant "killer" and goes to the world health org. with his findings to ask for help in stopping the ticking time bomb somewhere under Italys water ways so there are cops, the guys from the ship, the WHO all chasing after Langdon hoping he leads them all to an underground passage containing a dangerous substance. 

I won't give anything away but I was sort of rooting for the bad guy once I knew what they were looking for. The book addresses the increasingly dangerous overpopulation to our planet and how it can only sustain perhaps half of everyone on it. Usually nature takes things into it's own hands and a new strain of bacteria or deadly virus wipes out most of the population giving earth a chance to recover and start fresh. I liked the premise of the story and it's one that needs to have more thought by all the countries leaders. Limiting the amount of children people can conceive is a responsible thing to do.

I know someone who is fostering a baby and the mother has given up 3 other children to the adoption process and is pregnant yet again. The dumb shall inherit the earth because the more intelligent people know to limit the size of their family. Very intuitive and good reading.

MY SECOND DEATH by Lydia Cooper ****

I found this to be very good reading but the main character is so "off" it's unbelievable. A girl, Michaela, feels no physical pain, has no empathy, which makes her a sociopath and bunch of other weird psychosis names, has an older brother who tortured her all her life to get a rise out of her but of course he never did. The brother was basically a killer who blamed most of his dirty deeds on the sister who is so dumb or stupid she never explained to anyone that she didn't do anything. Just spent a lot of her childhood in mental institutions drooling on herself but now somehow she has redeemed herself to teach other children, I guess college students.

She's rude to everyone in her path, says she can't emote but is honest as that's the only way she can be. This has to be some fabricated psychotic person. She's even ruder to her own mother and father, more so than necessary and they seem to play almost no role in her life whatsoever. They're blank slates you never get to know at all really. You're pretty much stuck with Mickey, Aiden (her new roommate) her brother David and that's about all folks.

A few fires, some dead bodies turn up that she's supposed to solve the crimes without involving the cops or herself -course she CARES enough not to be sent back to the mental institution to go to all the trouble of trying to solve the cases herself.

One very irritating aspect of the writing is how everything smells. Drove me nuts. She doesn't want to be next to someone because "she'll be able to smell his teenage body odor and deodorant and the cafeteria and perfume scents lingering on his school clothes." HUH? What perfume? Or "The frozen crust of earth purls (?) with trapped melted snow. The scent of snow, wet crumbling tree bark (who smells this?), of exhaust. And under it all the sharp bitter smell of scorched wood, melted rubber, overheated metal, the last traces of an apocalyptic fire." Come on...really? She must be a dog but no one told me, a bloodhound perhaps. Odors like this crap are common thru out the book. It's ridiculous.

Otherwise I could have enjoyed it, if you bypass the fake ability to smell like a dog (and sense odors as one, lol) you may like it as well.

ASK BOB by Peter Gethers *****

If you enjoy animals and the inside of other people's relationships you'll enjoy the book. I liked it very much, mostly cuz it's about a veterinarian, his pets and his dating, marriages etc. It didn't really delve much into he animal part of his life and some of the relationships were unrealistic but overall a good read. Easy to get thru liked most of the characters, felt he was a sort of way too easy going type of person but would like to meet someone like that in my own life. Enjoyed it.

CODE WHITE by Scott Britz-Cunningham *****

Very good medical story with some danger/mystery involved. A  neurosurgeon was married to quite the monster, left him for another doctor and her husband went on a tirade. He invented a learning computer program that sort of was part of his own personality. He rigged the hospital with dynamite and demanded ransom money which the computer would go into the banks while the money was transferred and steal more up to the billions of dollars.


The wife Ali, learns all this while in the middle of using new technology they both invented (husband) to reconnect the boys brain to get his vision which he never had due to a tumor that first needed to be removed then the egg computer program inserted. She was running back and forth watching him, worried about the bomb, no one was allowed to leave the building but FBI and other cops were involved. Her boyfriend was offed by the computer without the husbands consent, it just acted on it's own and that scared Ali so much she had to figure out how to get the computer to calm down and stop the bomb ticking down to explosion.

Very edge of the seat and good reading. You'll like it.

NOS4A2 by Joe Hill ****

First off you gotta know that Joe Hill is Steven King's son. So there ya go...it's as scary as his dad writes, altho a little 'trippy' about "inside reality" being the same as outside reality, say music in your head becomes music in reality he just carried it sort of into bizarre areas that takes quite a lot of setting aside your disbelief. How can people travel over bridges in their mind with other people to be some far off place to "find" something? A few of these characters have this so called "power".

I can't give it 5 stars for a few reasons. It's a fairly good and difficult to put down book. Things I don't like are that the children somehow made to believe in a bad guys dream life and become vampire-like but are still alive and real children at the end but blood thirsty killers in between. Don't get it at all.

Then the heroine undeservedly aside from all the ass kicking she takes to herself, and marries/fucks a big huge obese fat guy when it says nothing about her being uglier than sin doesn't make it to the end. That is very disappointing to the reader. You have to know that the entire book hinges on this one character solving EVERYTHING and then you kill her off? WHY? Wasn't she tough enough, or worth enough, or kick ass enough? You made her a huge fighter but can't keep her alive? What was her point? Then her asshole big fat husband goes and gets his stomach tied off so he's slim and worthy of her but she's not there to see THAT and the cop who suspected the heroine Vic of killing her own kid ends up fucking her husband. It's unjust, unfair and not worth 700 pages for that ending.

How is any of that in all fairness worth the reader sticking with the writer to the end? Now I will never trust you Joe Hill. Not for a minute. I will doubt everything you tell me about everyone in your stupid stories and know you have a bad or unfair ending for them. Glad to hear you're so popular on twitter you're gonna need those friends. I may read your books but be suspect about your motives for every strong character because in the end they will weaken and die like all the bad guys in the book. I have no confidence you are taking me on a fair journey. You are taking me for a long drawn out stupid make believe story with a bad ending.

TWICE KISSED by Lisa Jackson **

The most ridiculous "romance" novel evah! Some teen has sex with a cowboy her twin has sex with her half brother, finds out about the cowboy seduces him from her sister and there's beginning of the love stupidity.

So the half brother kills himself sister #2 miscarries his kid which is why he did that, then she gets knocked up ASAP by her own sisters boyfriend and gives that kid away. Sounds like a horror story right? O but the sister#1 still adores and worships her manipulating, self centered, monster of a twin.

I hated it. Not a romance, not a mystery mostly a hate crime from one sister to everyone else she deals with in her miserable life. Hated all of it. Stupid ass yard sale buy. Circa 1998 and redone in 2006--bad idea it sucks.

ORIGINAL SKIN by David Mark *

Got reading it and said to myself, "self" I said, "Shit, writer's a Brit." hated it.
"chats with the force psyhologist and had her doctor sign the last of the seemingly endless forms promising that the slash wound to her hand has left no permanent damage. Tonight, all being well, she's allowed back to the sharp end of policing, watching her boss blahblah etc and somewhere on this page tea drinking is mentioned.
BUHBYE.
She drives a Citroen for shits sake listens to a station called Radio Humberside, loose horses and a stallion. I was an animal control officer and this dipshit with the loose horses gets no fine. NOTHING. The most dangerous animal is a stallion running loose, esp. since so many females are running around with him crashing car windows and stomping all over everyone's garden. NO FINE. NO PUNISHMENT. Nothing. Sheesh.

SIX YEARS by Harlan Coben ****

This is a very confusing story. There's a secret society that hides people who's lives are in danger and one guy Jake wants to find his girlfriend who disappeared into this net of deception. He's looking because he saw her marry a guy who was killed and the obit stirred his curiosity enough to want to find his girlfriend whom he absolutely couldn't live without.

Now in the story a bad guy has a son who wants to help people hide for the rest of their lives, so the newspaper article declares and people tell Jake that as well but then the author somehow turns him into a criminal who was killed by a person who had to hide in the secret society called Fresh Start. So this part is very stupid/confusing. Is Archer bad or is Archer good? Did he help people as the reader is led to believe or is he a criminal like his father?

Well you'll never really get a good answer to that. Otherwise the book is fast reading, you want to continue because so many odd things occur it peaks your curiosity but at the same time pisses you off by the high numbers of people involved the bad vs good the nature of Fresh Start and all that crap. One of the people who started the program worked with the FBI at one time hiding people so my question left at the end is why didn't he just put them in witness protection? Some were bad? Killers? I don't know.  By the time you're done reading it you have very little idea whether you care or not.

Happily ever after. The end.

TRAIL OF BLOOD by Lisa Black **

I almost read to the end because I had nothing else to read for awhile. This has two murder investigations going on, one 50 or so yrs ago the newer one is when the book was current which was 1963. There is no end to the murder mysteries that begin with one from 50 years ago. This sucks and pisses me off. I hate old crap murders. Either start fresh or stop writing this nonsense.

I find both investigations boring to the max. She writes in some old fashioned antiquated style: "Greer didn't, though, merely turned away and took a few unsteady steps. the Thunderbirds did a vertical climb over the lake, their engines whining, their sharp outlines silhouetted against the cobalt-blue sky. The cops present watched, of course, as anyone would, but Theresa stopped to swat a late-sesason mosquito and therefore witnessed the councilman drop to one knee and lose his lunch onto the grass." B-O-R-I-N-G.

There is way way too much space filler such as that all over the book, it makes you want to rip out page after page. I skip a lot of the reading to avoid these mindless traps of boredom. My opinion is find something more current, this shit sucks.